can't download the Enhanced Dictation Engine

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Benb2012 Author

Level 1

54 points

can't download the Enhanced Dictation Engine

User uploaded file

This is self explanatory. I get the error "An unexpected error occurred when I try to enable the Enhanced dictation engine." Note that this is not just turning dictation on; this problem occurs when I try to check the box that says: "Use enhanced dictation." This engine is supposed to enable you to use dictation with no Internet access available. It's one of the great things about Mavericks :-) It's a 785 MB download ....

Verifed several times that I have Internet access; so, clearly something is wrong at the Apple end. Tried to do this several times at different times today. This problem has persisted the whole day today. (10/24/2013)

I wanted to make an error report to Apple but I was unable to find the place at the apple support site where I can file a bug report about Mavericks and its components.

Can someone else try to enable the enhanced dictation engine and see if you get the same error. I'd like to see if this is an isolated case or it is a more global problem.

Thanks.

OSX Mavericks Enhanced Dictation-OTHER, OS X Mavericks (10.9), Enhanced Dictation (offline engine)

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 7:23 PM

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Answer 1

DVD33

Level 1

0 points

Oct 26, 2013 11:40 AM in response to alex349

I tried the fix with deleting the com.apple.assistant.plist - still getting error message "An unexpected error occured while downloading . . . " and cannot get further.

I cannot locate any files with ".support" or ".token" in preferences.

Anyone with any other ideas?

Thanks

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Answer 2

Benb2012 Author

Level 1

54 points

Oct 26, 2013 7:01 PM in response to Crownofthorns17

Hi there,

Thank you for your help. I didn't try that. I don't want to risk deleting a file when I have no idea what it does. I suggest others wait for a bit for now as well. I did look at:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5468660?answerId=23513414022#23513414022

This gentleman "Bassham" Pops up out of the blue. He has only one post about this topic, and a total of 4 posts in 5 years. None of them of a highly technical nature. Says that he has the same problem, and then magically responds to himself that he found the solution, and it happens to be deleting a very specific file.

No explanation what the file is, or what it does?! Just go there and delete it and see what happens? Really?

What if someone with 4 posts in 5 years said that the answer to forgetting your login password is deleting a single file ... oh it's just /etc/passwd. Don't worry it'll self generate if you delete it ... NOT!!!

I know it's a gross exaggeration and ~ is local files to one particular user; but, I hope you get my point. Deleting random unknown files, no matter how innocuous, will eventually bite you in the rear sooner or later.

People have had mixed results with this solution so far. That's too much variability. For myself, I will wait until we hear from Apple proper, or someone who can point out a whitepaper, or a legit apple support document that states the solution to this problem is ... "X." We all get 90 days of free tech support for Mavericks. I plan on calling tomorrow or Monday. I'll update the thread when I know more ...

My $0.02 ... we are all adults 🙂 please let us all know what happens.

Thanks.

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Answer 3

Benb2012 Author

Level 1

54 points

Oct 26, 2013 8:07 PM in response to Benb2012

Ok. a follow up. I was suspicious that the solution was deleting the .plist. Did a quick bit of experimentation:

Created a brand new test user account.

Created a New icloud account, icloud email ... all the usual user creation related things.

Verified there was no com.apple.assistant.plist file in /Library/Preferences/:

Then went and tried to enable enhanced dictation:

So now the plist file was created ... plus a few other related files:

I deleted the suggested file. Tried again ... FAIL!!! I deleted all assitant.plist files and tried to enable enhanced_dictation ... FAIL!!! verdict ... These files have nothing to do with the error.

Please repeat this experiment and see if you get a different result ...

APPLE SUPPORT:

DICTATION ENGINE IS BROKEN. WHERE IS THE BUG REPORT FORM?

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Answer 4

Benb2012 Author

Level 1

54 points

Oct 26, 2013 9:22 PM in response to Benb2012

Happy to say this is the final update,

I'm actually dictating this note using enhanced dictation. I have to say I do love Mavericks so far, and the additions, Updates, and enhancements are fabulous.

The suggestion from Crownofthorns17 works. All credit goes to him.

This is his post quoted below:

Crownofthorns17

Re: can't download the Enhanced Dictation Engine

Oct 25, 2013 9:02 PM ( in response to Evan_Beezy)

Did you follow each of the instructions above?

1. Press these keys simultaneously: (shift ⇧+command⌘+G)

2. In the dialog box that appears after step 1, copy and paste the following :
~/Library/Preferences
3. Hit return/enter

4. You will be presented with a ton of files, but you should be able to find the
com.apple.assistant.plist
5. Move it to the Trash and Empty your Trash

6. Open Dictation & Speech preference panel and turn off dictation

7. Restart your computer

8. Open Dictation & Speech preference panel, turn on dictation

9. Select Enhanced Dictation

10. Download should begin and install correctly

I hope this helps.

Step number 7 was critically important. Without that step the instructions do not work. I guess the instructions have to be followed religiously: 😝

Here is proof that the instructions work:

Downloading:

Downloading progress:

Finally installing:

Thank you all and good night:-)

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Answer 5

marcobg

Level 1

0 points

Oct 27, 2013 3:16 AM in response to Benb2012

I can use enhanced dictation but i cant download italian voice 😟 it says voices are not available

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Answer 6

Oct 27, 2013 3:40 AM in response to Benb2012

Hopefully in the forthcoming fix for Mavericks (it can't be long, can it?) none of what BenB described will be necessary - and there will be Italian voices 😎

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Answer 7

Benb2012 Author

Level 1

54 points

Oct 27, 2013 11:44 AM in response to marcobg

marcobg wrote:

I can use enhanced dictation but i cant download italian voice 😟 it says voices are not available

Sorry I hope it comes soon for you.

I still wish there was a bug-report form available. My general experience has been that usually non-english enhancements trail english enhancements by a bit.

This is a temporary thing. Business sense dictates that soon it will be Chinese, Hindi, English ... everone else. Just remember I said it first 🙂 LOL (with a bit of chagrin)

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Answer 8

Oct 28, 2013 4:12 PM in response to Benb2012

I have an iMac and a Macbook Air. The Macbook Air downloaded the enhanced dictation file with no problem. My iMac refuses to (despite trying all the fixes in this thread).

According to a post on the cut-of-mac, the enhanced dictation file lets your local machine process the voice file instead of sending it back to apple's servers for processing. I wonder if Apple is allowing it for portable machines that are more likely to be used away from a network, but not allowing it for desktops?

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Answer 9

dnmich

Level 1

0 points

Oct 31, 2013 7:42 AM in response to Benb2012

I have this problem too, or at least a version of it. For several days my MacBook Air has been unable to download the enhanced dictation languages files. Every time I try, I get the same error message: "Dictation languages aren't available to download at this time. Try again later."

I did work through the suggestions above (in this thread) from Crownofthorns17, but they did not fix my problem. I do have a working internet connection; I have no troubles downloading anything else. This is my only difficulty. Mavericks is, otherwise, working fine.

Does anybody else have suggestions that might address the issue?

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Answer 10

Benb2012 Author

Level 1

54 points

Oct 31, 2013 12:20 PM in response to dnmich

dnmich wrote:

I have this problem too, or at least a version of it. For several days my MacBook Air has been unable to download the enhanced dictation languages files. Every time I try, I get the same error message: "Dictation languages aren't available to download at this time. Try again later."

I did work through the suggestions above (in this thread) from Crownofthorns17, but they did not fix my problem. I do have a working internet connection; I have no troubles downloading anything else. This is my only difficulty. Mavericks is, otherwise, working fine.

Does anybody else have suggestions that might address the issue?

Is your Mac setup with English (American) as the default language? If the answer is no; then I think that's why you're having this problem. You're getting a different error. It's not saying "Download Failed" It's saying your language is not available. I'm only making a (hopefully educated) guess.

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Answer 11

dnmich

Level 1

0 points

Oct 31, 2013 12:30 PM in response to Benb2012

Thanks for the response. Yes, under the Language & Region preference panel, I have English as my first ("primary") language, and I have set the region as "United States." So I don't think that is causing the problem.

You're right, my error message is not the same -- except insofar as it is also a problem with enhanced dictation downloads. My apologies if this is diverting discussion into a slightly different channel, but this was the closest thread I could find in the support forum.

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Answer 12

Nov 2, 2013 5:22 PM in response to alex349

Thanks to alex349. I had the "An unexpected error occurred when I try to enable the Enhanced dictation engine." Proceeded with the delete of com.apple.assistant.plist, but it was only with the added help of the procedure below that it actually worked for me.

alex349 wrote:

Well, that fix did indeed work for me.

However, I went a step further and deleted all the "com.apple.assistant" plists. Not just the one listed in the steps above, but also the ".support" and ".token" ones before rebooting. Perhaps that will help you.

I think that I first tried downloading Enhanced Dictation right after installing Mavericks when my Mac was slowed down by Spotlight reindexing, and had to cancel the download.

My guess about what happend is that the token used to get the download was never deleted in that first attempt for some reason and therefore the subsequent attempts couldn't get passed finding the download because of an issue with the token used to authenticate being outdated but since one was there it couldn't get a new one from Apple. But that is just my educated guess.

Now I have real dictation (used to "type" this out in part) on my Mac rather than the iOS-style Siri-backed thing that wouldn't work for long chunks of speech. Thanks for the steps to fix this and I hope my additional steps here help those for whom the first set of steps fail.

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Answer 13

dnmich

Level 1

0 points

Nov 2, 2013 9:09 PM in response to Scott Gillies

Thanks very much, I appreciate the advice. Unfortunately this additional step didn't help in my case. I'm still getting the same error message -- which for me is "Dictation languages aren't available to download at this time. Try again later.."

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Answer 14

Fiddes

Level 1

0 points

Nov 4, 2013 5:11 AM in response to Benb2012

I am trying to do the same thing. Trying to Download English Australian & get the same error as you. I tried to find com.apple.assistant.plist but it is not in the list. & I also don't want to delete something I don't know anything about. I do get an error when I start my macbook air saying I need CS5ServiceManager Java SE 6, but I have Jave 7, so I dont know if this is related or not.

I am really looking forward to using this, mostly why I upgraded plus a few other things but this is really frustrating. Can anyone help, please?

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Answer 15

Fiddes

Level 1

0 points

Nov 11, 2013 12:24 AM in response to Fiddes

Hi,

Someone helped me with the CS5ServiceManager so thats good & obviously not related to the enhanced dictation download.

Does anyone have any updates on how to get the Enhanced Dictation, English Australian, to download apart from the above. I am still getting the same error message to try again later. Is there somewhere apart from Preferences, enhanced dictation that I can download English Australian for this?

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