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- #Dragon program for mac for mac
- #Dragon program for mac software
- #Dragon program for mac professional
Baker, his wife, founded Dragon Systems to release products centered around their voice recognition prototype. James Baker laid out the description of a speech understanding system called DRAGON in 1975.
#Dragon program for mac professional
The Professional version allows creation of custom commands to control programs or functions not built into NaturallySpeaking.ĭr. Voice profiles can be accessed by different computers in a networked environment, although the audio hardware and configuration must be identical to those of the machine generating the configuration.
#Dragon program for mac software
(Dragon does not support dictating to background windows.) The software has three primary areas of functionality: voice recognition in dictation with speech transcribed as written text, recognition of spoken commands, and text-to-speech: speaking text content of a document. As an example, dictated words appear in a floating tooltip as they are spoken (though there is an option to suppress this display to increase speed), and when the speaker pauses, the program transcribes the words into the active window at the location of the cursor.
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I say that as a writer who has depended on dictation software for writing long pieces of prose, and who has used multiple programs on multiple platforms, for almost 10 years.Dragon NaturallySpeaking uses a minimal user interface.
#Dragon program for mac for mac
But the version for Mac users is the buggiest, most frustrating, and most patently useless version of dictation software I have ever owned. For all I know, the version for PCs works like a charm in all situations. I can't speak to any other versions of Dragon. (If you really want it to work, you'll need a good microphone.)) (If your Mac runs Mountain Lion and you're interested in trying out your own native dictation program, open System Preferences under the "System" section, click on Dictation & Speech then turn dictation on. I expect it would either involve a lot of pain or a lot of money. If it weren't for the fabulous (but very limited) native dictation feature in Apple's latest operating system, I honestly don't know how I would do my job. This software, which is supposed to be the most advanced version of a program I once loved, can't help me at all with one of the most essential parts of my job as a writer. However, when what I'm doing is revising a currently existing manuscript – changing a few words here, a few words there – this is no solution at all. In fact, I've taken to doing this when I'm transcribing large amounts of text, because it seems to be my only option. When I called Nuance's (consistently appalling) customer service, I was told to dictate short sections of my manuscript into another document, then copy and paste those sections into the real document. If I have my Dragon Dictate microphone turned on and I click into my current 280-page manuscript, the software flips out, freezes, then takes several minutes to crash. The program is designed to be simultaneously conscious of every word in your manuscript, so that you can verbally navigate to any point – a feature I have no need for, but that I'm not given the option of turning off – and it's quite limited, apparently, in the number of words it can manage at once. So: I'm sure Dragon Dictate's latest version of dictation software for Mac users (by Nuance) is useful to someone with some job, but I'm sorry to say that if you happen to be a writer who works with manuscripts that are a few hundred pages long, it amounts to highly-priced garbage. I try not to make my blog Whinge Central, but this information might actually be helpful for some of you out there.
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