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.
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.
Dragon Group Client Installation Guide v15.5 (Open a new window) Dragon Professional Group, v15.4 Install Guide (PDF) (Open a new window) Dragon Group Configuration and Client Installation v15 (PDF) (Open a new window) Dragon Individual, v15 Install Guide (PDF) (Open a new window) Dragon Individual for Mac, v6 Install Guide (PDF) (Open a new. Mystika 3 - Awakening of the Dragons 1.0 for Mac can be downloaded from our software library for free. Mystika 3 - Awakening of the Dragons for Mac relates to Games. This software for Mac OS X was originally produced by UnikGame. The current setup file available for download requires 232 KB of hard disk space.
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. Side bullet mac os.
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: Hectic henry mac os.
- 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.
If you're a Mac gamer looking with disappointment at this year's holiday gaming releases, take heart, for BioWare and TransGaming may have just granted you an early present—Dragon Age: Origins is coming to the Mac later this month. The critically acclaimed title was first released for the PC and console systems in early November, and the quick turnaround time on the Mac version is a welcome surprise. The dark fantasy epic, from the makers of Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, will be available for Mac players to download on December 21.
Mac gamers often have to wait months (if not years) to see their favorite titles ported to the Mac platform. But TransGaming is planning on releasing a Mac version of Dragon Age: Origins mere weeks after its initial launch. Vikas Gupta, President and CEO of TransGaming, credits TransGaming's use of Cider Technology for the quick-turnaround time.
Dragon Age: Origins is a fantasy role-playing game that tasks the player with taking up the cause of a Grey Warden, one of the last of an ancient order of guardians. As an evil dragon known as the Archdemon threatens the lands, the player and his/her party members must unite the peoples of Thedas against the Darkspawn before the Blight destroys life. According to the press materials, this will not be a whimsical journey through enchanted lands: 'To restore peace, players must make ruthless decisions and be willing to sacrifice their friends and loved ones for the greater good of mankind.' Picksign mac os.
Players will have the option to download two different versions of the game, Standard and Digital Deluxe. According to the TransGaming and BioWare press release, the Digital Deluxe version will feature additional content including: 'a collection of wallpapers, in-game bonus items, the game's soundtrack and the Warden's Keep additional content.' The 'Warden's Keep' is a new dungeon-exploring add-on adventure that depicts the darkest hour of the Grey Wardens. There's also new loot including a set of ancient Grey Warden armor, a 'chance' to gain two to six new abilities, a new base complete with merchants and a party chest to store items.
Each version of Dragon Age: Origins for the Mac will also include The Stone Prisoner and the Blood Dragon Armor add-ons. The Stone Prisoner add-on gives players access to new environments, items, and the mighty stone golem, Shale, who the developers claim, 'can become one of the most powerful party members in the game.' Additionally, players will receive the Blood Dragon Armor add-on, a set of themed armor that gives players additional protection in combat and will be available for use in both Dragon Age: Origins on the Mac and in Mass Effect 2 on the Xbox 360 and PC.
Dragon Awaken Forum
The Standard and Digital Deluxe versions are available now for pre-order. Dragon Age: Origins will run on Mac OS X 10.6.2 Leopard or higher and requires an Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 2GB of RAM, an ATI X1600 or NVIDIA 7300 graphics card or better, and at least 17GB of hard drive space for installation. The game will not run on PowerPC-based Macs or Intel Mac that use Intel GMA video cards.
