- How Many Computers Can I Install Dragon Professional For Mac V6 On A Truck
- How Many Computers Can I Install Dragon Professional For Mac V6 On Fire
- How Many Computers Can I Install Dragon Professional For Mac V6 On A Car
Dragon for Mac v6, v5 and Apple Dictation Compared As of October 22, 2018, Dragon for Mac has been Discontinued. Nuance Dragon Professional Individual for Mac 6 vs. Dragon for Mac 5 vs. Apple Dictation. Nuance Dragon Professional Individual for Mac, v6 For v6 of: Contents Dragon Professional for Mac User Guide 1 Get started 25 Using the Dragon menu 25 Related topics: 26 The Status Window 26 To show or hide the Status Window 26. To put your computer in sleep mode 81 To restart your computer 81.
Dragon eliminates barriers to productivity and creativity by letting you interact with your computer by voice. It turns your spoken thoughts into text and your voice commands into action so you don’t have to worry about the mechanics of typing and spelling. You can easily switch between keyboard, mouse and voice so you can use the mode of input you prefer for any given task.
Dragon not only lets you dictate up to three times faster than typing, but it also allows you to make edits and apply formatting using your voice. You can select text and apply formatting such as bold, underline, capitals and more, or just speak to make needed changes. Smart Format Rules automatically adapt to how you want abbreviations, dates, phone numbers and more to appear, so you don’t have to correct them every time.
Dragon gives you robust voice command and control as well as Enhanced Dictation (or Full Text Control), for fully voice-driven editing and command capabilities within many popular business applications that you use every day. Create documents such as reports, emails, forms and notes and zip through computer tasks in record time.
You have to hand it to Nuance. The latest Dragon Professional voice recognition software is impressive. So is its business model.
Dragon’s software is expensive by today’s standards. A single user licence for Dragon Professional version 6 costs US$300. You can buy a PC for less.
Keep in mind both Apple and Microsoft include voice recognition software as part of their operating systems. Neither application is free, but they are already paid for. So, in effect, Dragon is, asking people to pay again for something they already have.
That puts the business’s livelihood on the line. To make it work, Dragon has to offer something special. It does that. Dragon Professional version 6 performs far better than the alternatives from Apple and Microsoft. It uses something called deep learning to improve accuracy.
Dragon Professional more accurate than alternatives
Dragon claims this means the software has 99 percent recognition accuracy. There’s no easy way to verify the claim, but in testing the software does a near perfect job of turning spoken words into computer text.
What the numbers don’t tell you is that even a small improvement in voice recognition accuracy means a vast improvement in the experience. The difference between going back and correcting every tenth word, 90 percent accuracy, and every hundredth word, 99 percent accuracy is huge.
You can improve performance by training the software. If you’re committed to using Dragon, then investing some time makes sense. Yet in practice the software works so well out of the box you might decide to just get on with it.
It seems the software does some form of training when in use. Every so often there’s a message to say Dragon is updating your profile.
Integrated app
Dragon Professional isn’t a stand-alone application. It is integrated into the operating system. It works with other apps. Apple Pages and Microsoft Word are the obvious candidates, but any program using text input should work.
It works with almost every Mac app that uses keyboard input. In theory you can control less word-oriented apps such as image editors, but that doesn’t make practical sense. Having said that, Dragon Professional is excellent at performance everyday MacOS commands. It would be an ideal tool if you had access problems with your hands.
A small icon appears in the Mac’s menu bar, in much the same way as other system level apps. When the software is in use a small floating window opens on the screen with three more icons. There’s also a guidance window with help when you need it.
For most of the time the second window keeps out of the way. The main one is small enough to not be a distraction. The microphone icon shows green when it is on and red when it off, otherwise there’s not much to see.
How Many Computers Can I Install Dragon Professional For Mac V6 On A Truck
If you like using the cursor you can switch between Dictation, Command, Spelling and Numbers mode using the main floating window.
There’s a transcription mode which allows you to turn audio files into text. It’s a lot more hit and miss than the normal dictation software. It manages to cope with a few minutes of audio where there is only one speaker, but chokes if you attempt to transcribe, say, an interview with two people talking.
A personal productivity note
While the technology in Dragon’s latest voice recognition software is impressive, it’s not for me. After forty years of touch typing, I write with my fingertips. Any attempt to compose faultless prose using my voice ends in an embarrassing mess.
That’s not to say I don’t make typing errors. Anyone who has read my tweets can see that. Yet the flow of my writing is so much better when I hit keys than when I speak. No doubt that would change if I spent thousands of hours improving my technique. Simple economics says I’m better off sticking with what I know.
Take this blog post as Illustrating how this works. I started out trying to use the Dragon Professional software to write the post.
It was a disaster. Although professional scribes are taught to ‘write like you talk’, that advice is not meant to be taken literally. When I gave up on voice recognition, I hit the ground running and finished the post in minutes.
There’s another problem that may affect some readers. I feel self-conscious and uncomfortable when dictating to a machine. There’s nothing worse than knowing people can hear you as you compose a story. That’s not an issue when I type.
While we are on the personal stuff I should mention another major plus for Dragon. Most voice recognition tools struggle with my accent. It’s a hybrid British-antipodean thing.
UK voice recognition settings don’t work for me. Nor do New Zealand ones. Oddly, Australian settings get me the best result on Apple equipment. Nothing seems to cope with my voice on Microsoft systems. Dragon Professional worked out of the box even though the settings are hard-wired to New Zealand.
How Many Computers Can I Install Dragon Professional For Mac V6 On Fire
Verdict
How Many Computers Can I Install Dragon Professional For Mac V6 On A Car
All the above leaves me in an odd position. I’m about to recommend a product that I wouldn’t normally use myself. So let’s run through the main points again. Dragon Professional version 6 does an excellent job of turning spoken words into text. The software is accurate and reliable. It also provides a great way to control a Mac when you can’t or don’t want to use hands.