Sunday, September 21, 2014

Finally, a big step up for dictation

To my surprise, the fresh iOS 8 (for iphones and iPads) includes a big improvement of dictation. (I'm surprised because... well, an example: the Mac had a voice, Fred, for years, since the early nineties, I think. And this voice was never improved upon until... I wanna say 2005 or so. The basic technologies improve slowly, generally.)

Dictation is now computed Live in the device, not sent off to a server in bits. The means it comes out as you are speaking, and fascinatingly, you can see it correcting itself as it hears more of what you are saying, and makes more sense of it.

And importantly: it's just better. I just had a text chat, and two long sentences were flawless. I don't think I have had even *one* long, flawless sentence before.
This will make it much more fun to dictate texts and emails.

10 comments:

TC [Girl] said...

I was just about to do it; deleted Messenger off of my phone, due to many saying it's got tons of privacy issues... Interestingly, now, I can't even see the screen...or reboot...and it's Saturday night... *sigh*...and...just happened to run into this. :-( (I'm prob one of the last people, in North America, anyway, with a 4S. :-P )

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Definitely not.

And of course iOS will fit on the frigging screen.

It may be a bit slow, though. We'll wait and hear more reports on that. Keep an eye on tidbits.com, they are way the most reliable, they test everything before reporting.

TC [Girl] said...

That's good to read!! Wouldn't want to be left behind on the last planet w/a heap o' those!!
:-P

I thought that was a bit weird to read, re: the not fitting on the screen... Thanks for the tidbit re: 'Tidbits;' I'll keep an eye on that!! O_o

Very odd how my phone got hung up; I had never had to do anything but hold down the power button, for a short while, and the silly thing would, usually, come back to life... Not that time; stone cold, overnight... D'ya know how SCARY that was for me?! :-P For one, I am on standby, at work, so...weird, to not know if anyone has tried to text or call me... Didn't know about the Menu/Power reboot... Now, I'm trying to remember how I unloaded and saved all my images, in the past, so I have more memory (I have the 16G...which might as well be 1G...for me); I've already removed my music, but it only wants to sync my photos and not remove and save them onto the computer... More research to do... :-P

TC [Girl] said...

Just had a bit of a chuckle @ the Tidbits article re: the messed up U2 download... I didn't realize that that album was downloaded to every single iTunes customer account!! I was wondering WHY they said that it was the world's largest download, during the keynote...and didn't think about it, after that; NO WONDER people were pissed off!! But...I find it a bit humorous that the writer also doesn't even mention that it seems to have been the largest digital music download, in history, to date...which is my gut feeling of WHY it was done the way it was done!! Too bad it was done that way; just a little something to piss a hornet's nest w/the tech and music industries mindless competition to be at the top of the heap, ALL THE TIME!! :-P

Eolake Stobblehouse said...


In nineteen years, I've never had an Apple machine die from an update. It's rare.

Do you have an Apple Store in town? The Genius Bar can probably help.

TC [Girl] said...

No, I hadn't even gotten to doing the update; I had just finished uninstalling Messenger (from FB) and it died... It was weird: no screen but made the Siri prompt sound, when the menu button was pressed; also, when it was plugged in, and, finally, nothing...and it was at 70% or something... But...as mentioned, I found out about the Menu/Power button "hard reboot," (I guess) and all was fine, again... Just very strange; only 2nd time it's ever given me troubles, in almost 2 years... Not too bad, hey? :-D

I ended up having to install Messenger, again, because there is no way to communicate, offline, w/FB friends w/out it...at least not on the phone...and...that has all been fine, today, as well... I just, still, don't have enough memory to do the update (I am determined to find a way, 'cuz I use the voice-to-text feature a LOT, but am quite frustrated w/it); I've always been up against the wall w/memory on this silly thing... Will be working on trying to figure out how to remove my images off of it; it's only the 2nd time I do that, in 2 years, as well... Really looking forward to January, when I can upgrade to the 6+!! :-P

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

If you have iTunes on your computer (it's free both for Mac and Windows), you can download iOS 8 to that and install from that. I heard that demands less free memory on the phone.

Also, if you look in Settings/Preferences, under General/Usage, you can see what takes up the most space. There may be a video or something you've forgotten.

TC [Girl] said...
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TC [Girl] said...
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TC [Girl] said...

If you have iTunes on your computer (it's free both for Mac and Windows), you can download iOS 8 to that and install from that. I heard that demands less free memory on the phone.

Oh, very good; I'll try that, thank you...I hadn't heard that, before... Cool! :-D

Also, if you look in Settings/Preferences, under General/Usage, you can see what takes up the most space. There may be a video or something you've forgotten.

Thanks... Yeah, when plugged into the laptop, it shows that I, still, have a GOB of pics on there, from image grabs; "life," where I might share them, on FB (took a couple of cool sunset shots, last night, that were quite a hit!! ;-) ); and...when I'm out shooting w/Oliver, sometimes I transfer some onto it, so I can, again, share them w/friends, on FB... I get a little nervous deleting some of them, because I'm not always sure if they were off an SD or shot w/the phone (even though the quality should be evident, but...I just don't want to delete, in too much of a rush, so I would just rather save them to memory on the laptop (which, in hindsight, will become another issue, on the Air :-( ); just gotta figure it out, again, because I didn't, readily, see the option to do that, this last time... Hm...wondering why...