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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Nuance Communications today announced that it has acquired MacSpeech, the leading provider of speech recognition products for the Mac platform. MacSpeech's "Dictate" product for Mac OS X, selected as Best of Show at Macworld San Francisco 2008, already utilizes Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition engine and will allow Nuance to build on its current success with Dragon applications for the iPhone and move into the Mac environment.
"We have heard from our customers -- and from the Mac community at large -- for years that they want Dragon for the Mac environment," said Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager for Dragon, Nuance Communications. "In 2008, MacSpeech licensed our underlying Dragon dictation technology to deliver MacSpeech Dictate, and the demand has only continued to grow, fueled recently by our recent launch of Dragon Dictation for the iPhone. MacSpeech's knowledge of the Mac platform and its deep understanding of Mac users, coupled with our decades-long experience with speech recognition and the popular Dragon brand, will allow us to provide the world's best dictation technology in a solution that is 100-percent Mac."
According to the press release, Nuance plans to leverage its existing Dragon branding and expertise in marketing, distribution, and research and development to drive growth of the MacSpeech line of products.

Late last year, Nuance introduced its free Dragon Dictation application for the iPhone, which has remained the #1 free application in the App Store's "Business" category since its release. The release was followed up by the launch of Dragon Search, a free voice-enabled search application for the iPhone capable of interfacing with such sources as Google, Bing, YouTube, and Wikipedia.

Article Link: Nuance Acquires MacSpeech, Beefs Up Plans for Dragon Speech Recognition for Mac
 

thogs_cave

macrumors regular
Sep 25, 2003
208
0
State of Confusion
I wonder what this means for Dictate users.

I'm going to be positive and assume that current MacSpeech Dictate users will be taken care of; I use Dictate at work and at home, and find it incredibly useful.

It is good, however, to see Nuance realizes the popularity of the Mac platform and is stepping up the efforts. If only Adobe would do the same.... :rolleyes:
 

MCIowaRulz

macrumors 6502
Feb 20, 2009
320
0
Finally!, I use Dragon Speech recognition on PC (I have CP) and I have always been a Mac person but the Inability to type long term as left me using my current PC laptop. As a Broadcast Major I was concerned I would have to use Bootcamp for the software. But running VirtualBox with my current will get me buy until they release a new version for Mac as IBM ViaVoice for Mac OS X was garbage.
 

SFStateStudent

macrumors 604
Aug 28, 2007
7,496
3
San Francisco California, USA
Totally cool; I was spending quite a bit of time at the MacSpeech booth at MWSF '10 and had just recently downloaded and began using Dragon Dictation. And in the back of my mind I was looking at the Dragon Dictation Icon and talking to the MacSpeech people, and wondering why I would pay for something that is already in the app store for free. Though MacSpeech has an assortment of software for Legal and Medical dictation, etc...:cool:
 

distortedloop

macrumors 6502
Jun 29, 2007
380
8
Nuance's Dragon Dictate on the iPhone is rock solid, with excellent accuracy, despite no training required. It's one of the few features on my iPhone that I think exceed those of Google's Nexus One (voice recognition). Both of these products are cloud based, which gives them millions of voice samples to compare against, unlike the local dictionaries used on a desktop product. It would be interesting to see if they merge the online features into the local desktop versions. Perhaps as an option for improved recognition when your computer happens to be online.
 

MacSlut

macrumors 6502
Aug 12, 2002
250
3
Bar
This is definitely one of the top companies on my list that I think Apple should buy. Their iPhone app is really incredible, but because it's 3rd party, it's not nearly as useful as it could be...not by a long shot.

It would be totally awesome to have this be integrated in the iPhone OS!
 

Friscohoya

macrumors 6502a
Jun 16, 2009
708
0
Oaktown
This would be great for large meetings. Provide notes based on individual voice recognition. Let it run in the background of your ipad's workspace and you could be a one person business wrecking crew.
 

RaZaK

macrumors regular
Jul 13, 2008
224
0
Brilliant move by Nuance

Let MacSpeech license their code, create Mac-Native software, and then acquire them as they begin to perfect it.

Voila! now Nuance has a full presence on the Mac platform with barely any effort. I can't wait for the latest version to be released. :D
 

philosopherdog

macrumors 6502a
Dec 29, 2008
733
515
Exciting news!

This is an exciting development. It would be nice to see a product as good or better than Dragon Naturally Speaking on the Mac. I'd love to see some more development on text to speech on the Mac as well. I think Ghostreader and the native TTS engine are wanting in features. I wonder how long it will be before we start seeing a release.
 

superted666

Guest
Oct 17, 2005
422
0
I've never witnessed or used any software that is actually good at dictating a humans voice. Call my cynical but i just don't think the software is good enough yet.
 

nuance

macrumors newbie
Feb 17, 2010
1
0
Nuance's Dragon Dictate on the iPhone is rock solid, with excellent accuracy, despite no training required. It's one of the few features on my iPhone that I think exceed those of Google's Nexus One (voice recognition). Both of these products are cloud based, which gives them millions of voice samples to compare against, unlike the local dictionaries used on a desktop product. It would be interesting to see if they merge the online features into the local desktop versions. Perhaps as an option for improved recognition when your computer happens to be online.


Thanks for the complements! One important point - the recognition engine in both Dragon Dictation and Dragon NaturallySpeaking (desktop) is the same. However, Dragon NaturallySpeaking on the desktop actually offers more in the way of accuracy if you consider that folks can correct misrecognitions in a much more powerful way than on a mobile device. Also, Dragon on the desktop allows you to customize your vocabulary and even train Dragon to your particular writing style. Further, specific versions for Medical, Legal, etc. go even further in terms of accuracy by providing more extensive, specific vocabularies. If anything, the mobile apps learn from the tried-and-true desktop apps!

-Erica Hill, Nuance
 

MCIowaRulz

macrumors 6502
Feb 20, 2009
320
0
Thanks for the complements! One important point - the recognition engine in both Dragon Dictation and Dragon NaturallySpeaking (desktop) is the same. However, Dragon NaturallySpeaking on the desktop actually offers more in the way of accuracy if you consider that folks can correct misrecognitions in a much more powerful way than on a mobile device. Also, Dragon on the desktop allows you to customize your vocabulary and even train Dragon to your particular writing style. Further, specific versions for Medical, Legal, etc. go even further in terms of accuracy by providing more extensive, specific vocabularies. If anything, the mobile apps learn from the tried-and-true desktop apps!

-Erica Hill, Nuance

Erica,
In your next version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Macintosh, please make it feature for feature the same or better as the Windows version. Since Macintoshes are used in a lot of schools, Kids that have conditions that limit their ability to type (ex. cerebral palsy ) would benefit greatly from the software. I can even envision Dragon NaturallySpeaking working hand-in-hand with Apple's text-to-speech. As you are aware, Apple has had text-to-speech since before the PC could talk. I would also like to see some integration with braille software and make the Macintosh the best platform for students with disabilities. For someone like me who uses the PC version of the software on a daily basis as I have cerebral palsy it is a lifesaver for use in college when writing papers(or even this reply). Please consider working with Apple hand-in-hand on the next version of the software to truly make it the best in class application available.:)
Thank you
Mathew
 

eawmp1

macrumors 601
Feb 19, 2008
4,158
91
FL
Thanks for the complements! One important point - the recognition engine in both Dragon Dictation and Dragon NaturallySpeaking (desktop) is the same. However, Dragon NaturallySpeaking on the desktop actually offers more in the way of accuracy if you consider that folks can correct misrecognitions in a much more powerful way than on a mobile device. Also, Dragon on the desktop allows you to customize your vocabulary and even train Dragon to your particular writing style. Further, specific versions for Medical, Legal, etc. go even further in terms of accuracy by providing more extensive, specific vocabularies. If anything, the mobile apps learn from the tried-and-true desktop apps!

-Erica Hill, Nuance

I'm a physician. Port it to the iPad so I can dictate real time into an EMR and you will corner the medical market. iPad + input faster than handwriting (for us non typers) = end of my paper charts. Definitely a killer app!
 

1olive

macrumors newbie
Oct 24, 2009
5
0
I have had and tried to use all the mac voice recognition apps, including macspeech. Though on a good day macspeech comes close to working it still falls short for me, for any creative writing. Having a more intuitive way to add vocabulary to personalize writing style, and a more intuitive way of doing corrections so that you don't find yourself wanting to use the keyboard,would be a HUGE improvement, as would having a more valid rating system for microphones. I have found that microphone placement is very very important, and changes every time you put on or take off a headset regardless of care. It would be nice to have a more definitive rating of mikes for voice recognition use so that you know you're using the best you can.
 

FoxyKaye

macrumors 68000
Just another word in to say Dictate on the Mac is definitely a major improvement over either MacSpeech's previous product or ViaVoice. I haven't nearly trained it as well as I could and it still is very accurate. Could be a little more stable on Snow Leopard (it tends to crash at odd moments), but overall I'm very pleased. Please keep up the good work with it - the Mac community has been missing out on Dragon over the years, and feature parity with the Windows version would be great.
 

michael.lauden

macrumors 68020
Dec 25, 2008
2,326
1
MacSpeech Dictate is definitely not worth buying. A friend let me use his program, and after countless voice training and setups it still doesn't recognize what i'm saying.

If there is remotely any background noise it will fail completely.
 

Jaro65

macrumors 68040
Mar 27, 2009
3,822
926
Seattle, WA
I hope Nuance doesn't ruin it.

Well, they certainly do have a pretty mixed track record with the PC applications. Let's just hope that they actually have a funded product development plans with MacSpeech, as compared to just hoping to ride the gravy train of continual upgrades offering very little improvement.
 

Marzzz

macrumors 6502
Nov 1, 2002
312
442
The Desert
I'm a physician. Port it to the iPad so I can dictate real time into an EMR and you will corner the medical market. iPad + input faster than handwriting (for us non typers) = end of my paper charts. Definitely a killer app!

+ 1 bazillion

I have already switched over to MacSpeech Dictate Medical and in the first month it completely paid for itself (and the Calisto wireless headset). I have held off going the EHR route because I 1) really wanted something Mac based; 2) knew from regularly visiting here that the iPad was imminent.

One thing I have learned from reading the MacSpeech forums is the windows-based Nuance/Dragon version has better functionality with regard to editing transcription and customizing the program- I hope that is ported to the Mac version soon.
 
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