There was a fair amount of panic in the Mac community last year when Dragon announced that it was dropping its Mac dictation software. People have been trying to turn to other sources to replace this excellent program. Just a quick search on Internet for Mac dictation will show lots of people talking about how Mac dictate/voice control is not as quick or as accurate as Dragon.
I would certainly concur with this. Whilst Mac dictate/voice control is useful it is not yet at the level that Dragon dictate was. Part of the problem appears to be that it appears to be operating through Siri and therefore requires an Internet connection sending the dictation to Apple for processing. I don't know about anybody else but I find that there can be quite a lag with this which really slows down the dictation and workflow.
The beauty of Dragon especially the older versions was that it was software driven and all processing and learning was done on board your computer which really speeded things up. Dragon's newer offering Dragon Anywhere has the same problem as Siri in that it needs an Internet connection that needs to be relatively fast to keep up with the dictation.
The problem was reported by the tech gurus was that once a Mac Dragon user updates to Catalina they will lose access to DragonDictate for the Mac. However, the good news is I have updated to been and I am still dictating using DragonDictate for the Mac! It still works!
It appears that Nuance has done a really good job with DragonDictate for the Mac and produced a very solid and robust piece of software. Whilst DragonDictate for the Mac isn't quite as stable as it used to be and there are the odd little glitches, as long as you keep the text fairly clean and don't start adding things like images, footnotes and the like whilst dictating it will do a far better job than Mac dictate/voice control and any other option available at the moment.
What I don't understand is why Siri dictate on the iPad and iPhone is way better, more accurate and faster than on my Mac. It is also limited to time chunks and stops after a short time, which is really frustrating.
Clearly the end is in sight for Dragon dictate the Mac and one day it will fall over permanently. Right now however, it is working just fine and I have dictated this entire post is in it.
Happy bunny!
I would certainly concur with this. Whilst Mac dictate/voice control is useful it is not yet at the level that Dragon dictate was. Part of the problem appears to be that it appears to be operating through Siri and therefore requires an Internet connection sending the dictation to Apple for processing. I don't know about anybody else but I find that there can be quite a lag with this which really slows down the dictation and workflow.
The beauty of Dragon especially the older versions was that it was software driven and all processing and learning was done on board your computer which really speeded things up. Dragon's newer offering Dragon Anywhere has the same problem as Siri in that it needs an Internet connection that needs to be relatively fast to keep up with the dictation.
The problem was reported by the tech gurus was that once a Mac Dragon user updates to Catalina they will lose access to DragonDictate for the Mac. However, the good news is I have updated to been and I am still dictating using DragonDictate for the Mac! It still works!
It appears that Nuance has done a really good job with DragonDictate for the Mac and produced a very solid and robust piece of software. Whilst DragonDictate for the Mac isn't quite as stable as it used to be and there are the odd little glitches, as long as you keep the text fairly clean and don't start adding things like images, footnotes and the like whilst dictating it will do a far better job than Mac dictate/voice control and any other option available at the moment.
What I don't understand is why Siri dictate on the iPad and iPhone is way better, more accurate and faster than on my Mac. It is also limited to time chunks and stops after a short time, which is really frustrating.
Clearly the end is in sight for Dragon dictate the Mac and one day it will fall over permanently. Right now however, it is working just fine and I have dictated this entire post is in it.
Happy bunny!
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