DragonDictate, Dragon Dictate, or Dragon for Mac was proprietary speech recognition software. In 2021 its owner, Nuance Communications, was acquired by MicrosoftMicrosoft acquires Nuance—makers of Dragon speech rec—for $16 billion and it has since been incorporated into Microsoft Copilot as Dragon Copilot.
It was originally developed by Dragon Systems for Microsoft Windows, and was replaced by Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows. It was later acquired by Nuance Communications. Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0 (originally named MacSpeech DictateNuance - Dragon for Mac) is supported only on Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Nuance's other products for Mac included MacSpeech Scribe.
Original DragonDictate DragonDictate for Windows was the original speech recognition application from Dragon Systems and used discrete speech where the user must pause between speaking each word. The first version, 1.0 was available only through a few distribution and support partners. It included a Shure cardioid microphone headset. Later it was replaced by Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which allows continuous speech recognition and correction and training of words via the keyboard. NaturallySpeaking remains a Windows-only program, and since 2016 distributes in Version 15. DragonDictate for Windows is still available but has not been updated since Windows 98 was the current operating system.
Dragon Dictate for Mac Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0, an upgrade for MacSpeech Dictate, was announced on September 20, 2010, by Nuance Communications, the developer of MacSpeech products. The upgrade incorporates some of the features of NaturallySpeaking into the MacSpeech software. Dragon Dictate for Mac lacks other NaturallySpeaking features, such as training mis-recognized words by simply re-typing them using the keyboard. An early review by David Pogue notes,
In October 2018 Nuance announced that it was dropping Macintosh support for its products.Mac users burned after Nuance drops Dragon speech to text software October 30, 2018
See also List of speech recognition software
Notable users
Peter David – American writer of comic books, novels, television, movies and video games. David began using DragonDictate following his stroke in December 2012.David, Kathleen (January 15, 2013). "Your Semi Daily Peter David Report for Jan 15 2012". peterdavid.net."Peter David, Post-Stroke, Returns Home". startrek.com. February 11, 2013.
References
External links for Nuance Communications