. Speech Recognition Although it may surprise many Mac users, the Mac is quite talented when it comes to speech. Its abilities fall into two categories: reading text aloud | . Speech Recognition Although it may surprise many Mac users the Mac is quite talented when it comes to speech. Its abilities fall into two categories reading text aloud using a synthesized voice and taking commands from your voice. 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. For that you need a program like iListen or better yet Dragon Naturally Speaking an amazing dictation program for Windows that you can run on your Intel-based Mac in Windows as described in Chapter 8. Instead PlainTalk is what s known as a command-and-control technology. It lets you open programs trigger AppleScripts choose menu commands trigger keystrokes and click dialog box buttons and tabs -just by speaking their names. Few people use PlainTalk speech recognition. But if your Mac has a microphone PlainTalk is worth at least a 15-minute test drive. It may become a part of your work routine forever. Figure 15-11. Turn listening on and off here. If you turn on Listen only while key is pressed the Mac pays attention to you only when you re pressing a key like Esc . As a convenience it even pauses iTunes playback while you re pressing the key. If you turn on Listen continuously with keyword you have to say a certain keyword to get its attention before speaking each command. In the Keyword blank type the word you want the Mac to listen for as it monitors the sound from your mike. . Your First Conversation with the Mac The on off switch for speech recognition in Mac OS X is the Speech pane of System Preferences Figure 15-11 . Where you see Speakable items on the Speech Recognition tab click On. . The Feedback window Check out your screen A small microphone-like floating window now appears Figure 15-12 . The word Esc in its center indicates the listen key the key you re supposed to hold down when you want the Mac to .
