[Macworld]

Post your comments for Get Siri-like functionality on your Mac with Speakable Items here

[hlachman]

Mr. Friedman, this was a clear, concise, excellent tutorial. Thank you. As an older, long time Mac User, I never knew Mac's had this functionality. I will see if I can use "Siri-lite" to switch between open applications, an operation I have never enjoyed regardless of Apple's attempt to simplify things (clearly better than swapping flopping disks :-) for those old enough to remember.

You might want to follow up with a brief note on microphones. Can we use the built in microphone on a powerbook (even when folded shut). Can we get by without a several hundred dollar mic clutter up our ports and our desktop (and depleting our pocketbook. Thanks
Harlan

[LexFriedman]

hlachman, on 01 March 2012 - 09:14 AM, said:

Mr. Friedman, this was a clear, concise, excellent tutorial.

Thanks, Harlan!

You can use your Mac's built-in mic; that's the one I used to trigger all the actions I showed in the video. I'm not sure that you can use the mic on a folded-shut laptop, though. It wouldn't work great if it worked at all, since I imagine the closed laptop would muffle the mic's input.

[dudemac]

When I got my first mac I used this a lot, but as apple has moved on this really is very simple and not all that useful. In fact it gets things wrong more often then it does get them correct. At least in my experience with it. I used it mainly for controlling iTunes at a distance. But it was fun to try and get it to open or switch between programs. I pretty much stopped even trying to use it once I switched my desktop to a Mac mini. The input jack for an external microphone would never work with a standard analog mic. To this day I am a little perplexed at the inclusion of an audio port that does not support any of the mics that I have around the house. I tried selecting all different settings even changing the mic to the aux port, but it would never work. I would caution anyone trying to get work done that this is more of a toy than anything.

[zekegri]

Hopefully they will integrate a Siri like functionality soon. Adding a real voice would be nice instead of those canned computer voices-how hard can it be to record thousands of the most commonly words and put them together in a sentence? And, like Dragon had type in words it does not get right and it learns them. Maybe even record that name yourself for audio playback.

[Nyhthawk]

Did you know that Mac OS X has scriptable speech recognition? That's right, you can write AppleScript scripts that can converse with you, matching words and phrases to perform actions.

Here's a simple example where the computer will ask you who is your friend and respond when you say one of the names in the list:

<pre>tell application "SpeechRecognitionServer"
set thisPerson to listen for {"Sal", "Sue", "Bob", "Carl"} with prompt "Who is your friend?"
end tell
say thisPerson & " is my friend too!"</pre>

Of course, this is a simple example, but the "listen for" command can be used to create very intricate scripts, like this one that will play music for you based on which artist you name:

<pre>tell application "iTunes"
tell library playlist 1
set theseArtists to the artist of every track whose artist of it is not ""
end tell
end tell

set the artistNames to {}
repeat with i from 1 to the count of theseArtists
set thisArtist to item i of theseArtists
if thisArtist is not in the artistNames then set the end of the artistNames to thisArtist
end repeat

set the chosenArtist to voice_query("Which artist?", artistNames, 60)
if chosenArtist is false then return "user cancelled."

tell application "iTunes"
set the searchResult to search library playlist 1 for the chosenArtist only artists
if searchResult is not false then
play (some item of the searchResult)
else
say "No tracks were found."
end if
end tell

on voice_query(user_prompt, these_items, timeout_value)
set the cancel_commands to {"Cancel", "Never mind", "Stop"}
set the match_items to cancel_commands & these_items
try
tell application "SpeechRecognitionServer"
set the user_response to listen for match_items ¬
with prompt user_prompt ¬
giving up after timeout_value ¬
displaying these_items
end tell
if the user_response is in the cancel_commands then
error "user cancelled"
end if
return user_response
on error
return false
end try
end voice_query</pre>

Enjoy!

[RWinski]

As we used to say in the old country.....It's CRAP !

[Ben]

dudemac, on 01 March 2012 - 11:14 AM, said:

When I got my first mac I used this a lot, but as apple has moved on this really is very simple and not all that useful. In fact it gets things wrong more often then it does get them correct. At least in my experience with it. I used it mainly for controlling iTunes at a distance. But it was fun to try and get it to open or switch between programs. I pretty much stopped even trying to use it once I switched my desktop to a Mac mini. The input jack for an external microphone would never work with a standard analog mic. To this day I am a little perplexed at the inclusion of an audio port that does not support any of the mics that I have around the house. I tried selecting all different settings even changing the mic to the aux port, but it would never work. I would caution anyone trying to get work done that this is more of a toy than anything.

That's because Apple includes line-in ports, not mic ports on their machines. Mic ports need a minimal amount of power to work correctly. You can work around it by getting a USB audio adapter (they're not very expensive) -- it will use up a USB port but will get your mic to work with your machine.

[airmanchairman4c0h]

Good article, a source of great fun this morning!

However, when I tried "Set Alarm for 1 minute", immediately after acknowledging the alarm and setting it, iCal threw the following error:

"The server responded with an error in a dialogue box- https://p02.caldav.i...42425/principal is not a location that supports this request

Then gave 2 options in the dialogue box - "Go offline" and "Revert to Server".

Is this a hint of future functionality to come or just a bug?