Oh no! My original post disappeared because I edited it the wrong way, and no one used poor enough form to quote it in its entirety when replying. How do I get it back??
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Johnny, I use the accessibility version of dictation, Voice Control, all the time and I was thinking how good it has gotten since it first came out.
I donât use the commands part, only the dictation.
In the latest macOS you can put the on / off toggle into the menu bar, so itâs a bit easier to start and stop.
The only downsides for me are that:
- it only has Australian, not New Zealand, accents which is okay but culturally difficult for me to accept
- itâs not perfect, but itâs not bad
I use it with the keyboard - ie talk and type and navigate all at the same time.
Hope that helps.
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I needed dictation for the first time in ages to dictate an email in an emergency, I tried no less than four times and read out the email and the dictation failed every time (not even one word was produced). More than frustrating - it seems the more useless AI companies deploy the more essential basic features end up completely broken! I eventually gave up and couldnât send the email because I was carrying things and couldnât free up a hand to type.
Itâs not just Apple, I was trying to export a PDF from Word the other day and that functionality is also completely broken now on iOS, it just produced an error!
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+1
On a scale of 1 to 10 I give it a 3.
And, to add a rant of my own, it is now impossible to use the âQuote - Copy Quote - Shareâ feature of this forum, on my iPad, because it is automatically covered by Appleâs copy/paste/etc menu.
I had to write this post on my Mac
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It is interesting to me to see how bad the reactions are by native English speakers. I thought that it only was that bad in other languages than English. I have to agree, native dictation is a pain in the rear.
When dictating in German, it can work to some degree, but it is happening frequently that - no matter what Apple device - the results are unusable or do need a lot of proofreading afterwards. What boggles my mind is that I sometimes end up with âwordsâ that do not even exist. And I am not talking about technical vocabulary but just plain everyday language. And when it comes to detecting sentences, using punctuation or case sensitivity correctly, it also is a total mess in my experience.
Dictating a WhatsApp message or a very short email on my iPhone is okay with proofreading afterwards. Apart from that, I stick to just typing everything without bothering about dictation.
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Not available on iOS, but on the Mac, Talon is great for voice to text.
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That would be frustrating, but Iâm not experiencing that problem. Below is a screenshot. Iâm on an M4 iPad Pro running 26.0.1.
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I think the text youâre selecting has be in the bottom 50% of your viewable screen so that the menu pops up above the text instead of below. (This is on an 11â iPad, for me at least.)
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You are CORRECT! I donât know how I missed such an âeasily discoverableâ feature.
Thank you.
I wonder if this bug is limited to 11â iPads?
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Itâs the same on 13â.
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Update: Iâm using MacWhisper Pro for dictation on my MacBook Pro to good effect. I run it through an Anthropic API account for processing.
Itâs fast enough that I can dictate and get the resultsâwhile not as Iâm speakingâvery quickly. However, it is inconsistent, and sometimes I dictate a paragraph only to have it not even process it, and have to dictate it again. It took me a while to set up its prompt. But it will do the job for now.
Most importantly, it does not work on my iPhone. So, Apple, please read my rant and do something about it. You should be more than a pretty face!
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A very important aspect is getting a good microphone, it makes a difference.
The Talon Wiki has some suggestions:
https://talon.wiki/Resource%20Hub/Hardware/#microphones
I have a Boya, and a Shure(this one is not on the list)
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I do not disagree that a good microphone is helpful, but I literally cannot talk into the microphone in the bottom of the phone and have it work. Remember, these are the microphones that Apple is advertising as âstudio qualityâ.
But either way, if Apple dictation requires a fancy external microphone, and OpenAI dictation does not, then there is a rather serious problem with Appleâs implementation.
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There are 
STUDIOS and there are 
studios . Pick your studio wisely!
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I doubt the quality of my microphone is the reason that occasionally dictation transcribes my message correctly, then changes it to something entirely different.
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I doubt it too. My favorite is when it transcribes the message correctly, and then apparently decides I didnât need huge sections of text after all.
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