Thanks, Esther. You've given me motivation to try and play with this a bit more. I'm surprised by the situation with the internal mike, I use it on skype all the time without difficulty.
thanks for letting us know this works, and the links to the archive. this'll give me something to entertain myself for quite a while. :) Best, Donna On Nov 29, 2010, at 12:02 PM, Esther wrote: > 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 > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MacVisionaries" group. > To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionar...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
