Dictation: Apple competition Nuance

We had spotted traces of dictation in Safari, this function is now official: you can dictate text to your Mac, as might already be on the iPhone and iPad. You will understand, the assistant Siri is not available on Mac, where it would also be quite useless - only the dictation mode was recovered iOS. The Word tab of System Preferences tab becomes Voice Dictation and Speech.

We can adjust the audio source and the keyboard shortcut activating the dictation mode: You can also choose language: voice dictation does not work yet in English, French, German and Japanese. It works in all applications with a text field: you can "tap" with the text kilometer, write a tweet from the center of notifications, or even dictate a URL. We must admit to being surprised at the speed of processing and accuracy, much better than on iPhone and iPad.

Unlike products from Nuance, dictation OS X does not control the functions of the software, and does not have a correction mechanism to the voice.

There Chromium 6 in Safari

Safari 5.3 has been renamed Safari 6: as in previous versions of the browser of Mountain Lion, he has an address bar and unified search. But this is still icloud integration and rapprochement with IOS that makes the difference. Thus, 6 Safari has a playlist, which can now view offline, the content of web pages being cached locally.

The "Tabs icloud" allows you to find the tabs that were open on iPhone and iPad - like Firefox Sync, icloud also allows merging the different historical Safari which is used on different devices. Finally, note that the tabs can now be displayed in a sort of view called Cover Flow "Tab View". This view is activated by pinching two fingers inwards with a trackpad, or by pressing the appropriate button at the end of the tab bar. We then find a presentation that reminds furiously IOS, which is virtually useless without trackpad, too bad.

Power Nap

Power Nap is an extremely interesting from the final version of Mountain Lion, What that only compatible with Macs equipped with SSD Office. It can because a Mac to sleep is always connected to the network in a minimal; its state is always synchronized with the cloud. The idea is to ensure that if an iPhone, iPad or another Mac makes changes to icloud, these are available on the Mac before he left eve. Better again: if you go home with a Mac under the arm in standby, Power Nap will ensure that you connect to Wi-Fi and perform its Time Machine backup and update their apps using the least resources possible. In short, a kind of active standby low power designed to keep a Mac to sleep in sync with its ecosystem.

Other small changes

A few weeks before the launch of Mountain Lion, Apple polishes its system here or there. The Apple brand has clarified the preferences panel "Update software". This includes the ability to automatically download the apps purchased from other Macs. Another small refinement, this DP4 includes a large number of new wallpapers.


On the other hand, Apple has revised the Displays preferences panel. This is very similar to that we could see on the new MacBook Pro Retina. The definition is no longer highlighted as in the past.

In conclusion

These functions are some of the new Mountain Lion, those that Apple had not yet unveiled. Upon its release next month, will bring 200 new Mountain Lion, some larger than others. Note as well the price, € 15.99, and the fact that we can spend directly from Snow Leopard, Lion jumping.