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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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213 replies

May 9, 2017 1:27 PM in response to ioyo

I too dislike the OS after 10.8.5 which I feel was the last best. Mac is getting too cheap, and like a PC, ugly and not user-friendly anymore. Shocking looks are an affront to the eyes....... that said...


I have tried deleting the 3 .plist files to no avail.


It was working before, and I changed or added nothing.


It works on my mother's iMac as she is 96 and blind and that is how she sends email... but no longer on my Mac Book Pro.


sigh.

May 31, 2017 3:22 AM in response to Hunaidi

I avoid upgrading like the plague, as every update seems to take us closer to the things I left Windows behind for. I finally took the plunge with my MacbookPro and updated (only 1 step, by paying) from the awful colourless OSX Lion to Mountain Lion, mainly because of the dictation feature.

Lo and behold, Dictation doesn't even work. I've tried all the suggestions here, including adding the 4 different DNS numbers. Good to know there are many others with the same problem.


One clue, my Little Snitch Network Monitor shows assistantd trying to connect on port 443 to guzzoni.apple.com every time I double-tap the fn key to run Dictation. Although Little Snitch doesn't block it, the total traffic is never more than 1.44 kP up and 0 B down. The Connected status shows a very brief "yes" as I do the double-tap, then immediately returns to "No".


Has anyone found a working solution to this bug?

May 31, 2017 5:38 AM in response to Hunaidi

Adding

1. 208.67.220.220 and

2. 208.67.222.222


Did NOT work for me.


I have since visited my Mom who hasn't touched her computer, also using 10.8.5 (even though they make it hard to see for the elderly) and lo and behold hers has stopped working as well.


I am thinking they have just shut us off because we won't update to their new Windows-like system.


It's a sad day for Apple when they don't 'just work' anymore and we can't stand the look of the GUI.

Jul 25, 2012 6:50 PM in response to deggie

Everything else is working...Facebook, Google Search, iTunes store, I downloaded updates for Pages and restarted hours again. Slow connection or not, something is not right. Here is what I am seeing: In System Preferences, Dictation & Speech note the Dictation option is OFF and the radio button to "turn it on" is greyed out. I have tried pressing the FN key and then quickly pressing and holding the Fn key down and talking using a open Pages document. I am not sure what's going on. Dictation just is not working.


I am using a MacBook 13 inch Mid 2009 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB of 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM, on a 6 Mb DSL Internet connection.


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Dictation not working on Mountain Lion?

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