I’m amazed by Siri’s ability to understand what I’m saying. Here are the ways to take your dictation further.
Mac Basics: Dictation
“The more you use Dictation, the better it understands you. Dictation learns the characteristics of your voice and adapts to your accent.”
On the iPhone, it’s interesting that no password is necessary. What are the limits: is it okay that I could pick up someone else’s iPhone an and use it to send a text from them, bypassing the phone’s password?
Here’s what Apple says about privacy and Siri:
When you use the keyboard dictation feature on your computer, the things you dictate will be recorded and sent to Apple to convert what you say into text. Your computer will also send Apple other information, such as your first name and nickname; and the names, nicknames, and relationship with you (for example, “my dad”) of your address book contacts. All of this data is used to help the dictation feature understand you better and recognize what you say. Your User Data is not linked to other data that Apple may have from your use of other Apple services.
Information collected by Apple will be treated in accordance with Apple’s Privacy Policy, which can be found at www.apple.com/privacy.
You can choose to turn off the dictation feature at any time. To do so, open System Preferences, click Dictation & Speech, and then click Off in the Dictation section. If you turn off Dictation, Apple will delete your User Data, as well as your recent voice input data. Older voice input data that has been disassociated from you may be retained for a period of time to generally improve Dictation and Siri functionality in Apple products and services. This voice input data may include audio files and transcripts of what you said and related diagnostic data, such as hardware and operating system specifications and performance statistics.
You can restrict access to the Dictation feature on your computer in the Parental Controls pane of System Preferences.