Hi Donna and Others,
Speech commands on the Mac work. The issue is that all the newer
Intel Macbooks have been built to optimize smaller size and weight,
reduced power consumption, etc. The result is that trying the speech
commands without using a microphone and headset, and attempting to
rely on the built-in microphone, is not going to work very well, as
Colin mentioned. How often have you tried to record anything, or
conduct a Skype session without a microphone on your present computer?
"Speakable items" works pretty well on my 12" G4 PowerBook -- my first
Mac, which dates from when I joined the Macvisionaries list, and which
I can still use. It's noticeable that even on this, the smallest of
the PowerBook laptop line, the speakers and sound quality are better
than on my MacBook, and the internal mic performance is much better.
(When I was first trying to learn about recording apps, I could just
try out voice recording -- with no separate mic.)
If you want to get a feeling for how speech commands on the Mac work,
I'll point you to a couple of discussion threads from the old
discussion list at the Mail Archive. In contrast to the responses on
this thread, where the focus has been on how spoken commands are not
recognized, the posted replies include statements like "Ask it to tell
you a joke", or discuss using "Speakable Items" to command moves in
the chess game program.
• Tim Kilburn's post on getting the system to speak date and time on
query
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg00883.html
• Tim's post about where to find the list of speakable items scripts
(read down this thread with Control-N in Safari to the later posts,
which include David's comment about using speech commands to read the
next page of a document in Preview, etc.)
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg00899.html
There are some other threads about using this option to play chess.
Note that the dates for these posts are around January 2006. And
you're all spared the computer's bad "Knock, Knock" jokes, but for
those of you who are curious about what this is like, here's the one I
just heard from my PowerBook using "Speakable Items":
E: Tell me a joke
Mac: Knock, knock
E: Who's there?
Mac: Thistle
E: Thistle who?
Mac: Thistle be my last "Knock, knock" joke.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
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