Open Book for Apple

By Scott W, 1 May, 2013

Forum
macOS and Mac Apps
I am currently working with an individual who has used Open Book (http://www.freedomscientific.com/products/fs/openbook-product-page.asp) for Windows in the past. She is more comfortable with Apple products and would like a comparable product to Open Book on an Apple operating system. Does anyone know something? Thanks.

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Comments

By Isaac Hebert (not verified) on Thursday, May 2, 2013 - 20:10

You can use digit eyes for the iPhone.

By DPinWI on Thursday, May 2, 2013 - 20:10

While you are correct, Digit-Eyes is a great app that works on the iPhone, I'm not sure how that has anything to do with OCR and TTS software for the Mac... Is it possible to run Open Book on the Mac? I seem to recall someone running K1000 in a virtual macine on a Mac.

By KE7ZUM on Thursday, May 2, 2013 - 20:10

There is abby fine reader and boo scan. Over all the whole bundle of apps will cost around $300 but I hear the pair works grate.

By Isaac Hebert (not verified) on Thursday, May 2, 2013 - 20:10

ABBYY is a OCR app for the mac. DevonThink This Mac-only program is well loved across our community and is developed by Devon Technologies. They just recently released an iOS edition for your favorite mobile devices as well. This app has a much steeper learning curve than ABBYY FineReader, as it combines both file organization and databasing as well as OCR. The OCR technology does require you to get the ‘Pro Office’ version, which is more expensive than the regular version of DevonThink, at $150. DevonThink DevonThink However, if you have a need to manage hundreds of files as well as have them searchable, this slightly expensive offering might be what you’re looking for. It should be noted that DevonThink also utilizes ABBYY OCR technology behind the scenes, so you should receive similar results and speed. ReadIris 12 Another fairly pricy option which is also multi-platform: ReadIris. This one costs nearly 130 Euros and isn’t as well designed as either DevonThink or FineReader. Also, there are some restrictions including per document page limits, multi-language support and folder monitoring. To access these features, you will be forced to spend over 400 Euros for their Corporate edition. A trial is available for their ‘lower’ cost version. ReadIris ReadIris VelOCRaptor VelOCRaptor is the lowest cost OCR app I’ve found for the Mac – at just $29. It is very simple – just drag the PDF on top of the drop-zone and it will process through its ‘No-Click OCR’ process. The application doesn’t offer any features available in the more expensive applications- like organization, Excel spreadsheet export or multi-platform support. However, this inexpensive option seems to work with most files I threw at it. Definitely give it shot if you aren’t sure that you really need a more expensive application.

By JT on Thursday, May 2, 2013 - 20:10

There's nothing quite like the total solution OpenBook offers, but there are a number of very good OCR packages available.

By Scott W on Sunday, June 2, 2013 - 20:10

Thanks for the great ideas. Am I correct in assuming that ABBYY would do the OCR operations and then voiceover on the Mac would be the option to read it?

By Tree on Sunday, June 2, 2013 - 20:10

I am a college student and i use Fine reader all of the time. I believe it will fill the needs of most users. It is very simple to use and from what I remember only cost around one hundred dollars which I believe is about eight hundred dollars cheaper then Open book is. Fine reader does not have the ability to read the document you scan within the app itself but this should not really matter. You can simply open the doc with another program like text edit when you are done scanning. You can even set it up to open the file automatically when you save it. I believe there is a thirty day free trile for fine reader so just go give it a whirl.

By Santiago on Sunday, June 2, 2013 - 20:10

Hello, The only place I'd see Open Book being created on, is on OS X, but to this date, I haven't seen or heard of such thing. There's an even better option than Open Book on Mac, its called DocuScan Plus, and it pretty much has the same functions, and it works perfectly fine with VoiceOver.