I’ve been writing quite a bit in recent years, especially in the past two years as I’ve transitioned from part time to full time writing. Im 85 and have Alzheimers disease, and had high hopes that this product would make my life as a writer easier when I first saw. Ive been a Nuance user for years, way back to version 2 or 3 of Dragon Naturally Speaking, and cant begin to tell you what a bitter disappointment Ive found Dragon-for-Mac v6.I haven’t had much experience with speech recognition software, but my father-in-law has sworn by Dragon on the PC for years, and Christopher Null had some good things to say about Nuance’s Dragon Naturally Speaking. It may be entertaining to watch, but it works… I was starting on a book late last year and began wondering if there was a way to cut down on the typing-related wear and tear, as well as a way to possibly go a little faster if I’m going to hit one million words this year I need to either work on my technique, hire a typist or stay on the keyboards for twice as long and hope carpal tunnel doesn’t come knocking. I never learned how to type properly, but I can move along at a pretty quick pace pecking away using a few fingers and thumbs in a style that makes trained typists cringe. Primarily three different keyboards, in my case. The common element in all of these words has been a keyboard.With Dragon Dictate you can produce reports, email, articles, books, research notes, online content and more - quickly, easily and accurately.Dragon Dictate doesn’t have particularly heavy system requirements, just an Intel based Mac running OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) I installed it on a three year old iMac with 4 GB of RAM and it ran perfectly. Control your favourite Mac applications - including Microsoft Word 2011 - using only your voice. With Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.5 speech recognition software, you can enter text just by speaking. The speech-recognition engine from the widely respected Dragon.
Nuance Dragon Dictate Review Bluetooth Versions AreMy objective was to test the software as a dictation tool, using Apple’s Pages, which is my primary writing platform. I found being tethered really didn’t bother me. Bluetooth versions are supported (and available as part of the package) for the wirelessly inclined.As we all know, Nuance discontinued Dragon for the Mac platform back in 2018. While this could represent a huge leap forward for the Mac platform, it’s significantly problematic for any Mac users of Dragon dictation software. For someone with eyesight impairment or fine motor control challenges, I can imagine such functionality would be welcome and based on my experience with the dictation aspect and other reviews I’ve read, I have no doubt that the software is up to the task—so long as you are up to memorizing a sizable collection of voice commands.To test this new version of Dragon Dictate, I used my 13-inch 1.7GHz Core i5 MacBook Air with 4GB of RAMthis model is at the lower end of the performance scale of the current Mac lineup.Well, that day has come: new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini models have landed sporting the new M1 chip. ![]() My creative process seems to be tied into the keyboard to a certain extent. One option is to print them out as a cheat sheet (or sheets) I have a second monitor that happens to be set up in portrait mode (I find stacking multiple reference documents preferable to viewing them side by side), so I throw up Dragon Dictate‘s Available Commands window on that second display for easy reference.Other than the odd transgression back into keyboard territory, how did I fare using Dragon versus manually typing? Well, one thing I discovered is that it’s difficult to undo several decades of conditioning. Item 2 Dragon Dictate for MAC Version 3 - Education Version - Ships within 12 hours 2 -.Until you become familiar with the commands, keeping track of them all can be a bit of a chore. The document was fairly long, so I went upstairs and grabbed a coffee after waiting a few minutes for it to complete parsing through the file.item 1 Nuance Dragon Dictate for Mac Version 3.0 Speech Recognition w/ Headset - New 1 -Nuance Dragon Dictate for Mac Version 3.0 Speech Recognition w/ Headset - New. There was a minor issue in that the document is a Pages file and Dragon doesn’t recognize that format for this particular function, so I saved a copy as a Word document (other than that, it played nicely with Pages). Next, I chose the manuscript I was working on and had Dragon scan it for vocabulary. I’d just clam up and stare into space rather than engage in what felt dangerously like talking to myself. I found it less natural to dictate off on a tangent and that part of the creative writing process never really caught on. Not exactly efficient, but that’s how I roll. The only time it would trip up for me was on the occasional “ladder” versus “latter” and other close sounding words. I’d often go a page without having any typos to correct and based on several months of use, I found that the claimed 99 percent accuracy rate wasn’t blowing smoke. The accuracy of the voice recognition really was quite impressive and one of the bonuses is that so long as the software guesses the correct word, it’s going to be spelled correctly. I quickly discovered that Dragon Dictate doesn’t fare quite as well if the person dictating is coldy, coughing, rasping and with a voice that’s breaking. One of the kids brought home a helluva cold—or perhaps several of the kids each brought home their own variation—and the end result was nearly a month of speech impairment for me. So much more relaxing than being hunched over a keyboard.The downside to the software is the reliance on voice controls (and given that it’s speech recognition software, one can hardly fault it for that). And I’ve really come to enjoy being able to sit comfortably in my chair, tilted back, hands behind my head, feet up and working productively. Even when I’d start rapidly spitting out long and complex sentences, I never left the software behind. Basically, if I sat down and spent a few hours with the software, the dictation process became more natural, the commands became more natural and it hummed. Sibelius 6 serial numberI also learned that the three hour periods during the day when the kids are off at school are the most productive with Dragon. No blaring tunes unless I wanted to go with the headphones, and I think strapping on multiple sets of headphones (one for the mic and one for the music) simultaneously risks crossing the streams (not to mention looking really, really uncool), so I just kept the music at a low, waiting room volume. While ambient noise is a function of microphone sensitivity, I did find that I had to be reasonable about having background music on while dictating. So, just like broken fingers make for a less than satisfactory typing experience, speech recognition software has no magic way of remaining spot on with a broken voice. ![]()
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