Macs Live Here
Since the first Macintosh in 1984 until the present, the principals of American Dictation have used Macs in their business. While PC’s may still dominate desktops across the USA, we have more and more professionals who call us for help in identifying digital solutions that are Macintosh compatible. (Pssst! We even run Windows on our Macs, but don’t tell anyone!)
State of the Software
For digital dictation authors, Olympus and Philips now provide Mac compatible software with their recorders. Unfortunately, their Mac versions are not as feature-rich as their PC versions.
While the entry level DSS Player for Mac compares very well with the Olympus DSS Player for PC, against the Olympus DSS Player Pro, or ODMS, the differences are more noticeable. For instance, you cannot yet have voice files automatically sent and received by the dictation and transcription software for the Mac. This creates some additional work in attaching files to email or FTP to your remote typist.
In the spirit of full disclosure, the following are the more noticeable features not found in the Mac version as compared to the DSS Player Pro Version 6 (ODMS):
- Instruction comments. You cannot playback instruction comments as part of a recorded DSS Pro file.
- E-mail/FTP Sending. There are no built-in tools for automatically sending or receiving files by e-mail or FTP.
- Linked Documents. No linking of documents to voice files. .
- Device Configurations. For other devices, such as the Olympus DS-7000, the software offers limited configuration options.
There are others, but these are the most noticed.
That said, we still feel the DSS Player for Mac is a robust, quality application. In time, Olympus – and perhaps other vendors – will do more to accommodate the growing number of professionals using Apple Macintosh computers.
Device Listing
The following is a sample listing of the most popular digital dictation and transcription devices which are Mac-compatible, whether as a result of their included software, or simply as attached devices:
Handheld Voice Recorders
Desktop Recorders
Transcription Kits
Speech Recognition
PC on a Mac?
With the latest Intel-based Mac computers, you can run versions of Windows. We do it all the time so we can enjoy the benefits of the PC-based dictation solutions we sell, including Dragon NaturallySpeaking.
All Intel Macs running Leopard (Mac OSX 10.5) or later include Boot Camp, a tool for re-booting your Mac in Windows mode.
For more convenience, we use VMWare Fusion which allows us to run Vista, XP or any other flavor of Windows simultaneously with the Mac OSX. Of course running two or more operating systems can be taxing on your computer. Our advice? Get as much RAM as you can, and you can easily cruise between Mac and Windows.
Mac Resources
The following are some of our favorites on-line resources for the Macintosh. If you have others you feel should be included, please let us know.
- MacUpdate. Find new software and updates.
- Macintouch. Long-time favorite of Mac-heads for latest technical information.
- Apple. Need we explain?
- Adobe. Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash and more.