Many Mac (s aapl) users, especially bloggers like me who suffer from repetitive injury syndrome, have become fans of MacSpeech Dictate, a dictation software made by the Salem, N.H.-based company MacSpeech. The company used Nuance Communications’ (s NUAN) core technology to offer this service. Today, Nuance, which owns Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, said it’s buying MacSpeech for an undisclosed amount. With sales of Apple’s computers on an upswing, it makes sense for Nuance to add the top speech recognition product to its portfolio. I, for one, am happy to see that MacSpeech is going to be around for awhile.
i am also thrilled – these guys were kind enough to send me a copy to review for CIMagazine a couple of months ago – i haven’t had enough time to really rip it apart for a review (or use/train it) -but i did tinker heavily on day one during the install and i was immediately impressed…it’s nice to know that they’ll be getting enhanced support – and i like to imagine that the proliferation of touch interface devices will give way to more demand for voice recognition, as it’s equally logical (IMHO) for interaction
I suspect the real reason Nuance is buying MacSpeech is because they saw the current MacSpeech team unable to make the most of the Nuance speech engine. I would wager they stepped in to provide the needed resources and engineering needed to offer an Apple based Speech to Text product at least equal to the Windows Naturally Speaking offerings and the free Windows Speech to Text software.
Dictate could be accurate at times but was always and continues to be frustrating to those of us spoiled by the Windows options. As someone who has poured wasted dollar after dollar into the MacSpeech offerings, I hope when a truly useful version of Naturally Speaking is released for Apple PCs, I will not have to shell out another significant offering as I did when “upgrading” to 1.5!