speakable items and sleep

Sorry Robert,

This is a bug that arose in Leopard, persisited through Snow Leopard and Lion, and still persists in Mountain Lion. After you start your computer with Speakable Items active, it will obey your Sreensaver and Energy Saver preferences only until you give your first spoken command. After that first spoken command, your computer will no longer obey the Screensaver and Energy Saver preferences you have set. I discussed this with Apple Technical Support back when I was using Snow Leopard and they had no solution. In fact they reproduced the problem on their own machines.

It is a real nuisance as I prefer talking to my Mac over going to the Dock, the drop down menues, or keyboard shortcuts but I do not want to always have to remember to put my machine to sleep manually wherever I leave it.

Ted.

Robert,

Let's keep pestering Apple about this bug. Please add your concern about with this bug to the threads:

•Is Speakable Items Keeping the Mac Awake,

•Is There a Problem with Speakable Items in Lion, and

•Speakable Items and Sleep Warning.

The more Apple hears that users have a concern with this problem the sooner Apple will fix it.

Ted.

Sorry to say Romert,

The problem remains. I have updated to OS X 10.9 Mavericks and find the bug continues to persist. I just gave my first Speakable Items command since the upgrade, then left my computer to do something else for a while. When I came back, I found my computer still fully wide awake, no screen saver active nor asleep as set with my Energy Saver preferences. Through Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion, and now Mavericks, why does this conflict bug between Speakable Items and Screen Saver/Sleep not get fixed?

I was wondering why my screensaver and energy settings never work. didn't know it's could have anything to do with using speakable commands.

I try to use speakable commands as long as it will let me, which is not very long these days.

Do you go to Apple menu + sleep, to put your mac to sleep? I haven't done that in the longest time because I found Long ago that our iMacs do not stay asleep well that way. instead I always go to the login window and push sleep there, or I use the power button to put it to sleep.

But all of a sudden, a little while ago, my mac has a hard time staying asleep. I'm finding often that it wakes up in the middle of the night many times, or I find it has woke up on its own and been on a long time and the unit is hot.

Also a while ago, I find I cannot wake the Mac by the mouse or tapping a key, Mostly have to use the power button.

[ I did find in the console that sometimes it was awakened via USB mouse or something like that. have two mice plugged in, one in the keyboard, and the other in the back. Wondering if the house shaking a bit could wake it, even though I cannot wake it by moving the mouse most of the time?]

[I also have a bigger issue that my drive inside the iMac failed irreparably a while back and am powering Mac via an external hard drive. But I only experience this failure to stay asleep recently.]

I certainly am not finding that ''it just works", any insights appreciated.

Sorry ioyo,

I can't help. I have never had any problem with my iMac staying asleep. My only problem has been with remebering to put my machine to sleep manually whenever I use Speakable Items. When it was available, I used to have a sleep corner set; now, since we have lost that feature, I use the Sleep command under the Apple menu. In reality I have have pretty well given up on using Speakable Items. This is unfortunate as Speakable Items is a really good feature that Apple seems to have forgotten.

I have the same issue, "mac will not sleep after giving a speakable item command". Didn't realize the no sleep issue was related to speakable items and have been putting the mac to sleep manually but often forgot to do so. Now I just leave speakables off and let the 27" mac rest. It is unfortunate as I really enjoyed the feature and impressed a lot of friends with it.

I have to laugh because by brother bought a 21 inch Mac last year, in part because of the Speakable Items demonstration I gave him. He returned it after a couple weeks because of the no sleep issue, not releazing it was due to the speech commands. The Apple store had no clue as to why it would not sleep for him, he took it to the store and it worked, but not at home. That was because they didn't use any Speech commands at the store.

Hope apple gets this fixed as it is a really nice feature. Probabley a lot of people are having the same issue but don't realize the cause. My previous searches on Sleep problems didn't bring up any links related to the speakables items. Not until I figured it out by myself and enter "sleep problems and speakable items".

Hi Skyhawk,

Sadly, I have long ago given up on using Speakable Items. It is a feature that I really enjoyed but just too often I would forget to put my iMac to sleep manually when I'd leave it for a while.

Let's keep pestering Apple about this annoying bug. Please add your concern about with this bug to the threads:

•Is Speakable Items Keeping the Mac Awake,

•Is There a Problem with Speakable Items in Lion, and

•Speakable Items and Sleep Warning.

The more Apple hears that users have a concern with this problem the sooner Apple will fix it.

Ted.

I suggest all who wish this bug to get fixed pester http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html and let them know that real concern exists with the way this bug has been permitted to linger.

I love speakable items + dictation! Am not having the problems I had before since I read comment somewhere that fixed my problems for the most part. --in energy saver , un-click 'wake for network access'. after I did that's my computer stopped frequently waking on it's own, [except for 2x--but I think that was because I had mouse on unstable surface]. And my screensaver finally came on. but it doesn't seem like those two things you mentioned work as they should sometimes. I've been too busy to care that much, much preferring the speakable items feature over those other features.

And my energy saver finally engaged for the first time in a long time. But I don't know if I had been using speakable items. [but the only times when I don't use speakable items is when it is not working. Seems mostly due to too much background noise?]. I'm sure what you say is true, but I will pay more attention when I get a chance.

I have no trouble putting it to sleep using speakable command[Apple menu, sleep.--is there a more direct command to put mac to sleep?] or hot corners [I'm using Mountain lion. Will hot corners no longer be available in Mavericks?]

So if I go to system preferences and turn off speakable items, the energy saver and screensaver should work? If it's one or the other right now, I would have to choose speakable items. I can't give it up as I have hand problems. But Apple should definitely fix it so that they both work! ... but I would much rather they work on improving speakable items and dictation more !

Hurrah, I can now talk to my computer without clobbering my energy saver preferences and screensaver. With Extended Dictation in Yosemite replacing Speakable Items the problem is finally gone.

Great! Thanks for posting. I'm still using mountain lion because I hate dealing with the unwanted changes that always seems to come with a new OS. And I didn't like the general look of Mavericks. Didn't Yosemite just come out? Is it not better to wait a little while before updating so that they can work out more of the bugs? But I certainly look forward to improvements on speakable items functioning.

[What I have been doing: when I want to take a quick break, I would put the Mac on sleep via hot corners.

But it would still respond to noises, so I would have to turn off speakable items first, which isn't that hard since I can speak that command. but of course it would be better to not have to do that.]

** does anyone know where I can locate the speakable items folder so that I can copy it and transfer it to other macs in my network, or even out of my network? I customized a lot of commands and I would love to share it... and hopefully I won't lose any of it by updating the OS? I know how to get to and use the speakable items folder, but I can't find it in a place where I can copy or transfer it .

Hi ioyo,

Speakable Items folder was at Home > Library > Speech > Speakable Items. I don't know if this folder gets deleted with the Yosemite upgrade or renamed and relocated (appears to be at Hard drive > System > Library > Speech > Recognizers, although the list of recognized commands is not in an eye readable format in there), but it no longer exists. I had too few custom spoken commands in my Speakable Items folder to matter to me. The actual list is easily accessed in the Accessibility system preference at the Dictation tab, on the Dictation Commands sheet where one can readily create custom commands. I don't know about copying commands over.

Thanks for the reply. I'll have to try to figure it all out at a later date.