Shrinkit snow leopard5/20/2023 Tip: All of these examples are new in Tiger, and they're really neat. (You can say any number of minutes or hours ”"Set alarm for two hours," or whatever.) The Mac asks you to type a little message, which will serve as the iCal dialog box that appears at the specified time. You can also say "Chat with Steve Jobs" (or whomever) to begin a new chat session in iChat with that person, "Mail this to Steve Jobs" to send the current document as a Mail attachment, or "Meet with Steve Jobs" to add an iCal appointment with this person's information attached. Displays Steve Jobs's phone number in huge digits across your screen ”the fastest way yet to look up a number of somebody in your Address Book program. Here are a few examples of what you'll find in the list at first: As you can see, some of them represent shortcuts that would take several steps if you had to perform them manually. (If it's not open, see Figure 15-12.) Keeping your eye on this window is essential, because it offers a complete list of everything your Mac understands. The only commands PlainTalk understands are listed in the Speakable Commands window. When you start talking, you'll also see the Mac's interpretation of what you said written out in a yellow balloon just over the Feedback window. You can specify a different key, if you wish, or eliminate the requirement to press a key altogether, as described in the next section. " Therefore, the Mac comes set to listen only when you're pressing that key.) (You wouldn't want the Mac listening all the time ”even when you said, for example, "Hey, it's cold in here. The word Esc in its center indicates the "listen" key ”the key you're supposed to hold down when you want the Mac to respond to your voice. The Feedback windowĬheck out your screen: A small, microphone-like floating window now appears (Figure 15-12). Where you see " Speakable items" (on the Speech Recognition tab), click On. The on/off switch for speech recognition in Mac OS X is the Speech pane of System Preferences (Figure 15-11). Right: Choosing Open Speech Commands window, of course, opens the list of things you can say.ġ5.4.1. If you choose Speech Preferences from its bottom- edge triangle, you open the Speech preferences window. If it's in your way, just double-click it (or say "minimize speech window") to shrink it into your Dock. Left: The Feedback window lacks the standard Close and Minimize buttons. It may become a part of your work routine forever.įigure 15-12. But if your Mac has a microphone, PlainTalk is worth at least a 15-minute test drive. įew people use PlainTalk speech recognition. It lets you open programs, trigger AppleScripts, choose menu commands, trigger keystrokes, and click dialog box buttons and tabs ”just by speaking their names. (For that, you need a program like ViaVoice for Mac OS X, or iListen, Instead, PlainTalk is what's known as a command-and-control technology. The Apple marketing machine may have been working too hard when it called this feature "speech recognition" ”the Mac OS feature called PlainTalk doesn't take dictation, typing out what you say. Its abilities fall into two categories: reading text aloud, using a synthesized voice and taking commands from your voice. Although it may surprise many Mac users, the Mac is quite talented when it comes to speech.
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