/article-new/2011/07/nuance_dragon_logo.jpg?lossy){kind=logo}
Voice dictation company Nuance today announced a collection of new software upgrades, including Dragon Professional Individual (version 15), Dragon Legal Individual (version 15), and Dragon Professional Individual for Mac (version 6). As with all versions of Nuance's software, the new updates are said to feature "powerful dictation, transcription and customization capabilities" to allow users helpful and responsive dictation features with an emphasis on workflow.
The Dragon software lets its users precisely dictate reports, spreadsheets, emails, and other documentation using only their voice. Specifically on the new Mac release, the software has had its accuracy boosted up to 24 percent over previous iterations of Dragon. Helpful tips will get new users "up to speed quickly," while further educating existing Dragon fans into the complexities of Nuance's product.
“This latest suite of professional productivity solutions brings with it some of the most advanced capabilities to drive documentation productivity – with higher accuracy, speed and efficiency,” said Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager of Dragon. “Combined with Dragon’s optimization for portable touchscreen PC’s and the ability to sync with Dragon Anywhere, professionals are able to keep up with documentation demands from just about anywhere their business takes them.”
In the new update, Nuance has introduced a "Batch Mode" to allow users to transcribe multiple audio files at once, as well as introducing full text control to empower "users to work even more quickly and accurately by voice." Using Apple's accessibility API, Dragon Professional Individual for Mac supports Apple Pages, Apple Keynote, Apple Numbers, Microsoft Outlook 2016, Scrivener, and other document creation programs.
The release on the Mac -- as well as Dragon on the PC -- uses Nuance's new "Deep Learning Technology" to learn each of its users' voice patterns and accents. This allows Dragon to recognize and adapt to the environment, be it in a quiet office or outside, which is a possibility thanks to the company's Dragon Anywhere mobile app that launched late last year. Over time, this speech data is accrued to improve Dragon's voice dictation features and result in a more naturalistic readout of transcribed speech.
The English version of Dragon Professional Individual for Mac will go on sale for $300 on September 1 (digital) and September 14 (retail) in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia. Nuance is also holding a special upgrade pricing scheme, selling Dragon for $150 for users who own registered versions of Dragon Dictate for Mac, versions 4 and higher. Those interested in the other Dragon software bundles can find out more about Dragon Professional Individual for PC and Dragon Legal Individual on Nuance's official website.
Top Rated Comments
A 24% boost in accuracy is quite good too, nothing to sneeze at there.
The early 5.0.0 — 5.0.4 builds for OS X had loads of bugs; crashing Word, crashing Dragon Dictate... We submitted so many crash logs to Nuance's portal. They were great in getting it sorted.
Office 16 on Mac had a lot to do with it as well because that was buggy as heck too. Eventually it was a combination of OS X updates, Dragon updates, and Office updates, to resolve the issue.
Dragon NS Premium v13 for Windows still doesn't work properly with Office 365, if it's the 16 version. So we still need to install 13 on the 365 licence for compatibility. It can be really, really frustrating when it doesn't work; when you're in tech support, the customer seems to blame you for it not working, as if you're the one who programmed the application :D
But boy, it is damn good when it works. Damn good. Really looking forward to trying this new update!