Dragon Professional Individual for Mac Discontinued

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Mac users burned after Nuance drops Dragon speech to text software
Dictation tool was more than just another app for those with disabilities
By Shaun Nichols | October 30, 2018

 
A seemingly insignificant product cancellation is having a far-reaching impact on a particular community of Mac users.

Reg reader (and contributor) Colin Hughes wrote in to inform us about how Developer Nuance’s decision to drop the OS X port of its Dragon Professional for Mac has left some customers with disabilities out in the cold.

Pitched as a productivity tool, Nuance’s Dragon software is aimed at everyone from journalists and home users to medical professionals as a way to accurately transcribe spoken words into printed text.
…
Perhaps most frustrating is that the technology to do voice control properly is already here. Apple and others have made a point of working it into their hardware demos, but the involvement ends there, and when it can’t be used to showcase a new product, speech recognition seems to get tossed aside.

“For some strange reason Apple keeps pitching voice control in terms of gimmicky things like ordering your coffee from Starbucks while turning your thermostat down on your way out to work,” Hughes says.

“For people like me being able to control my Apple device by voice can make or break my day. Apple just doesn’t seem to get that and it isn’t listening.”

 
Read the full article here

 
Product Discontinuation Notice:
Dragon Professional Individual for Mac
https://www.nuance.com/en-au/dragon/support/professional-individual-for-mac-eol.html

Dragon Professional Individual for Mac is being discontinued effective 10/22/2018 and will no longer be available for purchase. Customers may still receive telephone support for up to 90-days from date of activating the software in North America and up to 180 days from date of software activation in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Asia-Pacific regions.

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Elly

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Hi Kirsty — This is just wrong.  I’m very disappointed that Apple is so “tone deaf”! (Sorry for the bad pun).

 

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It’s not Apple dropping the product… it’s Nuance.

The author gets a dig in at Apple for having an OS that limits what the Nuance devs are able to do with the software compared to the Windows version, but the users profiled didn’t seem to have any problem with it the way it is, or perhaps I should say was.

Apple is also criticized for keeping the built-in voice recognition focused on the average consumer.  From an economic standpoint, it makes the most sense to focus on the simple things that most people will use it for (if at all).  I’d guess that the apparently small distance between what Apple now offers and what the individuals in the story would like would actually represent a geometric expansion in the complexity and size of the code base, which is not something that Apple, as mostly an OS company as far as software is concerned, is likely to tackle in the short term.

Eventually, I’d bet that what Apple learns with Siri and other voice recognition will expand what they’re able to do.  Until now, there has not really been a need for it, since a dedicated commercial product that offers all the functionality the individuals want was available.  The things that come with the OS are very often quite basic compared to what is available commercially, and this is no exception.

It seems like a weird time to throw in the towel on a MacOS version of software (or, as the article says twice, the Mac version of the Dragon software for Mac) in favor of having only the Windows version.  In comparison to Windows PCs, the Mac has never looked so good before.

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Hmm.. I turned off Siri as soon as I got the Mac out of the box. I’m really, seriously bad, am I not?

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I thought the PC version for individuals was also discontinued, that Dragon has decided to no longer sell to individuals but to enterprises only?

Siri is built into the Mac and got some improvements in Mojave (plus you can now use “Hey Siri” with T2 Macs, although I found a major bug with it), but I haven’t found myself using Siri on a Mac that much.

The dictation feature on the Mac is similar to Dragon’s. Dragon’s is more professional and feature-oriented, but at least the Mac has something built-in that’s functional.

Nathan Parker

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Nathan Parker wrote:

I thought the PC version for individuals was also discontinued, that Dragon has decided to no longer sell to individuals but to enterprises only?

Nuance are still selling Dragon Professional for Individuals (PC), as well as a number of other products. It’s nice to see they still do upgrades too!

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Nathan Parker

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Good to know. The article I read about it was inaccurate. It said it was going to be discontinued for all individuals and only available to organizations. Now that I know that’s not the case, I’ll keep this in mind when recommending it to PC users who need it. For Mac users, I guess I’ll recommend the built-in dictation tool in macOS until I know of a better option.

Nathan Parker

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