Jeff dePascale Blogging on and developing web and mobile technologies

Dragon Dictation iPhone app review

Solely responsible for the now near ubiquity of the colloquial term 'app', the iPhone app store has received vast amounts of both praise and criticism for what it does well and what it fails to do, respectively. As an iPhone app developer myself, I am accutely aware of the pitfalls of the app store from a content creater perspective. However, on a day to day basis, I am more aware of the pitfalls as a user consuming apps from the app store, and the largest issue by far is a severe lack of useful apps. In my glances through the app store  several times per week, it is growing increasingly rare that I look at an app and say, "yes...THAT is an app I need."  Some blame it on the app store interface itself, some on the content creators, some on the restrictions in the API from Apple. Whatever the case, the app store has a very well earned reputation of content bloat.

Bucking that trend of repititive or marginally useful apps comes an elegantly simple yet profoundly useful app from Nuance. Best known as the company behind the well-known Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software, they have released the first version of what could potentially be the next killer productivity app for mobile devices, Dragon Dictation.

Press a button, record, click done, and the app wooshes your voice off to Nuance's servers to be translated into text, and sent back to your device, ready to be edited and copy/pasted wherever you need it, complete with handy shortcuts to email and sms.

Users of my own flagship app, Quick Text (iTunes Link), will recognize some userflow similarity here. It's identical. Not that I take issue with that - quite the opposite. It just reinforces that my architecture was a valid one. Actually, it is immediately apparent to me that, in many cases, the Dragon Dictation app is superior to Quick Text for many short response situations, especially where phrase customization is required. Thankfully, I am happy to report that the 2.0 release of Quick Text is in build now and adds substantial new functionality that should render it useful in parallel to Dragon Dication.

I've already found Dictation so useful that it has already found a place on my iPhone's homepage, right next to Quick Text, and is already proving it's worth as an often-used app, deserving of that placement. What this app does well, it does very well. It even works over bluetooth, so dictation in-vehicle is now a reality EDIT: I was mistaken, bluetooth does not work with this app. But that's not to say that it isn't without it's flaws. Let's look at a couple of those:

1. Accuracy

At first blush, I was inclined to give Nuance the benefit of the doubt here, and I still am. Given that this is a 1.0 release (actually it's already 1.0.1 as of this writing), bugs are expected, and efficiences and improvements are almost a given. Having said that though, this is Dragon we are talking about, and the technology behind the speech to text in use here is not something new. This is an implementation of what Dragon already does best. But I am still holding out hope that future updates will improve the accuracy, particularly when it comes to recognizing contact names with complex last names. Which brings me to number two.

2. Contacts are uploaded to Nuance

In the day and half since this app has been released, there has been more noise about the legal language you agree to when first running the app than the app itself. About halfway down the legal copy you'll find that Nuance uploads your contact list to their server to, in effect, build a custom add-on dictionary for Nuance to better recognize your contact's names. Let me say first say that I fully recognize the issue people are having with this, but at the same time I personally don't have an issue with it. What I do have an issue with is that, for all the hubbub about this, it doesn't really seem to work too well yet. Most names I tried, no matter how I spoke them, rarely were recognized correctly. I'll reserve final judgement after the app matures.

3. Apple's API restrictions

This one I am intimately aware of through my own frutstrations as a developer with Quick Text. You simply can't reduce the effort involved for the user to get that content out of copy/paste efficiently with OS 3.0. Until Apple opens up the API further to allow some form of multi-tasking and possibly context menu access, the flow now to paste something into anything other than email is: open Dictation->press record->press done->correct errors with keyboard (if needed, but likely)->press done button->press send to clipboard->close app->launch app to paste into->press and hold in field->choose paste. It can, and should, be simpler, and in reality it probably will be, maybe in 4.0. We'll see what Apple's next move is, but in the meantime I can't fault Nuance for this issue given my own acute awareness of this shortcoming of the API.

Given all of this, it is a groundbreaking, useful app, which is a rarity right now on the app store. And to top it all off, Nuance made it free for now, which I give them much credit for. I don't doubt this app will cost something soon, and that's a great strategy in the near term for them. It gets a solid user base in place for testing, gets the word out, and eliminates some of the obligation to provide a superior product. After all, don't we expect near perfection from paid apps? By the time they do add a price to this app, I don't doubt that it will be very stable, very useful, more feature packed, and well worth whatever they choose to charge. So kudos to Nuance for thinking outside the box, and doing it well to boot. So go grab it on the app store for free (iTunes Link) while you still can, and let me know what you think in the comments.