Dragon Dictation comes to the iPhone. Wow.

I accepted the terms so that Nuance can copy the names in my Contacts, but how do I use that feature? When I need to send the text msg, it doesn't really give me the opportunity to say a contact name; it gives me the choice of emailing, text message or copy to clipboard. I thought it was capable of listening for a Contact name and send it to that contact. Am I missing something here? There is also no Settings button to access its settings! What is this??

been waiting a long time for something like this. Hope it continues to grow.

The one I'm holding my breath for is the "take any dictated text from my iPhone, pass it through a reader and get it back to me so I can paste it into the large document I'm woking

Why isnt this available in the UK App store?

Sure this looks great, but WATCH OUT for Dragon's ABYSMAL SUPPORT!

As a long time user of Dragon Naturally Speaking on the PC, these guys have a virtual monopoly on the consumer speech-to-text market. As a result, their customer support is absolutely atrocious - at best.

Call the company and see if you can talk to anyone except some bubblehead receptionist who basically tells you to get lost. You want email support? Well, pull out your wallet. Yes, you have to pay to get email support - WTF!

Incredible program. It really is for letters and short notes though. It is not very practical for long documents. A few reasons why. Although it translates almost 95-99 percent of American Dialect speech, you would have to have it "personalized" to improve regional recognition, as is found in their more spendy desktop products. I use the Medical Dragon system myself on a PC desktop.

Second, the dictionary is very generic, as one would expect for a v1.0 product. Thus most of the vocabulary is suited for a short letter or text message or note. Again, I see a more personalized product with greater vocabulary coming.

I think that Nuance is being nice right now with the product being free, but the usual "free" then "price it" option may not work with this product if the pricing for the desktop issues are anything to compare. I for one would find it very difficult to go from free to say $99.00 or something worse.

On the plus side, the recognition is awesome. Somewhat better at times than my desktop product running with 2 gigs of ram. Additionally, the idea of using a server to do the translating is a stroke of genius. It is very fast. I am very surprised by this.

I believe that they will need to remove permanently two things if this is to succeed in the Apple World. One, I noticed that you don't have to register to keep anything on the server. This means that they are using your UUID or Unique Iphone identifier. Second the Address book issue needs to be put to rest permanently. They should just get rid of it! Most people can put in the names later. Besides, it does a poor job at Non-American names anyway. African, Indian and Asian names are a travesty. One could always add it later or use a Pseudonym and "change all occurrences of Pseudonym" in editing.

Perhaps more insidious is the attachment of the UUID to the Addressbook. Despite the rebuttal from Nuance that they do not identify you, they are effectively doing so with the UUID and Addressbook. Additionally, there are a few HIPAA issues that come into play. What if my address book has Patient data or names of people whom I need to call? That is private and should have an opt-out provision. Additionally, I can see that in future versions, the UUID will be what is used to personally identify whether I have used the server or not and to modify or personalize my Dragon settings file. These really should be optional for the user.

On the plus side, this is a great use of the technology and I wholeheartedly congratulate Nuance on getting something like this done. If you correct some of the short comings, which are really more social than technical issues, I think that you will have a number one product on your hands.

This app is way cool, but it has a problem with it. When I try and do dictation it will stop every time I finish a short paragraph (50 words?) and I will need to press record again to continue. Is anyone else experiencing this?

Downloaded it because Nuance are our competitors (telling you frankly).
Well, I am satisfied - another failure that plays well to our side.
Vlingo and Nuance came out with such products and that did push our sales upwards.
Speech to text is far from perfect still.

This is frikkin' amazing. I tried a slew of dictation products in the late 90's, including Dragon Naturally Speaking, and overall, I concluded that typing was much better overall.

That's not the case with this. Out of the box, it has an almost unbelievable accuracy. In my opinion, the one drawback that has kept the iPhone from being a viable alternative to a laptop on-the-go, has been the lack of a convenient means to write longer documents. This app changes everything!
Notes, emails, minor word processing, all can be as conveniently or perhaps even more so, with the Dragon app.

Sorry for gushing, but I haven't been this excited by my iPhone since the first day I got it. I heartily recommend this app hands down!

i have a pretty standard English RP (received pronunciation - "BBC" English) accent and after several attempts this app continues to fail miserably! it's currently transcribing utter gibberish. my poor attempts at a generic American accent improve the accuracy about 60-70%.

if you're listening, Nuance, then please add an accent setting, similar to that in your Win software! the app could be a clear win with this addition, which shouldn't be too difficult, i'd have thought, as your algorithms are running server-side?

sorry, wrote German, was so frustrated.
1. feel rather stupid but cannot find the NAME OF THE APP.
2. in your form for comment there is no space for somebody's name but for a password. strange.
but quesiton 1 is really important, can't find tha app and feel throughly stupid. sorry.
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