What to do about Dragon for Mac being discontinued, and not being supported on Mojave?
What to do about Dragon for Mac being discontinued, and not being supported on Mohave?
How am will I be able to use Macs in the future, now that Nuance Dragon for Mac has been discontinued, and that there is now no longer any full-fledged Mac voice dictation software available for disabled users like me to use, and upgrading to Mojave has trashed the app?
This past week has been a sobering fiasco for me personally, as I rely on voice dictation entirely, due to severe nerve damage in my hands.
I rashly upgraded to Mojave on my laptop last week, only to discover that it completely trashed my being able to use Dragon dictation for Mac. This essentially rendered my laptop useless for my purposes, as I can no longer use the voice dictation.
Thank God I still have it on my iMac, but this does mean that I will no longer be able to upgrade any of Apple's operating systems in the future, as Nuance announced that it is discontinuing Dragon for Mac. After being devoted to Apple products for years, it has been a shock to realize that I might have to entirely abandon buying/using Mac computers from this day forward.
I am aware that I could spend a considerable amount of money purchasing Dragon Naturally Speaking, and then parallels or such like in order to run it on a Mac, and then Microsoft office, only then to have to move all of it over to the Mac side of my computer? This is sickeningly expensive, needlessly baroque, ridiculous and beyond belief galling. How is it possible that there is no other decent voice dictation software in existence for Mac users?
For those who do not rely on voice dictation due to a disability, I can assure you that there is no comparison between what Apple provides as dictation, and a full-fledged voice dictation software App. This has essentially upended my being able to use Mac computers, and I'm feeling quite panicked.
Nuance has been notorious for its disregard of its Mac customers, through its significantly less proficient Mac dictation program, its appalling customer service and high prices. However, people with disabilities who like Macs were stuck with Dragon for Mac, and now it is gone.
There was no advanced notice for registered Mac Dragon users that it was going to be discontinued, and that it would not be compatible with OS Mojave. Long-suffering Dragon Dictate for Mac users kept hoping future versions of the software would improve. Hopes dashed.
Nuance has been the only game in town for voice dictation software, and its products for Microsoft have been light-years of quality over and above the substantially substandard version for Mac, and I often wondered why they had no competition. I'm completely blindsided that Mac users who depend on voice dictation are being essentially shut out in the cold. After years of tearing out my hair over major issues with this supremely annoying, but alas all too necessary software, I can remember wishing that Apple would step up to the plate and create their own software for their own users, but no such luck. I can't believe this is an issue in this day and age.
How can Mac users needs be completely ignored and dismissed in such a way? This is been a real game changer for me. I have been pretty much devoted to Apple products for ages and ages, and it is quite a shock to realize that in one week, the unholy meeting of losing Dragon for Mac and the old Dragon not being supported by Apple's new OS Mojave, signals a complete parting of the ways, and a reorganization of all of my tech life.
If I have any hope of reviving my laptop from the dead, I will have to go to the hassle of reverting to high Sierra, in the hope of being able to continue to use the old Dragon, otherwise that laptop is essentially dead for my purposes, as I can't use my hands to type.
Voice dictation is not a luxury, or a fun “see your words appear on the screen” novelty for those of us with physical limitations. I have loved my Macs, and it has been a true shock to realize that I may be forced never to buy another, as I cannot use my hands to type, and no one has come up with decent full-fledged voice dictation software for Mac for the future. Frankly, devastated, as I rely on computers daily. I really don’t know what I’m going to do.
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iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9), iwork update