macOS vs. Dragon Dictation

Since Dragon for Mac stopped being supported, I switched to their IOS app, Dragon Anywhere. It actually seems to work a bit better than the old Mac program. You need to copy the text over to the Mac, but that seems fairly straightforward. It is pricey, but it is a solution while we wait for Apple to get their act together.

Apple removed the Mute when dictating in Catalina, which is super annoying now every time Dictation is used it has the Beep sound.

The Voice Control Dictation sucks. Which is what I believe was used in those comparison. It is slow, and barely works for English, let along many other languages.

I dont understand why anyone would want to use Dragon Dictation when Siri is working perfectly, apart from the fact for privacy reason.

Like others, I have found that Dragon 6.0.8 works satisfactorily with Mac OS Catalina, despite support having been withdrawn by Nuance. Dragon remains my dictation tool of choice on the Mac.

In the last month, I have installed the Mac OS 11 'Big Sur' public beta and I find Dragon still works.

There were a few problems selecting the microphone to dictate with, but that is just a change to Big Sur's bluetooth selection.

I am dictating using my AirPods rather than a headset. I am usually in a quiet environment.

MacDictate is a very poor substitute for Dragon.
There is no training for my voice
Correction of errors is nearly impossible
Corrected errors are repeated as though error had never been corrected
Capital Letters are Randomly inserted In the text like This
Surely Apple can arrange for voice training and a personal vocabulary.

this is no being dictated through the neck System.

Note the errors!

There is still no alternative to dragon 6 on the mac when it comes to the quality of recognition. I still have problems fixing the microphone under big sur. If you install the plantronics interface, the bt300 interface is selectable unter the dragon config, connects to the headset - at least it says so - but there is no data being transferred. Without the plantronics usb interface, the bluetooth way of using the headset mike is funcional all over the mac, but not recognized under the dragon config. so I have to use the internal microphone for dictation, which is still better in recognition than all the other programs including siri with the headset.

I have needed to keep using Dragon 6.0.8 since Nuance stopped supporting it in 2018 or 19, thus I never updated to Catalina, and still have not updated as of Aug. 2024, (it was important at the time that I did not risk losing the functionality of Dragon, and has remained so). Now, in August 2024, many platforms are ending support for High Sierra (macOS 10.13) and I think I am going to be forced to finally update. If anyone sees this message, and is able to answer, what is the most recent version of macOS that Dragon 6.0.8 is basically functional with? Or, as anyone produced an equal to or better substitute for Dragon in the intervening time?

The Roaring Apps site that tracks OS-Application compatibility indicates Dragon 6.0.8 "Works Fine" with macOS through Monterey. The caveat is that there is very little data behind their reports.

https://roaringapps.com/app/dragon-dictate

I just upgraded to Sequoia on my Mac two days ago and dragon is no longer working. I thought I would call Dragon Support at 857–2 14–6311 to find out if my Dragon version 6.0.8 will work On Sequoia. Maybe there’s some thing I haven’t done right. Anyone else know if Dragon will continue to work with his operating system?

Regarding Dragon 6.0.8 and Sequoia:

I just installed 6.0.8 on my Intel MacBook Pro / Sequoia 15.0.1 (OpenCore Legacy Patcher Sequoia install on unsupported machine). Dragon crashes on launch with a detailed crash report auto-inserted into a Dragon Support email.

FYI, if anyone's interested: my early 2015 Retina MacBook Pro runs just fine with clean install of Sequoia via OpenCore Legacy Patcher. Obviously none of the benefits of Sequoia on Apple Silicon — but it's a wonderful thing to extend the life of these machines. They are ~80% of a new machine's capabilities, and there's more than a little satisfaction in sending a little FUCK YOU to Tim Cook.