Using Dasher at this very moment to write this very comment, I absolutely love it and would be lost without it. are useless dictation software for the bulk of my writing for the web, emails, coding etc as you might imagine that makes it somewhat impossible to have a private conversation without a carer's/PDAs/anybody overhearing. It's not as easy for me to just tap out a quick, silent and private text message for example. Privacy is one of the first things to go, you are constantly having to give people your password to unlock your devices for you. This drives me up the wall!
Dasher put some of that back, it really is invaluable. But I think it's been abandoned because it's not been updated for years and while I think it doesn't need much more polish in the functionality department; I think it could do with a little bit of a shine in the UI and the typography as you quite rightly point out.