Have office mac iphone and mac laptop what is the least costly that supports all 3. Is this still compatible I haven’t tried to download it on this laptop yet. But, now I have Windows 10 and Word 2019. I think I bought it in 2010. I have Dragon Naturally Speaking Premium 11.0.When that’s done, you’re good to go.For dictation, you can choose from various input options, including your computer’s built-in mic, or the recommended (and included) Nuance-approved noise-canceling USB headset microphone. After setting up your profile, you begin a 5-10 minute training exercise in which you familiarize Dragon Dictate with your voice by reading a set of pre-prepared passages. It wants you to create a profile for each person who will be speaking, and ideally, whether they are actively dictating or being transcribed (more on that part later). I haven’t run previous versions of Dragon Dictate for Mac, but Nuance claims that version 4 is “up to 99% accurate” which they say is an improvement (though they don’t indicate how much of an improvement) over version 3 of the software.Once you install the software, it invites you to set up a profile. Dragon Dictate 4 excels at this.Mac OS X Mountain Lion and Mavericks, for example, pack some very capable speech recognition — especially if you use the “Enhanced Dictation” option, which gives you the ability to do offline and continuous dictation. But frankly, if the only reason you’re looking at speech recognition software is the ability to do some basic dictation, you’re probably better off with your system’s built-in software. If you want to see an amusing video of Dragon Dictate in action, check out David Pogue’s review.This most recent version of Dragon is very impressive. It was usually on words like “a” which the software kept hearing as “and.” I did do a fair amount of editing for things like capitalization and modifying symbols such as “%,” but I suspect that had more to do with my lack of familiarity with the proper ways to insert these than any deficiency in the program. Amazingly, after calibrating each of these options, I found them all to be highly accurate in a quiet environment, with the provided USB headset offering the best results overall.Above: Nuance’s Dragon Remote Mic app for iOSHow good is it? I dictated this entire review using Dragon Dictate and only had to make one or two minor corrections per paragraph in terms of misunderstood words.Normally, this would involve opening Safari (or another browser) and then navigating to Gmail.com. Better still, you aren’t limited to a specified set of commands as is the case with OS X’s voice recognition.For instance, let’s say you wanted to be able to open Gmail. Opening applications, saving files from within those applications, navigating system dialog windows — this can all be done through the mastery of Dragon Dictate’s voice commands. If you’re physically unable to do much in the way of typing or mousing, Dragon Dictate gives you access to a wide variety of system-level commands. See that word “adjust” in the previous sentence? I was able to go back and italicize it after I finished dictating the sentence by simply saying “italicize adjust.” While not available in all apps (the latest version of Pages being a notable exception), Full Text Control gives you an almost magical ability to change the appearance of any text you’ve dictated.Above: Image courtesy of Nuance Communications2. Dictating text is all very well and good, but if you’re serious about going hands-free, you need a way to adjust text that you’ve just dictated.
Naturally Speaking Windows 10 And WordAs a journalist, I spend a lot of time interviewing sources for stories both on the phone and in-person. And though it was a feature of version 3, Nuance has expanded its feature set as well as file compatibility. This feature is the main reason I was interested in trying out Dragon Dictate, and it’s one of the only areas where the Mac version of the software exceeds the PC version. This means you can navigate Gmail entirely with your voice using commands such as “Click Compose,” “Next Field,” and “Click Send.”3. True transcription ability. Once done, Dragon Dictate can then whisk through an entire audio file, converting speech to text with reasonable accuracy.There is however, one big drawback: Unlike normal dictation, where the speaker utters punctuation words such as “comma” or “period,” there are no such indicators in a recorded interview. You then need to correct any mistakes it has made along the way so that it can “learn” what those problem words are. You then need to provide a sample audio file (supported formats are: mp3, aif, aiff, wav, mp4, m4a and m4v) of at least 90 seconds in duration.Dragon Dictate will show you its best guess at what the speaker has said during the sample period. So I was eager to try Dragon Dictate’s transcription service.You start by either creating a new Profile (if the person you’re transcribing is not you) or by adding a transcription source to your existing profile. It’s incredibly time consuming. Turn on restore word for macYou can buy other versions for $299 each, but these simply offer upgraded hardware (like a Bluetooth headset for wireless dictation) not better or different software features.As I pointed out earlier, you can achieve decent — if not perfect — basic dictation with your existing OS, (if you’re running Mavericks), so $199 is buying you the other three capabilities: System control, Full Text Control, and audio file transcription. (See Competition, below for a full example.)The Bad: Price (and transcription if pushed to its limits)Nuance has priced Dragon Dictate v4 for the Mac at the starting point of $199. While this was good enough for my purposes (I just need to quickly identify interesting sound bites), it might seem frustratingly basic for someone who wants the equivalent of dictated text. That might well be the case, but in order for Dragon Dictate to deliver on that promise, you’ll need to set up your recording device as close to your source as possible.In fairness, Nuance does say that the transcription feature is only meant for single-speaker recordings, so using it as an interview transcription tool might not be a fair test of its abilities. Nuance suggests that the transcription function is ideal for capturing lectures if you’re a student, or speeches. I had to correct every single word in the sample audio portion and even then, it still couldn’t make out what my subject was saying. Unfortunately, the person I was interviewing was on his cellphone, which dropped the call quality substantially — but since this is the new normal for me when doing interviews, I had hoped that Dragon Dictate would be up to the task.Dragon Dictate couldn’t understand it at all. My first attempt to use it was with an interview I had recorded by setting my iPhone next to my landline speaker phone. The interface is very simple — deceivingly so. This can also be used as a real-time transcription service from a recorded audio file if you place the playback device near your computer’s mic.Google “transcription software for Mac” and “free transcription software” and “Mac voice recognition software,” and you’ll come up these options:Wreally Transcribe: a plug-in for Chrome that is free to try for seven days but afterwards costs $20 if you want the full version. In fact, as far as the Mac goes, there aren’t any true speech recognition competitors at all (it seems Nuance has a habit of buying them and then closing and/or integrating them).But there are a few inexpensive or free products that will give you dictation capabilities. There have even been rumors that Apple might buy Nuance to prevent that technology from falling into rival Samsung’s hands.The company is dominant to the point that, as I mentioned above, there isn’t a competitive product that does everything Dragon Dictate can do. The CompetitionNuance is so dominant in the speech recognition space that its technology is baked into Apple’s Siri and similar products from other companies.
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