Nuance, the company behind Dragon Mobile for iPhone and the Naturally Speaking range of software products, has bought MacSpeech, makers of the jaw-droppingly amazing MacSpeech Dictate and its recent new sibling, MacSpeech Scribe.
In a statement, Nuance’s Peter Mahoney said:
“Rest assured, if you currently use either product, nothing will change in the near term. In the coming weeks, we promise to share updates with you as regularly as possible.”
Whether this was done for plain economics or as part of some long-term voice/text strategy, it points the way towards some interesting new future products.
Mahoney makes specific mention of the iPad in his statement, and I think it’s clear that the new Dragon/MacSpeech product line of the future is going to include some sort of voice-to-text app for that particular piece of hardware.
And if such a hypothetical product is even half as good as MacSpeech Dictate, it will probably be a big hit on the iPad App Store.
I don’t dish out praise like this for every app I try, but MacSpeech Dictate really is astounding. When I tried it recently, I was blown away by how well it could understand my English accent, and even accurately transcribe some unusual proper nouns, after just a few minutes of voice training.
What’s even better is that the small voice training exercise that’s required to set it up is valuable in itself; what you read out loud is a set of simple instructions and useful tips for using the app itself. While you teach the app, it teaches you. It’s fantastic stuff and highly recommended. I can’t wait to see what comes out from the new Nuance/MacSpeech stable.
