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- Dragons and Dictation Software: How the Failure Continues
In late November, Gear Diary ran a short video sneak-peek of Dragon Dictation for the iPhone, an app that, like its big brother Mac and PC counterparts, converts spoken words into written text. The teaser video begins with the words “An app that will transform your iPhone usage.”
It’s now available in the iTunes Store, and for a limited time, it’s free. But don’t rush to download it just yet. While this is not a review of the Dragon Dictation app, it is a cautionary tale to be skeptical of the hype. Because, unless you already have a very specific need for speech-to-text technology (subscription required), this app fails where all dictation software has failed before.
A Quick Recap
In the early 90’s people started taking dictation software seriously, and developers dreamed of a not-too-distant Star Trek-inspired world in which our primary method of interaction with our computers would be via the spoken word. Not just stilted single-word utterances either, but fluid, organic sentences. Natural speech, they like to call it.
It all sounds fantastic. But the hardware was a long-time coming. Processors were underpowered. Microphones were too low-fidelity for dictation software to do its job reliably.
Image courtesy of SummerRain812 on Flickr
Sadly, higher quality microphones tend to be prohibitively expensive or must be strapped to the head during use. (Not exactly user-friendly.) In any case, even when speech recognition and dictation works well, it’s a control mechanism most of us find horribly uncomfortable.
What do I mean by that? If you’ve never tried dictating an email, letter, article or essay, go do it right now. I guarantee you’ll be returning to the keyboard in next to no time.
Dictation tools still require you to explicitly dictate punctuation (an awkward skill to master). The fact is, until computers really are as smart as those in Star Trek, the biggest problem with dictation software is not with the software at all, but with you, the user. You see, you need to be carefully re-trained not only in how you go about the task of ‘writing,’ but also in how you control your computer. It’s deliciously ironic that, after a while spent training yourself to speak the right words, the right way, at the right speed and with the right tone of voice, you sound more like a robot than your computer ever could.
Challenges
No one writes an essay or lengthy document knowing in advance exactly the words they will use and in precisely what order. If you’re anything like me, you write a few lines here, an edit there, a quick jump back to the beginning to add something you forgot… Writing is a creative process that requires a lot of flexibility.
Just try moving your carat around a page using only your voice, and you soon realise that in the time it took to navigate successfully to that one particular spot on the page, you could have reached for the mouse, clicked, made your edit, completed your sentence and wandered off to watch last night’s episode of Stargate Universe.
Dragon Dictation is nothing special unless you already have a very specific need for such software, like I said at the start of this ranticle (a portmanteau of ‘rant’ and ‘article’ I suspect would take an eternity to type using dictation software).
The problems with dictation technologies can’t be blamed on Dragon Dictation; rather, they belong to those human interface challenges that are the product of our bias towards using our hands for most activities. If your hands and arms work sufficiently well, you’ll just prefer a mouse or keyboard.
For what it’s worth (even though I did promise this was not a review) Dragon Dictate has some noteworthy limitations; Dictation has to occur in short bursts of 20-30 seconds, which will swiftly become a nuisance if you happen to speak s-l-o-w-l-y. There’s no realtime visual feedback, so you can’t tell whether the speech-to-text conversion was successful until after you’ve finished dictating. Most importantly, the Dragon Dictate app doesn’t itself perform the speech-to-text conversion; those short 20-odd seconds of speech are recorded by the iPhone and transferred via the web to a server which does all the real work, sending the text results back to your iPhone. So not only is there an unavoidable processing delay, but you also have to be online to use it in the first place.
So, is this really the app that’s going to transform how you use your iPhone? If you constantly use Voice Control then perhaps you’ll love it. But for everyone else, this is likely one of those apps left to gather virtual dust, another victim of the harsh reality of current voice-interaction technologies.
I look forward to a Star Trek future in which we all talk to our computers and receive intelligent, useful responses. But don’t forget that the crew of the Starship Enterprise does the bulk of their computer work with their hands. (And it’s all dignified tapping and swiping, mind you, not comically-impractical Minority Report arm-waving!)
Переслать - MacUpdate Winter Bundle: $450 Worth of Mac Apps for $50
If you’re looking for a gift to buy yourself this holiday season (or someone else, I suppose, though I never find that people much like software gifts), the MacUpdate Holiday Bundle has just arrived and is well worth considering. Like MacHeist and many other software bundles, MacUpdate’s offers a heaping helping of software at a bargain basement price.
The bundle includes 11 quality Mac apps, including both utilities and games, and if you’re lucky enough to be one of the first 10,000 buyers, you also get three additional pieces of software at no extra charge (around 1,200 had been sold at the time of this writing). Best of all, if you’re unsure about any of the apps included, you can download a preview package that includes trial versions of each.
The total cost of the Holiday Bundle is $49.99, which is a nearly 90 percent discount from the cumulative regular price of $446.77. Even if two of the apps on offer are part of your prospective to-buy list, there’s no better time to snatch them up. Here’s a quick look at what’s included in the deal:
- Path Finder – Finder replacement. Looks like Finder, but features numerous enhancements, including a dual pane file browser, tabbed browsing, easy Mac package navigation, disk image creation and OS X command line access.
- Socialite – Used to be EventBox. It’s an aggregator for your social networks and news sources, including Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter and RSS. Learn more in our recent article about the program.
- Yep – PDF and document management app. It’s described by the developers as an iPhoto or iTunes for your iWork, Office and PDF files. You can navigate your file structure to find them and move them, and also preview them within the app.
- Radio Gaga – Nothing to do with the Lady of the same name. It’s an internet radio player and recorder. You can add your own stations or use the built-in directory of more than 10,000.
- Garage Sale – eBay auction creator and client. You can build your auction using templates and a WYSIWYG editor, broadcast them using Twitter, and also keep an eye on auctions you’re bidding on. PayPal support is also built-in.
- DragThing – An OS X launcher. It’s a dock, but more versatile than the one that ships with OS X, and you can have more than one using DragThing. Billed as a way to keep your desktop clean, so that you can have your files available without wasting all that space and memory.
- Speed Download – Download manager and accelerator. I’ve never used one of these, but this one does have the advantage of doubling as a full-featured FTP client, which is good enough for me.
- HealthNut – Calorie tracker and food diary. Just in time for helping exacerbate the guilt of stuffing your face over the holidays, and helping you stay on track with your consequent New Year’s resolution to lose weight.
- PCalc – Scientific calculator application. Features support for hex, octal and binary calculations and unit conversions, and is completely scriptable. Also includes a companion dashboard widget.
- Machinarium – The much-loved Mac puzzle/adventure game. You’re a robot who has to travel through a world of robots to find your robot lover. On the way, you’ll run into countless puzzles and brain teasers.
- iRip – A utility for getting music from your iPod onto your Mac. This is the one that made headlines a little while ago when it had to change its name to iRip because Apple took issue with its original name, “iPodRip.”
That’s the basic bundle, but as mentioned, you also get three other apps if you buy it soon. Those three are PowerTunes (manage multiple iTunes libraries), Holiday DVD Templates (self-explanatory) and FlagIt! (flag add-on for Apple Mail). The MacUpdate Holiday Bundle is only available for around 12 more days, so if you’re going to bite, you’ve got less than two weeks to do it.
Переслать - Apple Looking to Hire In-House Video Game Talent
Apple’s posted job listings seem to provoke no end of exciting speculation, and one of its latest open calls for applications is certainly no exception. New job postings call for a software engineer for the iPhone Gaming Group, and a video game artist. Last month’s call for a game/media software engineer was somewhat open to interpretation, but this time around, there’s no ambiguity involved.
Not that Apple hasn’t made games in the past, as The iPhone Blog points out. Texas Hold’Em is a game, after all, if not a particularly ambitious one. But that casual game was a one-off, and was probably designed more to get the ball rolling for third-party developers than as a meaningful entry point into the gaming industry for Apple itself.
The new job postings, however, seem to indicate that Apple wants to start taking gaming much more seriously. The skill sets asked for definitely go beyond what’s required to create a simple video poker simulator, at least. From the call for an artist:
The interactive media group is looking for a skilled artist who wants to work as part of a small highly motivated team to work on interactive multimedia experiences on the iPhone and iPod touch. The position on the team is to help design, visualize, enable and implement interface, 3-D characters/environments, animation, texturing as well as original concept artwork.
Requirements also include the “ability to model, animate, texture and produce bump/normal maps for 3-D scene graph environments.” The software engineer position is less obviously game-related, but the description does specifically mention the iPhone Gaming Group, and lists “experience with game development” as an asset:
Please join us in taking the revolutionary iPhone to the next level. The iPhone Games Group is looking for a proactive, highly motivated engineer with 5+ years experience, to share their expertise in application and framework development…You will be responsible for implementing new features in existing applications as well as developing complex applications from top to bottom (user interface design to design and implementation of supporting frameworks.)
Two job calls does not exactly a gaming studio make, but it shows that Apple is thinking about that area. And how could it not, really? It’s been pushing the iPod touch as a gaming device, and witnessed first-hand the success of games on both it and the iPhone, so it knows that’s a space where money can be made. I still believe the primary purpose of any software effort on Apple’s part is selling hardware, so I’d expect to see new games from the company to make especially good use of the newer hardware and software features of the iPhone and iPod touch, including peer-to-peer networking.
Переслать - Rumor Has It: Foxconn Receives Order for Next-Gen iPhone
The inevitable iPhone update is looming ever closer in the distance, and accordingly, the iPhone rumor mill is heating up. Today, news came that frequent Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn, a Taiwanese hardware company, received an order to build the new iPhone, which still won’t arrive in consumer hands until mid-2010.
News of the iPhone order comes via Mobile Review’s editor in chief, Eldar Murtazin, who tweeted simply, “Foxconn received order for next generation iphone” early Thursday morning. Murtazin is known to have good connections in the mobile phone industry, so there’s a good chance that there’s something solid behind the report. Engadget went so far as to call him “the ultimate insider when it come to all things mobile,” which is no small praise.
It also makes sense time-wise, since Apple basically now has about six months to ramp up production enough to deal with the massive demand that usually accompanies the launch of its iPhone products. It’s also worth noting that this time around, many people who got the iPhone 3G on contract through AT&T will be at the end of their 2-year agreement, and thus fully eligible for a new hardware deal, which should help boost sales even further.
Thus far, details regarding what the next iPhone will have that the current generation doesn’t have been scarce. But that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from working overtime. Some suggest we could see a CDMA or dual-mode CDMA/GSM model, or one that supports RFID technologies. If it’s true that production on parts of the iPhone is going to begin soon, we likely won’t have to wait long to see these rumors multiply and resolve into a more definite picture of what’s to come.
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