Nuance no longer supporting Dragon for Mac

I have been using it regularly since the upgrade on an iMac running Mojave 10.14.1. It works quite well for me. Perhaps you have other issues not related to Dragon, but then you have provided little information about your problems.

Please read Writing an effective Apple Support Communities question.

We are here to help. We are all users. We are not mind-readers nor clairvoyants. We only know what you write down and tell us. Be specific and thorough. Include your hardware information and installed version of macOS.

Yes, we are all here to help and we are all users. In fact, Apple Support Communities is primarily a user-to-user technical support resource in which Apple participates only in a very limited manner. As a quadriplegic scientist and expert user of speech recognition software for 20 years, here's why I think the original post from usernamesaretheworst1 highlights an important issue that will have serious ramifications for users like myself while the reply from Kappy is not helpful.

First, the reply is condescending ("we are not mind-readers nor clairvoyants" is rude). It also uses only personal experience but does not add substantive information to the discussion and worse, is misleading. Rather than extend the original, helpful post (“Nuance is no longer supporting Dragon for Mac”) or provide useful information about the topic at hand, it includes a rude comment, instructions that are not all too relevant here, and a link to a "User Tip" for writing a question (this is not an Apple document, but it was written by JohnGalt another user who also did not write a question—ironic). Awesome, thanks for the advice.

Some users may incorrectly assume Kappy (Level 10 - 306,974 points, an experienced user who should be able to help solve your problem) represents an expert opinion on Dragon. Some might also believe an upgrade to Mojave is a reasonable idea. This would be a mistake. Perhaps Kappy has had good luck, but this is not evidence, just anecdote. This is unscientific and unhelpful. So, here's my User Tip based on facts and extended conversations with Nuance, including management:

DRAGON MAC USERS NEEDING RELIABLE SPEECH RECOGNITION SHOULD NOT UPGRADE TO MOJAVE. DRAGON IS NOT SUPPORTED ON MOJAVE. IT WILL NOT BE SUPPORTED IN THE FUTURE. NEW VERSIONS WILL NOT BE RELEASED TO MAKE IT COMPATIBLE.

As stated in the linked announcement below, Nuance has officially discontinued product development and will no longer provide updates for this software. Nuance evaluated its product portfolio and decided to discontinue Dragon for Mac: https://www.nuance.com/dragon/support/professional-individual-for-mac-eol.html?P ID=3640511&cjevent=4e7028aee6a711e8832c0…

This announcement was a surprise to many experts who sell Dragon AND accessibility specialists who provide support to people with disabilities who use Dragon, an assistive technology. Indeed, Nuance is still listing the software for sale and they're still selling it on Amazon. If you buy it, you should know that they will not updating the software any further and will not provide you support on Mojave.

Now, here is my personal anecdote from someone who relies on Dragon to use a Mac: The product does not work well for dictation or control in Mojave. It is even worse than it was with High Sierra, which was already problematic. It is terrible. As stated in the original post here, it crashes regularly. It’s less accurate. Furthermore, Nuance suggests not using Dragon on Mojave, as there are known stability issues. Call them. Nuance will not help you beyond recommending you downgrade your operating system to High Sierra. It's not fun to do that. I have spoken to management at Nuance and they actually recommended I switch to the Windows platform, and they will refund my purchase of the Mac version (last Spring) and supply me with an equivalent version – Dragon 15 for Windows at no charge.

Hope that helps. People come to this Apple website to get more information that will help them. This should be a simple straightforward process that doesn't require bullying or an instruction manual about "writing an effective question." I don’t have any specific questions, just information to help.

So why are you criticizing a helper here instead of addressing the real issue regarding Nuance's dropping support of Dragon? Make your displeasure known to Nuance. There is nothing we users can do regarding Nuance's lack of support.

Version 6 is semi problematic on setup, whereas 6.0.8 has been a dream. I have 3 copies running without a hitch. Two on Mac OS 10.11 and another on 10.13. All of my computers were given fresh Mac OS installs with Dragon and Microsoft Office as the first programs added to make sure nothing was interfering with their functioning correctly. After testing for a while I resumed adding all the extra programs that make life easier and fun.

Another habit of mine is to create a fresh partition on the SSD using Apple's disk utility. This makes it easy to do the fresh install. This requires using the system preference > Startup Disk to choose the new partition for bootup.

If you are an advanced user, open the Console app and view the log to see what is triggering the crashes. Possibly there is an answer there to what is causing the issue/conflict. This can give you data for speaking with Nuance or another software company regarding crashes.

Otherwise, a fresh OS will give you a baseline to build a great working system. Just be sure to use a drive and Time Machine to backup each stage of your adding new programs to the OS. That way... if and when things go wonky, you can revert easily back to a smooth working version.

Best of Luck,

+1