Dictation not working on Mountain Lion?

I dont have 1Password and my internet is working just fine.

I somehow did not see the input dropdown on the left side underneath the microphone. It was simply not selected on the proper input device. Thanks for pointing that out.

Does any apple staff actually come on these message boards at all?

Still no go on the dictation and the input levels.

Ive tried everthing still doesnt work on my iMac 27 inch/ 3.1 Ghz icore 5/ 12 GB of memory

Still no go with dictation on my MBP 15 although it works nicely on my iMac24.

I would suggest that everyone gives their feedback to Apple directly as I am not sure whether if they do bother to monitor these forums at all: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I have sent mine and am hoping for a solution to be released in the next service update to ML.

I did a bit more snooping around the files to see where the problem lies. I suspect that there is an inability for the Mac to generate a key to interface with Apple's voice dictation servers.

If you look at this file -- in Finder, hold down on the option key and click on Go in the menu and select Library. Under Preferences, there should be a file called com.apple.assistant.plist. On my iMac on which dictation is working, there is a section marked with Keys and ID etc. This section is completely missing on the MBP on which I am experiencing problems with Dictation. I tried making a copy of the file from my iMac to replace the one on the MBP but the MBP keeps overwriting this file with one that doesn't have the key.

I am hoping that someone at Apple is seriously looking into fixing this bug!

Hello,

It's not a bug - it works fine for most people. Why it's not working for you folks, I haven't got a clue, but it works on dozens of machines at my home, and at the clinic.

Cheers,

M.

It's a bug for me at least. Works on my iMac but not my newer MacBook Pro. And I am using a legitimate copy of ML which I paid for from the App Store, on a machine with specs that is fully supported. It should work as promised by Apple. If it worked fine for 100% of people then I'd be happy to say that it's not a bug.

Not sure if any of you guys are on a corporate network, seems like dictation is using a port that's blocked by our proxy or firewall. I tried using an open internet connection and now dictation is working fine all in all applications.

Here, too. Same computers work fine through an open WIFI connection, but on the LAN they don't. Maybe due to proxy or port blocking. I hope Apple fix this or publish a workaround such as using HTTP/S port.

I was suspecting port issues initially. However both my iMac and MBP are on the same network and dictation works on one but not the other. It appears to be more than a port issue then.

I am pretty confident that it is a port issue that needs to be dealt with on the LAN server side. Could it be that one of your machines is either configured differently, or actually using its wi-fi connection rather than LAN connection to connect (even when the plugged into the LAN).

My university has a LAN and a wi-fi network, and dictation works on wi-fi but not on the LAN. The LAN has proved itself restrictive in the past as well for odd things like downloading video, and so I think its likely that if we can find out from apple where a LAN might be blocking the transaction with the dictation servers, we can tell our administrators and have them open the proper port. Still looking for that info though. . .

Have you tried parental preferences? On my mac it worked perfectly first time, however, on my daughters Mc book nothing that we did seemed to be able to turn dictation on. Then I logged into her machine using my password and everything worked perfectly. We went and had a look at the parental preferences and there is a misc tab with a radio button that says 'Allow Dictation', well guess what, the default is 'No'. So you would think by clicking that button to a 'yes' it would solve the issue, but no it still didn't allow us to start dictation. So in frustration I decided to put my daughter on 'trust' and switched off the parental preferences altogether and hey presto, it all works fine. There is clearly some kind of bug in the whole program judging by the number of comments here but certaninly if you have any form of parental preferences enabled on your mac you are going to have trouble. Only turning them off completely seemed to make a difference. By the way, do a complete reboot after you turn off the Parental prefernecs.

This also worked for me after a reboot, cheers Ian!

To summarize, there are two different issues so far:

a. The dictation is not enabled or the purple microphone is not coming up

and

b. The purple microphone gives a shake and is not able to convert sound to text due to connectivity issue as per console

For problem type a) the following things have worked:

1. Setting the dictation to use the internal microphone from Automatic
2. Parental preference change/Non-Managed account

Problem type b) is still an unsolved problem.