Overcoming macOS Siri Dictation Problems with the 2018 11″ iPad Pro, 1writer and nvALT

I recently complained about the Siri dictation service on macOS being slow to load, and asked whether the problem remains in RAM with Macs that have 32-GB of RAM. I didn’t get an answer to that question. But I did get an 11″ Nov 2018 iPad Pro, which I now keep beside my desk, on, at all times while I’m working on my Mac (which is in most other respects much better for knowledge intense work than an iPad).

Continue reading Overcoming macOS Siri Dictation Problems with the 2018 11″ iPad Pro, 1writer and nvALT

Does macOS Load Siri Faster in MacBook Pro with 32-GB of RAM?

In 2012, I blogged about How Dictation Benefits Cognitive Productivity. The now discontinued Dragon Dictate for Mac, on which I gave up several years ago, did have an advantage over Siri: it loaded faster. (It also was explicitly trainable.) In my consistent experience (well inference from experience) since the introduction of Siri for macOS, if Siri has not been invoked for more than a few minutes, macOS offloads Siri loads from RAM. Continue reading Does macOS Load Siri Faster in MacBook Pro with 32-GB of RAM?

How Dictation Benefits Cognitive Productivity

Whereas, in the past, the fruits of your ambulant mind dangled precariously on the dendritic branches of your memory organ, they can now be digitally harvested and processed. You can dictate while taking a stroll, running errands, jogging, working out, commuting, waiting for an event, or meditatively pacing in and around your home office. You can digitally capture your voice using a special-purpose recorder, a smartphone, or a computer. Nuance’s Dragon Dictate™ (Mac) and Dragon NaturallySpeaking™ (Windows) both do a great job of converting speech to text.
Continue reading How Dictation Benefits Cognitive Productivity