Up until now my experience speech-to-text applications has been relatively limited and not terribly good. But since the latest generation included with iOS 5.1, I am finding that the iPhone and iPad are becoming truly effective tools that can be used in this manner.
Now I can take a coffee break and dictate a paragraph or two as ideas pop into my head which is considerably faster than doing this via the keyboard on the iPhone. I find that it’s necessary to do a fair bit of correction once the text has been entered, but overall the quality is pretty impressive.
I find that the biggest difficulty in using speech-to-text is the formulation in my head of what I want to say in a structured manner, something that I don’t have an issue with using the keyboard. There’s still something about the use of the keyboard that allows me to order my thoughts differently and proactively edit what I want to say while I’m typing, where with the speech input I find my thoughts jumping ahead to the next subject before I’ve completely finished a phrase. But like any change in user interface, there’s a learning curve to take into account. This is another area where the fact that I went with the 3G version of the iPad makes a huge difference in the functionality of the device.
One amazing feature of the iOS speech to text functionality is the ability to switch keyboards and do multi-lingual voice input. Je suis étonné par la qualité de ce système. Même avec mon accent anglophone la reconnaissance en français marche très très bien.
Now that the quality is pretty much there, the ability to create the beginning of an article in Byword on the iPhone, and access it when I get back to my desk with the iPad connected to the Bluetooth keyboard is very very slick. Or alternately, using Byword on the MacBook Air with the iCloud integration.
The complement to much of this is the iCloud or DropBox integration which means I’m that much closer to the continuous client where I don’t need to think much about files and the like, as the data is simply available everywhere I need it when I need it. Currently my only complaint with iCloud is that it only refreshes when you open the Apps, which was a major blocking point on the old iPad since if I hadn’t opened the app to force the synchronization before leaving the house in the morning, the data was unavailable until I found an internet connection. With the built-in 3G/4G service on the new one, the experience is so much better.