Mac, take a memo
Dictation, a feature previously available
only on the iPhone 4S and the third-generation iPad, has come to the Mac with
Mountain Lion. The dictation engine appears to be identical to the one found on
iOS and requires and internet connection. (Keep in mind that Dictation and Siri
are two separate functions. Mountain Lion doesn’t offer Siri.)
The
Mac OS X Mountain Lion Developer Preview is available to Mac Developer Program
members
Mountain Lion dictation can be used just
about anywhere there is a blinking cursor. If you can enter text there, you can
dictate text into it 0 no app updates required. By default, you kick off a
dictation session by tapping the Function key twice, although you can customize
this to a different keyboard shortcut in the Dictation and Speech (formerly
Speech) preference pane. Then you just say what you want to say and once you’ve
finished, your utterances will be rendered (usually quite accurately) as text.
It’s a great addition. Of course, there are
better speech-to-text options available commercially. Those programs work on
your Mac without an internet connection and offer voice-training and customizability
that Mountain Lion’s dictation feature can’t match. But not everyone who might
use Dictation needs that level of customizability.
iMessage supplants iChat
In 2011 Apple introduced the iMessage
communication system, a replacement for text messaging that let iOS devices
communicate directly with one another. Unlike SMS TEXT messages, the iMessage
system transfers data (not just text, but images and files) via the internet,
so there are no text charges.
With Mountain Lion, support for iMessage
comes to the Mac as well as iPhones and iPads
With Mountain Lion, support for iMessage
comes to the Mac as well. And it happens via the Message app, which is a
renamed version of iChat with all its old features intact, plus support for
iMessage.
Like Messages on the iPhone, Messages for
Mac lets you hold multi-person chats and can optionally let people know when
you’ve received and read their messages and when you’re typing a reply. And
integrated video-chat button allows you to kick off a video chat with capable
devices, either over traditional instant-messaging systems (as iChat has always
done) or by launching the FaceTime app.
There’s a lot to like about having access
to iMessage on the Mac, but there are also frustrations. It’s great that using
iMessage means you have a record of your conversations on all of your devices
and it makes it easy to keep on having a conversation even if you have to shut
down your Mac and head for the bus stop. But every time I receive a message via
iMessage on my Mac, my iPad and iPhone also chime or vibrate – not just at the
beginning, but every time. There should be a way for Apple to detect which
device I’m using to have the iMessage conversation and stop ringing the rest of
them.
Alert! Notification center appears
Sometimes your Mac needs to get your
attention. For years, many Mac app developers have built their own – think of
meeting reminder pop-ups in iCal or Microsoft Office, for example. For years,
the open-source project Growl has attempted to create a more general
notification system and it’s supported by lots of apps.
With Mountain Lion, OS X gains a
system-level notification system accessible to every developer, with features
much like those already found in iOS.
Alert! Notification center appears
Alerts appear in the top-right corner of
the screen in a small bubble. Notifications remain there for five seconds and
then slide off screen to the right (unless you swipe them away first or click
on them to open the relevant app). Alerts, on the other hand, remain on-screen
until you click on the Show or Close (or in the case of some alerts, Snooze)
buttons.
The Notification Center list is a narrow
band that lives just to off the right side of your screen. You can reveal it
either by clicking on the new Notification Center icon at the far right of the
menu bar or by swiping with two fingers starting at the far right edge of the
trackpad.
Either way, your entire Mac interface will
slide to the left, revealing a list of what’s been trying to get your attention
recently.
Not all notifications come from apps,
either: Because Mountain Lion includes integrated support for Twitter and
(soon) Facebook, Notification Center can display notifications from either
service – direct messages and/or mentions on Twitter and a whole host of
optional items (events, application requests, nearby friends, friend requests,
comments, wall posts, messages, photo tags, friend confirmations and place
tags) on Facebook.
Apple has even built quick sharing links
into the very top of the Notification Center list, so you can click to quickly
write a tweet or Facebook status post.
There’s also a new Notifications pane in
the System Preferences app, analogous to the Notifications submenu in iOS’s
Settings app. From here, you can choose which apps appear within Notification
Center and how their alert bubbles behave.
Notifications are good when you want to see
them, but they can also get in your way, depending on context. Apple has made
some smart decisions in order to let you squelch notifications when they’re not
appropriate.
If you scroll up in the Notification Center
list, a new option is revealed: Show Alerts and Banners. If you flip the switch
to Off, notifications are muted – but only until tomorrow. Apple assumes that
you just don’t want to be bugged right now, but doesn’t want you to miss out on
important notifications in the future.
Another clever feature is Notification
Center’s auto-sensing when a Mac is connected to an external display. I use a
second display at my desk and Notification Center has no problem displaying
alerts there. But if I hook up my MacBook to an HDTV or a projector, the alerts
will be suppressed.
I’ve found Notification Center to be a
useful addition to my Mac. This is the sort of feature that needed to be a part
of the operating system for the sake of consistency and ubiquity, and Apple’s
done a good job of implementing it.
I appreciate being alerted when someone’s
sent me a Direct Message on Twitter or when I’ve received an important email,
and the settings in the Notification Center control panel are granular enough to
allow me to suppress any notifications that get in my way. (In a way, they may
be too granular – I wish there was a way to more broadly set notification
settings, rather than going app by app.)
