Nuance Discontinues Dragon Professional Individual for Mac

Nuance this week announced that it is discontinuing Dragon Professional Individual for Mac, effective two days ago on Monday, October 22, 2018. The software is no longer available for purchase, but customers who purchased version 6 of the software and have a perpetual license will be able to keep using Dragon Professional Individual.

As of now, Nuance will no longer provide updates for the software. Customers will still be able to receive telephone support for up to 90 days from the date of activating the software in North America, and up to 180 days from activation in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. They can also visit the Nuance Dragon Knowledgebase for online resources.

Nuances says its reason for discontinuing Dragon Professional Individual for Mac comes from "constantly evaluating its product portfolio to see how we can best meet the needs of our customers and business." The software allowed Mac users to gain access to powerful dictation and transcription tools with an emphasis on streamlining user workflows, allowing users to dictate reports, spreadsheets, and emails, which Dragon converted to text.

Now, users will be able to buy Dragon Professional Individual for Windows, Dragon Legal Individual for Windows, and Dragon Anywhere for Android and iOS. Dragon Medical for Mac was also discontinued back in August.

Tags: Nuance, Dragon

Top Rated Comments

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AJ Mac25

12 weeks ago

This is ridiculous. They took a great program from the Mac world, MacSpeech, and destroyed it. Support was always terrible and software prices were expensive. They are a monopoly and now we are left without a viable dictation software program for the Mac platform. Time for Apple or someone else to step in. Sad

Rating: 13 Votes

keysofanxiety

12 weeks ago

Good. Nuance were one of the worst companies on Mac. Their software was extremely poor compared to Windows.

Furthermore they pissed off a lot of people following Lion (or Mountain Lion, I forget which). Their Dragon Dictate software was available but not supported on the latest OS. They continued to sell it for about 4 months whilst the latest OS was out, then released a brand new version with compatibility on the latest OS and said the previous version wasn't compatible with it. I was gobsmacked.

I have grown a deep loathing for this company following 6 years on first/second line support for a DSA company in the UK and we had to be intimately familiar with loads of assistive software. Luckily I've since left that role but the pain remains.

Rating: 13 Votes

keysofanxiety

12 weeks ago

Do either of you know of good speech-to-text and/or text-to-speech apps (or one app that will do both) for Macs?

I was rear-ended in an MVA and now have a lot of trouble reading, so I am looking for assistive software.

The built-in Siri on macOS is pretty good for speech to text and the built in reader on macOS can convert any highlighted text to speech. You can have both triggering on a keyboard shortcut of your discretion.

It may be worth trying that first before going third party as it has native OS integration. :)

Rating: 6 Votes

avtella

12 weeks ago

Swype was such an awesome keyboard when it first released then Nuance bought it and destroyed it.

Rating: 6 Votes

mschmalenbach

12 weeks ago

It also interpreted a statement that my 80 year old patient "enjoys cooking" as "enjoys cocaine". As far as I know, it's not why she has the sniffles. : )

One of my team is Hong Kong Chinese - when he first introduced himself to the 65 students in the room who were from all over the world, he said his name was Bernard and he liked cooking - what they and I heard was that he too like cocaine!!

I had to quickly jump in and explain!!

We still joke about that 2 years later!

Rating: 5 Votes

Mick-Mac

12 weeks ago

I just joined the discussion to say that Nuance are an evil and disgusting company and I gave up on any of their software years ago. Read this:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/business/goldman-sachs-and-a-sale-gone-horribly-awry.html

Rating: 4 Votes

keysofanxiety

12 weeks ago

Yup. I had a version of DD and found it cumbersome to use. I'm surprised Apple hasn't done more with speech inout on the Mac given what they've done with Siri, iOS and AppleTV relative to speech input.

Yep, you'd think with all Apple tout about accessibility, this might be on the list. Mind you, Nuance may well have had some antitrust threats for Apple (wouldn't surprise me), much like Kaspersky did for Microsoft.

At least now, Apple have no excuse not to fully develop speech control for upcoming macOS releases.

Rating: 4 Votes

cactustweeter

10 weeks ago

('https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/24/nuance-discontinues-dragon-mac/')

Nuance this week announced ('https://www.nuance.com/dragon/support/professional-individual-for-mac-eol.html#') that it is discontinuing Dragon Professional Individual for Mac, effective two days ago on Monday, October 22, 2018. The software is no longer available for purchase, but customers who purchased version 6 of the software and have a perpetual license will be able to keep using Dragon Professional Individual.

As of now, Nuance will no longer provide updates for the software. Customers will still be able to receive telephone support for up to 90 days from the date of activating the software in North America, and up to 180 days from activation in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. They can also visit the Nuance Dragon Knowledgebase for online resources.

Nuances says its reason for discontinuing Dragon Professional Individual for Mac comes from "constantly evaluating its product portfolio to see how we can best meet the needs of our customers and business." The software allowed Mac users to gain access to powerful dictation and transcription tools with an emphasis on streamlining user workflows, allowing users to dictate reports, spreadsheets, and emails, which Dragon converted to text.

Now, users will be able to buy ('https://www.nuance.com/dragon.html?utm_source=PR&utm_medium=release&utm_campaign=2016DragonLaunch&PID=3640511&cjevent=b56e2dddd79511e881ab01940a24060e') Dragon Professional Individual for Windows, Dragon Legal Individual for Windows, and Dragon Anywhere for Android and iOS. Dragon Medical for Mac was also discontinued ('http://www.speakeasysolutions.com/blog/2018/08/16/the-end-of-dragon-for-mac-medical/') back in August.

Article Link: Nuance Discontinues Dragon Professional Individual for Mac ('https://www.macrumors.com/2018/10/24/nuance-discontinues-dragon-mac/')

[doublepost=1541814359][/doublepost]Some may say no big deal that software sucks. Well, for someone like myself who uses the software daily to control his Mac completely by voice it is a big deal. I have no use of my arms and since Dragon Dictate 2.0 I've been able to use my Mac completely hands-free by voice complements of Dragon Dictate for Mac. Being able to use a computer completely hands-free is very enabling for a high-level quadriplegic. I was looking forward to upgrading to macOS Mojave but now it looks like I'm screwed.

I know Apple has built-in voice recognition. It's pretty good but it lacks all the features needed to run the computer hands-free by voice. I know Apple has the resources and expertise to add these missing features. How do I get them interested in enhancing macOS built-in speech recognition to allow complete operation of the Mac by voice? If you want to do me and others with physical limitations that need to control their computer by voice a favor go and create a macOS enhancement request as I describe here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5iu9xsjgw6rka7u/Dragon for Mac Favor Request.pdf?dl=0 ('https://www.dropbox.com/s/5iu9xsjgw6rka7u/Dragon%20for%20Mac%20Favor%20Request.pdf?dl=0')

Rating: 3 Votes

artfossil

12 weeks ago

[USER=47648]@Val-kyrie[/USER]

I think that dictating with the built-in microphone works remarkably well. In fact, I dictated this comment. Have you given it a try?

(Edited to add: I've used and loved Dragon Anywhere for short term but complex projects on my iPad. I just buy it for a month and then cancel.)

Rating: 3 Votes

southerndoc

12 weeks ago

Would be nice if a medical or legal dictionary was offered for macOS so that Siri recognizes more medical words. Would also be beneficial to add a medical dictionary to iOS. I don't know how many times I've texted a doc and autocorrect thinks I've "intimated" instead of "intubated" a patient.

Rating: 3 Votes

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