It’s been announced that the MacSpeech company has been purchased by Nuance. Nuance are the company behind the Windows product “Dragon NaturallySpeaking“ and other recent Dragon products for iPod Touch and iPhone.
So what does this mean for MacSpeech Dictate and the other MacSpeech products? Nuance are quick to assure us that “nothing will change in the near term” but I think things will change for the better. Nuance is a much bigger company than MacSpeech – the Windows market has always been more than ten times bigger than the Mac OS X market, and the company which is now Nuance has been around much longer than MacSpeech has. I don’t know the number of employees that either Nuance or MacSpeech actually has, but I’d be willing to bet that Nuance has a lot more. And this will probably mean good things for MacSpeech’s products, as more talent is available to work on them they can progress more quickly.
MacSpeech Dictate still has some major features missing, such as mouse control, but it’s growing and maturing quickly. One big problem for people wanting to switch from using Windows with NaturallySpeaking to using OS X with Dictate is that the names of various commands are completely different between the two products. Actually, Dictate’s command set has grown in a haphazard way and commands are difficult to memorise because different commands are constructed in different ways. I would think that with the acquisition of MacSpeech, there’s the possibility of the Dictate command set becoming more like the NaturallySpeaking command set. This may be confusing for existing customers, but it would be a huge blessing for customers switching from Windows to Mac and, I think, in the long run it would be a good thing.
Nuance obviously thinks the OS X market for voice recognition is growing and viable, and they’re willing to spend money to get into it. This might mean that MacSpeech products eventually cost the same as the equivalent NaturallySpeaking products – at the moment the Mac versions cost significantly more, despite having fewer features. Reducing the cost would not have been possible for MacSpeech alone, as they needed cash flow, but Nuance are in a stronger financial position and they’re bigger so they can probably cope with a bumpier cash flow. Cheaper assistive technology is good for everybody, so I hope this one comes true!
I’ve got a MacSpeech Dictate-related free download coming up soon too – so regular readers stay tuned!
What else do you think will change, or hope will change, with Nuance’s buyout of MacSpeech?
- Ricky Buchanan
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New on ATMac: Nuance Buys MacSpeech: What Now? http://bit.ly/c6ddWp
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
This is great news. Mac will have a reliable speech recognition program with good editing capabilities and I can sell my PC,which I use to run Dragon
@Diane: Let’s hope it’s soon!!
Hi Ricky,
I don’t know if the buyout is recent, but I saw the MacSpeech product on the shelves at the Apple Store here in Kingston a couple of weeks ago and it says on it “powered by Nuance” or “powered by Dragon”, I can’t remember which and couldn’t find it on the shelves today. So, if MacSpeech had already been porting or repackaging Nuance’s technologies for the Mac, it makes sense that they’d be bought out eventually.
Also, the basic Mac version of MacSpeech costs £179 at the Apple Store in the UK (there’s a version for medical professionals that costs nearly £500). That’s well in excess of the cost of Dragon NS but it makes sense if they have to license the technology, so perhaps the buyout will put that right.
@Matthew: MacSpeech Dictate has always licensed and used Nuance’s speech recognition engine, but the buyout was only finalised last week.
New ATMac post: Nuance Buys MacSpeech: What Now? http://bit.ly/brGGPp
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
This is nothing but a good thing. Nuance clearly sees what everyone else sees, and that’s that Mac sales — including devices such as the iPhone, iPad and touch — are dynamic. I would be very surprised if the Mac side of this software didn’t compare to that of Windows. In fact, I’m very interested to see what they do with the above devices. Great news!
@Tony: I’m excited to see what they do with the devices too! I’ll be reporting on it all, have no fear.
I am hoping for a MacSpeech Dictate / Transcription iPhone app in the not to distant future.