Hunaidi

Q: Dictation not working on Mountain Lion?

I enabled dictation on my mac through the System Preferences. First I tried going to notes and pressed the fn key twice, the Siri like mic appeared and I began to say simple words such us "hello" "how are you" and pressed done. The thre dots appeared for a few seconds then the 'three dots' went left to right and nothing appeared. I've tried this on notes, microsoft word, and also while typing this discussion. Any ideas?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 25, 2012 3:27 PM

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Q: Dictation not working on Mountain Lion?

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  • by ndacev10,

    ndacev10 ndacev10 Jul 29, 2012 11:54 PM in response to Hunaidi
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 29, 2012 11:54 PM in response to Hunaidi

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

  • by loyking,

    loyking loyking Jul 30, 2012 12:48 AM in response to Hunaidi
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jul 30, 2012 12:48 AM in response to Hunaidi

    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.

  • by loyking,

    loyking loyking Jul 30, 2012 9:54 AM in response to ndacev10
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jul 30, 2012 9:54 AM in response to ndacev10

    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!

  • by Monty1945,

    Monty1945 Monty1945 Jul 30, 2012 10:03 AM in response to loyking
    Level 3 (690 points)
    Jul 30, 2012 10:03 AM in response to loyking

    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.

  • by loyking,

    loyking loyking Jul 30, 2012 10:15 AM in response to Monty1945
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jul 30, 2012 10:15 AM in response to Monty1945

    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.

  • by CT997C2S,

    CT997C2S CT997C2S Jul 30, 2012 11:37 AM in response to Hunaidi
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 30, 2012 11:37 AM in response to Hunaidi

    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.

  • by Richard Cartledge,

    Richard Cartledge Richard Cartledge Jul 30, 2012 1:47 PM in response to CT997C2S
    Level 2 (449 points)
    Jul 30, 2012 1:47 PM in response to CT997C2S

    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.

  • by loyking,

    loyking loyking Jul 30, 2012 3:33 PM in response to Richard Cartledge
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jul 30, 2012 3:33 PM in response to Richard Cartledge

    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.

  • by goofyfootgaijin,

    goofyfootgaijin goofyfootgaijin Jul 30, 2012 4:23 PM in response to Richard Cartledge
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 30, 2012 4:23 PM in response to Richard Cartledge

    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. . .

  • by ianfrombarrie,

    ianfrombarrie ianfrombarrie Jul 30, 2012 7:43 PM in response to Hunaidi
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jul 30, 2012 7:43 PM in response to Hunaidi

    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.

  • by Robert Wakeling,

    Robert Wakeling Robert Wakeling Jul 31, 2012 7:23 AM in response to ianfrombarrie
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 31, 2012 7:23 AM in response to ianfrombarrie

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

  • by Raju K,

    Raju K Raju K Jul 31, 2012 7:52 AM in response to Robert Wakeling
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Jul 31, 2012 7:52 AM in response to Robert Wakeling

    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.

  • by loyking,Helpful

    loyking loyking Jul 31, 2012 8:59 AM in response to Raju K
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jul 31, 2012 8:59 AM in response to Raju K

    Nice summarised, Raju.

     

    I did some more research on problem B. I am using an Apple Airport Extreme router with my iMac (working dictation) on Ethernet and MBP (with problem B) on Wifi. Taking the suggestion that it might be a LAN problem, I switched the connections over so that the MBP is on Ethernet and the iMac is on Wifi. No difference. Dictation continues to work on the iMac regardless of whether if its connection is through Ethernet or Wifi. Dictation continues not to work on the MBP.

     

    I tried deleting com.apple.assistant.plist from /user/Library/Preferences, turning Dictation off and then back on again, and then rebooting the system. Still the same problem. I noticed that there is an additional file called com.apple.assistant.token.plist. On the iMac where dictation works, quick previewing this file shows a list of keys for the different languages supported. On the MBP where dictation is not working, a list of supported languages is shown, but critically, the keys are all missing. I did a Google on com.apple.assistant.token.plist and found that a similarly-named file on the iPhone that controls how the iPhone connects with Siri servers and that this file was introduced as a way to thwart people hacking Siri. I am suspecting whether if Apple may have coded some bugs inadvertently into dictation in ML to thwart dictation server hacking. This might be why my MBP is unable to generate the correct key to contact the Apple servers. Blame it on the people trying to hack Siri to work on unofficial devices!

     

    I have deleted the tokens file away to see whether if the MBP will regenerate a new working copy but this has so far proved unsuccessful. As the keys are however tied in to indivual system, copying the file from the working iMac over to the MBP doesn't help. I have spent the last few nights trying to troubleshoot this problem with no success. C'mon Apple, what happened to "It just works" ???

  • by iRog,

    iRog iRog Jul 31, 2012 8:09 PM in response to Hunaidi
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 31, 2012 8:09 PM in response to Hunaidi

    Okay so here's what I did. I changed my DNS settings to Google's DNS settings 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

     

    Now I am using dictation to type this message.

     

    I switched back to my original DNS settings and it seemed to work on and off, but once I came back to google's DNS settings it works fine.

     

    I really hope this works for some of you, Good luck!!!

  • by Dominik Reinmund,

    Dominik Reinmund Dominik Reinmund Jul 31, 2012 8:35 PM in response to Monty1945
    Level 2 (180 points)
    Jul 31, 2012 8:35 PM in response to Monty1945

    Oh, so it's only a bug if it doesn't work for Monty1945 ?

    Thanks for setting the record straight.

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