From: Thomas Hall
Date: November 2002

Thanks for all of your valuable contributions to the Mac community. I have enjoyed your Missing Manual series. In fact, I just purchased the new Mac OS X Missing Manual (covering Jaguar). I noticed in the colophon that the book was written (on a PC!) using Dragon NaturallySpeaking, due to a wrist ailment.

I was wondering why you had chosen to write a book about the Macintosh on a PC running Windows, and if you'd tried any programs for OS X. For instance, I was looking into buying IBM's ViaVoice for OS X, since I have a similar wrist problem.

I use PCs at work as well, so don't think I am bashing you for using a PC to do the speaking-to-text. I was just wondering if you had any advice/pointers for what software would be best, on either platform.

Thanks!
Thomas

---

Oh, believe me, my life would be COMPLETE if I could find a working speech-recognition program for the Mac! I am really not a Windows fan, and would much prefer to live in Mac OS X if I could!

But there aren't any programs good enough for real work. I've tried both ViaVoice and iListen. They're light-years behind NaturallySpeaking on the PC. Unfortunately.

David

Got a question? Just ask!

Return to: From David's Desk