User Profile for VancouverRMT

User Name VancouverRMT

Member Since 2004-09-15

Total number of Feedback Posts: 12

Total number of comments: 1

Last 10 Feedback Posts by VancouverRMT [ Search for All ]

MacSpeech Dictate 1.5.1 (Mac OS X)

worst software purchase I�ve ever made

Dictate is one of the most unstable and generally poorly designed major pieces of software I have ever had the misfortune to be stuck using. Far from being a major improvement over MacSpeech's previous product, iListen, Dictate still feels as twitchy and poorly thought out as iListen ever did, even after a year and a half of development and at least two major updates. The only real improvement is that Dictate is based on a far superior speech recognition engine (and that's not nothing). However, it's a lot less use if the software wrapped around the engine totally sucks. I purchased Dictate shortly after its release in early 2008, and have barely had a day of trouble-free use of the product ever since. Routine hanging and crashing has been the main problem. Due to an egregious Canadian localization bug, for several months I had to choose between a version of Dictate that would literally not launch all, and an older version that merely crashed frequently. When 1.5 was release recently (May 09), I hoped I would finally be able to use Dictate with fewer hassles, but no such luck. Even running on a well-maintained year-old MacBook Pro, Dictate 1.5 (and 1.5.1) is as crashy as ever. Within minutes of using the new version, CPU usage spikes to 98% and stayed there � not just bringing dictate to all but the entire machine, and even refusing to force quit. Lovely. Such experiences have been the rule with Dictate from the beginning! For many months I communicated regularly with MacSpeech about my frustrations with their product. I cooperated diligently with a great deal of troubleshooting. I was often treated like I was some kind of �problem� customer, despite the fact that I have some empathy for the kind of frustrations tech support workers have to cope with and try pretty hard to be nice to them. Some weren�t so bad, of course. But despite the professionalism of some individual tech support professionals at MacSpeech, the overall customer service experience was abominable. Ultimately, MacSpeech simply was not willing to stand behind their product in any substantive way. I am a deeply annoyed customer. [alert admin]

Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 2 users found this helpful

Tuesday, June 16 2009 @ 10:46 AM PDT

OmniFocus 1.6.1 (Mac OS X)

a great power tool, but only for geeks in love with GTD

With extensive usage, I have slowly become less enthusiastic about OmniFocus than I once was. It�s generally an amazing piece of software. However, it is also extremely complex, and I don�t mean in a power-user kind of way: I mean in a confusing way. No matter how well I learn the software, I still �lose� my data. There are so many ways to sort and view and filter your data that it is also amazingly difficult to find things. I�ve seen this problem discussed ad infinitum on the Omni forums. It�s such a serious flaw that I would never recommend the software, despite its other virtues. This app is a power tool for geeks in love with GTD. Syncing with the iPhone application was so consistently error-prone over several months of experimentation that I eventually gave up. OmniFocus support, generally excellent in my experience over the years, was not exactly perfect either. Ultimately they dropped the ball, offering to examine my database for the cause of my chronic syncing problems, but then taking much too long to follow-up (weeks). [alert admin]

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Tuesday, June 16 2009 @ 07:36 AM PDT

iClipboard 1.1 (Mac OS X)

this developer needs to be spanked

Buggy product, and total failure to respond to support requests. (Really, “total” failure - not a peep. It’s like they aren’t even there.) Abandonware is not welcome in the Mac indie software community. VersionTrackers, rise up! Spank this developer with bad reviews here and on MacUpdate. Bad developer, bad! [alert admin]

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Sunday, November 23 2008 @ 07:45 AM PST

PTHPasteboard PRO 4.4.0 (Mac OS X)

first impressions mixed

I’m an intense typist, and I have worked with tools like clipboard managers and other typing tools since the Apple IIe. To this day, the quest for a quality clipboard manager continues. PTHPasteboard is not the answer. But after two weeks of regular use, it seems fast and stable to me. Certainly it blows the doors off iClip in the speed department. It also has some impressive power-user features. It’s absolutely amazing to have my pasteboards synced across two machines, for instance. But the GUI is a rough around the edges, which drives me nutters. It isn’t a deal-breaker, but I’m a Mac-user, and I want visual polish. There are practical implications to: ugly UI elements are also often harder to understand, and there are certain parts of the UI that are as cryptic as a CLI. The developer needs to hire someone who understands interfaces! I sent the developer an easy question two weeks ago and never got an answer. Never a great sign. [alert admin]

Read Comments (1) | More Info | 4 of 6 users found this helpful

Sunday, November 23 2008 @ 07:35 AM PST

iClip 4 (Mac OS X)

I am abandoning this product just like the developer did

After over two years of regular usage of first v3 and v4 since its release, I am finally abandoning iClip, and I'm not in a good mood about it. My major complaint is that it is too slow: I am tired of waiting for its glitzy interface to respond to my requests, and sick of it taking as long to launch as about six other applications combined. iClip 4 is certainly not horrible, but it's far from excellent, and there's really no excuse for that. It certainly could be excellent. As other reviewers here have commented in the last few months, the developer seems to have abandoned the product. Optimizations and bug fixes are needed, but there's no sign of active development, and the only responses I've received to about three different inquiries have been slow and a touch defensive and disinterested -- the "no one else has reported that" school of tech support. Meh. [alert admin]

MacSpeech Dictate 1.0.1 (Mac OS X)

flaky product released prematurely into the wild, plus lousy support

MacSpeech Dictate is the worst software purchase I’ve made in recent memory, and I will never buy from them again. Their customer service is a joke, particularly when compared to so many other Mac developers that I really enjoy working with. I have tried to use Dictate regularly since it was released. Although the engine shows great potential and is obviously more powerful than iListen, the application has many significant limitations and stability problems. It crashes on me regularly. It is beta software, for sure. I started complaining to the MacSpeech about my concerns on April 22. I have never received a meaningful response, just those lame tech support replies that show that they didn’t read more than the first line of your message. [alert admin]

Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful

Thursday, August 07 2008 @ 10:58 AM PDT

1Password 1.0 (iPhone)

excellent first crack

Yes, of course, the v1.0 has issues — which have already been fixed in updates that Apple hasn’t posted to the App Store yet. Knowing how responsive and diligent the company is, I have complete faith that the full potential of this application will soon be realized. v1.0 is already highly functional, and impressive. [alert admin]

1Password 2.8.2 (Mac OS X)

well-designed, awesome support

This is the most useful new application I’ve discovered since LaunchBar. And the company is extremely responsive to support requests. What a find! [alert admin]

Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful

Friday, August 01 2008 @ 02:19 PM PDT

1Password 2.6.2 (Mac OS X)

nothing but happy with 1Password

Indispensable application for anyone with a lot of online accounts. By far the most valuable program I got out of that MacHeist bundle. :-) Fast, friendly, competent technical support. [alert admin]

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Monday, May 19 2008 @ 10:33 AM PDT

Logitech Control Center 2.1.2 (Mac OS X)

some improvements in 2.1.2

I found the previous version of the Logitech Control Center unuseable: feature poor and buggy. In particular, the absence of per application settings was an unacceptable (ridiculous!) limitation for driving an expensive mouse (MX2000). All those buttons, and I can't define what they should do in Safari versus UT2K4? Good grief. The new version has per application prefs, and so far seems more reliable. In fact, it fixed a nasty problem I was having with stuttering movement trying to drive the mouse with USB Overdrive X. Yet I am quite sure that all the other complaints here are honest. I think I just lucked out. My experience with Logitech has generally been poor, and I have no intention of ever buying a Logitech mouse again. While the MX2000 is generally a good mouse, there are blatant problems -- like an incredibly loose power plug connection -- that really make me shake my head and think what a chump I am for still believing that "you get what you pay for." Ha! [alert admin]

Last 10 Comments by VancouverRMT [ Search for All ]

Has developed into an excellent program!

Yes, some people criticize Dictate for the wrong reasons, and they need to actually read the documentation. And, yes, the recognition engine is good. Unfortunately, there are also so many good reasons to criticize Dictate. You know you are going to be dealing with some user-unfriendly design when it launches, throwing up a window that floats above everything else you have open, so you can�t do anything else while it launches. This…

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Wednesday, June 24 2009 @ 10:39 AM PDT