New Thunderbolt iMac and setting up Speech Recognition Software – Dragon Dictate
I have a new iMac 2011 with Thunderbolt, the new super fast data transfer method from Intel and Apple, installed. I am very pleased with the machine overall although there are a couple of small niggles. One thing I seem to be having trouble with, is that when I would like to download applications I have bought previously on my old computer, for some reason or other it doesn’t understand that I have bought them and it says that I have them already installed. I tried setting up the Apple ID within system preferences and also within iTunes and still, it’s not working properly. I am considering deleting all authorised computers en masse from all of the computers I own and then just authorising the MacBook that I still work with and also my new iMac, I will then be all set up with the iMac software. Also it would be good to go and authorise my wife’s computer so that I can download applications I have bought onto her computer too.
Thunderbolt Devices are Coming to A Mac Near You
I am highly delighted to have the new iMac with OSX Lion Thunderbolt installed even though there are no Thunderbolt devices available that I can afford. Apple have produced the Apple Thunderbolt display which although his excellent piece of kit is it’s far too expensive for me to be able to buy. The same goes for the Promise Raid technology, out of my price range. Hopefully there will be, by the end of the year, some Thunderbolt devices that will be more affordable. Some industry cynics do not hold much hope out for this to happen, but market forces probably will prevail.
I do have a toaster type of hard disk docking solution which is pretty marvellous with its USB connection and it also has an ESATA correction. I think there is a good possibility that at a later stage in the game somebody will make a cable or a converter which will allow this device to connected by a Thunderbolt. It is a shame there is no iMac to HDMI port on this Apple iMac, I may be able to get a convertor to go from the Thunderbolt mini DVI port to HDMI. I will have to look into that. That was not on the new iMacs 2011 but maybe it will surface in the new iMacs 2012.
Getting used to dictating articles into the iMac with Dragon Dictate
I’m also having some difficulty with Dragon Dictate. Generally it is working very well and I can dictate my text into the computer pretty rapid and it understands even with my strange accent. I think I need to read some more of the application training stories. The training of the dictation software will have the computer and DragonDictate learn a little bit more about my style of speaking.
I like the way that there is a recognition window and it has in a number of options of what it thinks I said. I can double-click on a selection if I think that it did not get what I said correctly and is there is a better option in the recognition window. I can also say “Choose 2” and it will swap out the incorrect guess with what I wanted to say. It does still take getting used to how the software works and I may need to spend some time training myself, how to use it and learning how to speak a little more clearly. I am still really amazed by how well it works in recognising my speech and turning it into text that is editable within a document.
Some Teething Problems with Dragon Dictate The Speech Recognition Software
The other problem is that sometimes in external applications such as in Scrivener or in TextMate it will not put in some of the letters, even though I can see it has recognised what I said properly. I am wondering if the problem with the letters being left out is due to that there is only 4 GB of memory in the computer and maybe it will work better when I have the 8 GB installed later this week.
I am not very good at inserting the punctuation within the words that I read or so into the Dragon dictation software. I have to say the word COMMA to have that punctuation. I dare say I will get used to working this way in time. I am certain that I will also still need to spend time reading through and editing in the old fashioned way, what I have already dictated and making sure that it reads properly before I publish. It is possible to edit within Dragon Dictate Mac
and it actually recommends that you don’t edit manually in the app because otherwise it gets confused about where the test is. What I should do is to use a command like “Insert Before The Words” to have the dictation go where is is supposed to go. Or I can say “Correct [The word I want corrected] to [The word it is supposed to be]. Using Dragon Dictate Mac
in this way will ensure that it knows where things are on the page and it will work correctly. I may still even just dictate an article all in and the work on it manually after I have pasted into Scrivener.
Dictation Is Much Quicker That Typing
Judging by how fast I can dictate these words into the computer and have them recognised as text then I should be able to create many articles per day. I will complete much more work than I would have been able to do by just typing alone. I have also noticed that this software works far better than the Dragon Dictate Mac
version that I was using on the iPad. That version is pretty good but it does require an Internet connection because a all of the work of converting the speech to text is done away from the iPad on a server somewhere.
Software iMac
The iMac PC / personal computer has some great technology and also the iMac software to go with it. There is iMac Facetime capabilities. I keep meaning to use it more and even more so now that Skype has been bought by Microsoft.
