Charlie Fletcher is a former medical transcriptionist now serving as sector leader for the pharmaceuticals industry at Off The Record Research, a market research and reporting firm based in San Francisco. In writing his research reports, Fletcher conducts hundreds of interviews each month. He used to spend hours typing up interview notes by hand because he wasn’t able to find an efficient and cost-effective way to dictate into his Apple Macintosh computer. Problem was, as a Mac owner, he didn’t have many viable options when it came to machine dictation and transcription.

Until recently, running a dictation program on the Mac typically meant installing Parallels, Boot Camp, or a Windows emulation program and then installing something like Nuance Communications’ Dragon NaturallySpeaking dictation software on the Windows side. The process was not only time-consuming and costly, but because the software was not native to the Mac, users had no access to Mac systems and software while working in the Windows environment and often experienced speed, compatibility, and performance issues.

Fletcher didn’t consider it an option. "I have Parallels and Boot Camp on my machine," he says. "I use Windows emulation for everything else, but I didn’t want to do dictation through emulators. This is how I make my living."

So he typed...and typed...and typed some more, so much so that his wrists, hands, and fingers hurt by the end of each workday.

Many people in Fletcher’s shoes—especially those who have to use dictation software due to a disability, carpal tunnel syndrome, or just poor typing skills—simply abandoned their beloved Macs for PCs. But not Fletcher. Like so many other Mac users, he is rabid in his adherence to the Mac, often at great personal expense. He has rebuffed countless offers from his company to buy him a PC. "I don’t like PCs. I would sooner buy my own Mac," he says.

That’s why Fletcher is so excited about  Dictate, the recent dictation software release from Salem, N.H.-based MacSpeech.

Fletcher’s joy aside, MacSpeech Dictate is likely to have far-reaching effects that  have many believing it could threaten to break the decades-long stranglehold that PCs have had on the machine dictation market.

MacSpeech Dictate is, in essence, the Mac version of the very popular PC-based Dragon NaturallySpeaking program. MacSpeech developed Dictate through a licensing agreement with Nuance. And though Nuance could have entered the market with its own Mac version of NaturallySpeaking, Peter Mahoney, Nuance’s vice president and general manager of desktop dictation units, says the company looked for a partnership instead. "Now we’re at the point where Apple has done very well. We’re seeing a big growth in that area, and [partnering with MacSpeech] was a way for us to help participate in the market and respond to some of that demand.

"We are pleased to help MacSpeech provide a dictation solution, powered by Dragon NaturallySpeaking technology, to users that require a native Macintosh dictation application," he further said in a statement. "MacSpeech has intimate knowledge of the Macintosh platform and deep understanding of Macintosh users. This collaboration brings an unparalleled opportunity to provide the world’s best dictation technology in a solution that is 100 percent Mac."

And because it is 100 percent Mac, it delivers the same user experience Mac users have come to love. "When people think of the Mac, they think of it as more user-friendly than Windows," says Robin Springer, president of Computer Talk, a consulting firm specializing in the implementation of dictation and other hands-free technologies. "People have been trying to get Windows dictation programs to run on a Mac for years, but because they weren’t native [to the Mac], it was expensive." Users also faced issues with speed, performance, training, and compatibility, she says.

"What’s so exciting about Dictate is that it runs natively on the Mac, so you don’t get those issues," Springer adds.

As such, Dictate also allows users to operate, navigate, and control their Macs and Mac applications with voice commands. The software can be used to launch applications, open files, cut, paste, copy, print, scroll through files, compose email, format documents, and surf the Web. An "Available Commands" window can be accessed on-screen through a drop-down menu. The software even recognizes spoken commands separately from dictation, freeing the user from having to tell the software to change modes.

A Checkered Past
Previous attempts at desktop dictation software for the Mac were fraught with problems. The landscape has been dotted with near misses and failures that started in the early 1990s with Dragon Systems’ PowerSecretary, a software product that was slow and required users to pause between each word spoken. PowerSecretary simply disappeared after only a few years on the market.

Then came ViaVoice, which IBM launched in the latter part of the decade. Versions of ViaVoice were available for the Mac and PC, but the software was slow and clunky. It also required users to dictate into its built-in SpeakPad speech-enabled word processor and then transfer the transcribed text to a destination folder. In 2003, IBM gave the exclusive rights for ViaVoice to ScanSoft, which in 2005 merged with Nuance. By that time, Nuance had already acquired Dragon Systems, makers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Though it still offers the IBM ViaVoice for Mac product, Nuance has put very little behind it, citing a lack of demand.

The only dictation product to show any real success in the Mac world was iListen, MacSpeech’s precursor to its new Dictate product. iListen used underlying speech recognition technology from Phillips, but the software was getting old and difficult to support, according to MacSpeech president and CEO Andrew Taylor. "iListen’s code base was written in 1998, and it was starting to get quite a bit of crust around the edges," he says.

iListen was also very limited in its capabilities. For starters, users often had to spend 15 minutes or more training it to recognize their voices. It was also slow and memory-intensive and lacked many of the more advanced features of other competitive products.

For a while, Fletcher was using iListen to convert his taped interviews and story notes into text files, but eventually gave up using the program. In addition to the hours it took to enter the text into iListen, he spent hours more in iListen correcting all of the mistakes the software made. "In my business, deadlines are the most important thing, and something that slows me down has to go," he says.

Expanded Access
MacSpeech Dictate is also expanding Mac’s accessibility options for the disabled, something that had also been very limited. Alva Access Group, for example, had provided a Mac version of its OutSpoken screen-reading product for several years, but stopped making the product when Mac’s OSX came out.

In its place, Apple developed its own screen reader, called VoiceOver, which comes built into OS X. VoiceOver enables users to navigate their computers, create and edit text documents, send and receive email, browse the Web, and even play chess. It comes with 20 voice options.

Springer also expects Dictate will expand Mac’s user base among the disabled. "A lot of people who dictate to their computers out of necessity left Macs for PCs. It will be interesting to see how many go back," she says.

Taylor says the process has already begun. "We’re already starting to see people come back to Macs. They’re looking at [Dictate] with the same recognition engine from Nuance; they know [Dragon NaturallySpeaking] works, and now they’re ready to come back," he explains. "Mac users use Macs because they like the applications environment and the way it works. If they had any real interest in Windows, they would have bought a PC for a lot less money."

But not every Mac user will be able to use Dictate. The MacSpeech software requires the latest versions of Mac hardware and software, and only runs with Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher and the latest Mac computers with Intel processors. "You can only run this new software on the newest machines," Taylor says. "We jettisoned the old software that had been around for years to take advantage of only things that are brand new."

Not for Everyone
But while the Mac’s popularity is gaining (see the sidebar), not everyone is joining the craze. Eric Rose, electronic health records product manager at McKesson Provider Technologies, simply says that the Mac "is not part of our development plans."

Among the clients for his company’s medical dictation and transcription products, "there is no demand for [Mac software]," he says. "PCs are cheaper, more widely available, and the IT expertise is more easily available for the Windows environment."

To make the company’s electronic health records software available for the Mac "would take up valuable R&D resources, and we just don’t see a compelling reason to do that," he adds.

Still, most other dictation technology vendors have taken a wait-and-see approach to the Mac.

Apptec, maker of the DigiTel and DigiScribe dictation and transcription technologies, hasn’t tested its products on the Mac platform, but its president, Andy Braverman, says there is no reason to believe that Mac owners couldn’t use them. The technology is housed on a device (called a Pod) that connects to a computer, networked server, or Web FTP site through the USB port, which is common to both the Mac and PC. Though it’s listed as supporting the Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Vista operating systems, "you shouldn’t have issues with it on a Mac," Braverman says. "All recordings are done through the Pod, so it should be hardware-independent, plug-and-play technology."

Even Phillips Speech Processing, the company that lost out when MacSpeech went with Nuance for its Dictate product, has left the door open for Mac-ready products. "We don’t have anything right now, but I’ve heard that there are plans in that area," a sales leader at the company’s Atlanta office said.

For MacSpeech, the exact opposite is true. "We are not in the Windows market. We will never get into it," Taylor says.

Going Mobile
Instead of the Mac, many dictation software vendors are turning their immediate attention to the mobile space, particularly as issues of accuracy related to mobile devices’ limited memory, processing power, and sharing of information between devices and networks disappear. Greater mobile dictation offerings will further unshackle users from their PCs.

Though still largely limited to dictating email and text messages—as is the case with Nuance’s VoiceControl application that is now preloaded on a number of mobile devices—and voicemail-to-text offerings like those from SpinVox, SimulScribe, and CallWave, many have high hopes that mobile dictation software will soon accommodate much larger files.

And when it does, Virginia Beach, Va.-based Vianix will be there. The company’s Managed Audio Sound Compression (MASC) offering compresses audio files for easier storage and transfer. MASC reduces the size of voice files by 10 to 20 times and delivers them with up to 300 percent faster processing speeds, similar to the way that programs like WinZip compress data files. "We will play big in the mobile space, especially on smartphones," says Bernard Brafman, vice president of sales and marketing at Vianix.

Brafman notes that interest for MASC has steadily been building among dictation software providers, mobile service providers, and mobile equipment manufacturers. Nuance already provides MASC technology in its Dictaphone dictation products. Dolbey, a maker of medical dictation and transcription products, has included MASC in its FusionMobile product since its launch in May 2006 to respond to a growing demand among the medical community for dictation software that could run on PDAs.

That mobility is key to Apptec’s DigiTel system, according to Braverman. "It gives users flexibility that wasn’t there before," he says. "Dictation was tied into a desktop computer at the office. Now, you can move it from one machine to another."

But not everyone is convinced that mobile dictation is a good idea. McKesson’s Rose says his company has no interest in the mobile market and calls it a "very-well-founded truth that in information-rich environments, things very much correlate with screen space.

"To put dictation on such a small screen, it becomes unreadable," he states. "Most users would be better served with a large screen so they can see a lot of information without a lot of effort."

MacSpeech has also avoided the mobile market, but for a much different reason. "If we did something with mobile, more than likely it would be around an Apple product like the iPhone," Taylor explains. "But for now we’re focused on [the Mac] desktop."

But regardless of where he uses Dictate, Fletcher is relieved to finally have some options without having to dump his Mac. "As a user, I’m glad. For me, anything brings a far better experience."

—Additional reporting by Lauren Shopp

^{Macs on a Roll}

Chalk it up to a halo effect from Apple’s success with its iPod and iPhone, great marketing, the ubiquity of its TV commercials, or a general sense of disappointment with Microsoft’s Windows Vista PC operating system, but sales of Mac computers have been exploding since late last year. Apple moved 2.3 million Macs in the last three months of 2007, raising its share of the total global computer market to 6.1 percent, according to research from Gartner. In the first quarter of this year, it sold another 2.9 million units. With sales like that, some industry watchdogs expect that Apple’s share of the computer market will rise to 21 percent in the U.S. and 10 percent globally by the end of the year.

The Mac resurgence—after several years of just barely holding on to a paltry 2 percent to 3 percent of the total computer market—has prompted many to anticipate a software revolution as more Mac sales lead to more software for the Mac, which will lead to more Mac sales, which will lead to even more software, and so on.

As the first sign of that, Loquendo TTS, for example, is now available for developers of multimedia applications on the Mac OS X operating system (versions 10.4 and later). —L.K.