Since the announcement of Siri with the iPhone 4S, countless OS X users have been wondering if Siri will eventually makes it’s way to the Mac. Well, you may not know it, but OS X actually includes a Speech Recognition system called Speakable Items, which is very similar to Siri in many ways. In this video, I’ll show you how to set it up, as well as how to tweak Speakable Items to your liking.
Michael Steeber is a student who is obsessed with everything Apple. He enjoys making videos and runs the MSComputerVideos YouTube channel in his free time. You can follow him on Twitter as well.
20 responses to “Use Speakable Items To Bring Siri’s Functionality To Your Mac [Video How-To]”
I heard about Dragon dictation a while ago, I just downloaded it and it works pretty well. I tried speakable items once before well several times, not as good. By the way I’m leaving this message with Dragon dictation try it out.
I discovered this back in 2007 when I bought my first Mac, I opened up the Chess app (Apple’s ONLY included game) and this speech thing poped up.
Really? Anyone who actually says that Speakable items is even remotely close to Siri either hasn’t tried both, or has a serious lack of understanding of what AI speech recognition really means! It would comparable to comparing a moped with Honda Goldwing or a homemade go-cart with an Audi…
Pedantry Rules!!
Ehh this has been around since Panther. Its okay, nothing special needs an overhaul.
The information provided by you is really useful. I am agree with you that how you can relate these two terms to get benefit. The most important thing in your post is video that you shared with us. It is more clear for us that how to use Siri`s functionality for our benefit. It`s really appreciative post “Michael”.
This has been around since…I think…OS 8. In one form or another. Anyone else remember PlainTalk microphones??
I think that game is their second game for Mac, ever. They don’t seem to be pushing Macs to gaming much compared to other devices and computers (remember the Apple II? They produced lots of games for that). The other Mac game was “Alice”, released in 1984, and came with a fancy box too.
Oh yeah. I have 2 of them, one of which is sitting on my Power Mac’s screen right now.
why press esc and i ask “what time is now” and nothing happen ? :(
yeah I do remember using this in os 8… the only mic I could find to work with my performa 631 was an old mini-jack mono mic from the late 60’s… I just fired it back up in lion and while it can be used to control most apps, if you do not mind speaking each and every command, there are not enough commands to coin it siri like…