Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

Speech Recognition

Although it may surprise many people, 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”—Mac OS X doesn’t take dictation, typing out what you say. (For that, you need a program like Dragon Dictate, www.nuance.com.)

Instead, Mac OS X’s speech recognition feature 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 speech recognition. But if your Mac has a microphone, it’s worth at least a 15-minute test drive. It may become a part of your work routine forever.

GEM IN THE ROUGH: QuickTime Virtual Reality

If they live to be 100, most Mac users will probably never encounter a QuickTime VR movie—mainly because it’s quickly dying away. Apple has taken it out behind the barn to die.

Still, it’s a very cool kind of “panorama movie” technology.

The trick is finding a QuickTime VR movie; your safest bet is, as usual, the Web. Google can help you find one.

When you open a QuickTime VR movie, a message lets you know that you need the old QuickTime Player 7 to play it, and Software Update ...