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Nov 03, 2017 I first fell in love with Nuance NaturallySpeaking on the Windows platform. After I switched over to the Mac and purchased Dragon for Mac 4, I was sorely disappointed. The dictation quality was not near as good nor was the cursor handling. I quickly backpedaled trying to get NaturallySpeaking version 11 working in a VM on my Mac. Indeed, running Dragon on a Mac isn’t recommended. The Mac version of Dragon has been discontinued and running Dragon for windows on a Mac requires either Parallels Desktop emulation software or a separate boot with Bootcamp. The question of what PC is ‘good for Dragon’ is always a bit difficult to answer. Dragon NaturallySpeaking version 12 Premium and Professional edition on Windows and the recently released Dragon Dictate 3 for Mac can take recorded audio and transcribe it, but that is only for the single voice trained person who is speaking. So it is understandable that the leap is often made that if it can transcribe one voice it can.
- Changing audio-in on the pc side has no effect. Without any mic control on the pc side, Dragon NatSpeaking cannot do its initial mic calibration. You have to do this manually by going back and forth between the mac and pc, and hope for the best. Parallels is a great product, but the usb mic-in doesn't work yet.
- If you are having trouble with Dragon, find the type of problem you are having below, then try the tips and links to resolve the issue. If you need help getting started with Dragon, see Getting started with dictation and FAQs for tips. Nuance recommends upgrading your OS to version 10.11.6 or later.
Dragon Naturally Speaking Does It Run Well On Parallels For Mac Pro
and “Minimum Recommended” hardware requirements forusing the DragonNaturallySpeaking software. The MinimumRecommended hardware will generally allow NaturallySpeaking toprovide fullaccuracy and performance. MinimumHardwareis specified by the manufacturer and will allow NaturallySpeaking toinstalland to run but the performance and accuracy may range fromslightly tosubstantially lower than optimal. Upgraded requirementsfor the recommended system requirements arenoted below theminimum specifications. While it is notpossible to predict how NaturallySpeaking will work on every system,here is agood operational test:“Ifyouarenot impressed with the dictationresults, it is not working correctly.”
SupportedOperatingSystems
o Windows 8 and 8.1™ 32-bit and 64-bit
o Windows 7™ SP1 32-bit and 64-bit
o WindowsServer 2008 R2, SP1 or higher
o WindowsServer 20012
Important Notes:
- During the install process, the software checks that your system meets these requirements; if they are not met, it will not be installed.
- Dragon web extensions require Internet Explorer 9, 10 or 11, or the currently supported version of Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome.
- Only the Medical edition of Dragon supports dictation directly into Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Systems.
- Dragon must be installed on the users (Client) computer. In some cases it may be possible to install the Dragon software on a Citrix or RDP Server. Successful Citrix and RDP installations require a clear understanding of the network and operational limitations prior to purchase.
- It may be possible to run Dragon on a Mac OS using a Windows emulator (Boot Camp, Parallels, etc.) This configuration is not recommended as it is not currently supported by the manufacturer. Some users have reported good success but others have been unable to get Dragon to work well or at all with this configuration.
Minimum System Requirements
Theseare the manufactures minimum system requirements. Meeting thesespecificationswill allow the software to be installed and run, however bothperformance andaccuracy may be reduced.
- Intel® Pentium or AMD at 2.2 GHz or or faster.
SSE2 instruction set REQUIRED - 32 bit operating systems: 2 GB RAM, 64 bit Operating Systems: 4:GB RAM
- Processor Cache: 512 MB
- 4 GB Free Hard Disk Space
- DVD-ROM (required for installation)
- Sound card capable of supporting 22 kHz 16-bit recording
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, 10 or 11, Current version of Firefox or Google Chrome
- Internet Connection (for activation)
- Speakers (required for playback of recorded speech and text to speech features)
- Nuance-approved microphone (included software purchases, not with upgrades)
- An internet connection is required for activation
Minimum Recommended System Requirements
Minimum System with the followingupgrades:
- RAM: 4 GB RAM installed for 32-bit
6 GB RAM for 32-bit operating syatems - L2 Cache: 2 MB
In October 2018, Nuance announced that it has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac and will support it for only 90 days from activation in the US or 180 days in the rest of the world. The continuous speech-to-text software was widely considered to be the gold standard for speech recognition, and Nuance continues to develop and sell the Windows versions of Dragon Home, Dragon Professional Individual, and various profession-specific solutions.
Dragon Naturally Speaking Does It Run Well On Parallels For Mac Catalina
This move is a blow to professional users—such as doctors, lawyers, and law enforcement—who depended on Dragon for dictating to their Macs, but the community most significantly affected are those who can control their Macs only with their voices.
What about Apple’s built-in accessibility solutions? macOS does support voice dictation, although my experience is that it’s not even as good as dictation in iOS, much less Dragon Professional Individual. Some level of voice control of the Mac is also available via Dictation Commands, but again, it’s not as powerful as what was available from Dragon Professional Individual.
TidBITS reader Todd Scheresky is a software engineer who relies on Dragon Professional Individual for his work because he’s a quadriplegic and has no use of his arms. He has suggested several ways that Apple needs to improve macOS speech recognition to make it a viable alternative to Dragon Professional Individual:
- Support for user-added custom words: Every profession has its own terminology and jargon, which is part of why there are legal, medical, and law enforcement versions of Dragon for Windows. Scheresky isn’t asking Apple to provide such custom vocabularies, but he needs to be able to add custom words to the vocabulary to carry out his work.
- Support for speaker-dependent continuous speech recognition: Currently, macOS’s speech recognition is speaker-independent, which means that it works pretty well for everyone. But Scheresky believes it needs to become speaker-dependent, so it can learn from your corrections to improve recognition accuracy. Also, Apple’s speech recognition isn’t continuous—it works for only a few minutes before stopping and needing to be reinvoked.
- Support for cursor positioning and mouse button events: Although Scheresky acknowledges that macOS’s Dictation Commands are pretty good and provide decent support for text cursor positioning, macOS has nothing like Nuance’s MouseGrid, which divides the screen into a 3-by-3 grid and enables the user to zoom in to a grid coordinate, then displaying another 3-by-3 grid to continue zooming. Nor does Apple have anything like Nuance’s mouse commands for moving and clicking the mouse pointer.
When Scheresky complained to Apple’s accessibility team about macOS’s limitations, they suggested the Switch Control feature, which enables users to move the pointer (along with other actions) by clicking a switch. He talks about this in a video.
Unfortunately, although Switch Control would let Scheresky control a Mac using a sip-and-puff switch or a head switch, such solutions would be both far slower than voice and a literal pain in the neck. There are some better alternatives for mouse pointer positioning:
- Dedicated software, in the form of a $35 app called iTracker.
- An off-the-shelf hack using Keyboard Maestro and Automator.
- An expensive head-mounted pointing device, although the SmartNav is $600 and the HeadMouse Nano and TrackerPro are both about $1000. It’s also not clear how well they interface with current versions of macOS.
Regardless, if Apple enhanced macOS’s voice recognition in the ways Scheresky suggests, it would become significantly more useful and would give users with physical limitations significantly more control over their Macs… and their lives. If you’d like to help, Scheresky suggests submitting feature request feedback to Apple with text along the following lines (feel free to copy and paste it):
Because Nuance has discontinued Dragon Professional Individual for Mac, it is becoming difficult for disabled users to use the Mac. Please enhance macOS speech recognition to support user-added custom words, speaker-dependent continuous speech recognition that learns from user corrections to improve accuracy, and cursor positioning and mouse button events.
Thank you for your consideration!
Thanks for encouraging Apple to bring macOS’s accessibility features up to the level necessary to provide an alternative to Dragon Professional Individual for Mac. Such improvements will help both those who face physical challenges to using the Mac and those for whom dictation is a professional necessity.