Can MacSpeech Hit Apple's Dragon Curve?
By Charles W. Moore

MacSpeech Inc's president says that his company will stay the course despite the surprise announcement at WWDC last week that Dragon Systems will be porting their popular PC continuous speech recognition program, NaturallySpeaking, to the Mac Platform, with Apple's blessing and fanfare.

This news had to have been a bitter slap in the face for the folks at MacSpeech, who have been the only developers working on a Mac dictation program since Dragon unceremoniously dumped Mac support last year when they terminated development and support of their long-in-the-tooth PowerSecretary for the Mac.

Up until last week the "great white hope" for development of an up-to-date continuous speech recognition engine for the Macintosh, MacSpeech is headed by software engineers Andrew Taylor, Eric Hon-Anderson, and Paul Czarnecki, all of whom worked on Dragon/Articulate Systems' PowerSecretary and Voice Navigator products.

"Well, 'they' finally noticed the lack of dictation software on the Macintosh!" commented Taylor, MacSpeech Inc.'s President, from the WWDC conference floor. But Taylor affirms that "We are still here and right now our plans have not changed."

I hope they won't change, and I have to wonder about Apple's apparently shafting another startup Mac-only developer in favor of aligning with a cross-platform player that has so recently demonstrated dubious loyalty to the Mac platform and Mac customers.

On the other hand, MacSpeech's mission statement is music to a Machead's ears:

"We are Macintosh people, committed to the Macintosh platform. We have worked with speech in the past and are working with it now. Speech on the Macintosh is our one and only focus! No other company can say this and no other company can offer you our focus, our desire and our will to succeed.

• We believe in Speech and we believe in Macintosh.
• We believe in the concept of Insanely Great.
• We believe in putting the user first and the computer last, possibly even behind that potted plant in the corner.
• We believe in getting things done and doing them right.
• We send neither allegiance nor tribute to N47 W122.

Seems to me, this is the sort of developer that Apple should be helping and cultivating -- not throwing curves at.

Dragon's NaturallySpeaking is highly respected, premium dictation software, without question. However, MacDictate, MacSpeech's proposed software product which will be offered in two versions, promises to be something special as well.

MacSpeech Inc. has posted a "white paper" outlining the projected features of both MacDictate speech recognition products for the Mac that the company has under development. A disclaimer cautions that while these specifications are what MacSpeech intends to build, they are subject to change.

MacDictate Professional is to be a full- featured, top of the line dictation product, while MacDictate would be a lower priced product with strong dictation features, command and control, and integrated application support with Speech Ready applications.

The entry-level MacDictate would provide dictation, editing, formatting and simple speech navigation with any application. Users will be able to dictate text, edit and format it with just the power of their voice -- without touching the keyboard and mouse.

MacDictate is also to support text macros, which enable you to "type" phrases you repeat a lot with a single phrase or single word.

MacDictate would also support MacSpeech's Speech Ready application enhancements, which allow other application vendors to use the Speech Ready Programmers interface to make their applications "Speech Ready" -- optimized for faster, more accurate dictation and additional application-specific commands.

Simple speech navigation would be included as well, so users can operate menus, press buttons and control the mouse by voice.

The program will be customizable by adding words to the user's personal vocabulary.

Since efficient Speech Recognition requires high quality sound input, MacDictate will include a high quality preamp and microphone headset.

A summary of MacDictate's (proposed) feature set includes:

• Continuous Speech Recognition -- Dictation in normal tone of voice and at a normal pace
• Direct Dictation -- Dictate, edit, format and correct text directly in any application
• Text Macro Capabilities -- Insert limited (128 character) standardized or predetermined phrases and text - with a single spoken phrase
• Specialized Vocabulary Creation -- Add more words and customize vocabulary for your specific needs
• Speech Navigation -- Open, close and control applications and navigate the desktop by speech
• Speech Ready Application Support -- Application Programmer's Interface allows other application vendors to easily integrate speech into their applications to provide greater accuracy and more functionality
• Large Vocabulary -- Active vocabulary of greater than 30,000 words. More words available in backup vocabulary
• Dictation Playback -- Text to speech / read-back capabilities
• Multiple User Support -- Multiple users create their own speech files on the same computer
• Platform Compatible -- Easy speech file transferability across entire Macintosh computer line
• Microphone/Preamp Included -- High quality preamp and headset microphone included

MacSpeech Ltd has also arranged a deal with VXI Corporation to offer a high quality microphone headset in advance of shipping their continuous speech dictation software product, MacDictate. This microphone works with all Macintoshs and was rated best performing by Dragon Systems for dictation software. The unit includes VXI's patented noise reduction amplifier, which claims to virtually eliminate breath noises, low frequency hum and some other background noises.

MacSpeech offers the microphone headset with a $40 discount towards the purchase of MacDictate Professional or a $20 discount towards the purchase of the standard MacDictate dictation product. You must purchase the dictation product directly from MacSpeech to be eligible for the discount.

The dictation product you receive with this discount will not include a microphone headset. Price is $43 plus tax and shipping.

And MacSpeech's lawyers have advised them to say this: "MacSpeech is not currently shipping any dictation software products. MacSpeech may never be able to ship any dictation software product."

For more information on the microphone headset offer, go to: http://www.macspeech.com.

• System 7.5 - System 8.6 compatible
• Requires 150Mhz or greater PowerPC w/ 48 MB RAM -- (Recommended: G3 and 64 MB RAM)
• Proposed Price in the $150 - $225 range

The high-end product, MacSpeech MacDictate Professional, would include in addition to the feature set of the standard version, very large Text Macros and extensive customization through command and control scripts. You will be able to create complex scripts (a series of commands) to automate repetitive tasks, and also create scripts to do simple things such as open a stationary file or send email.

MacDictate Professional would also contain the feature set of MacDictate plus the following additional features: large Text Macros, additional command and control and customized scripting.

Additional Feature Summary (proposed) of MacDictate Professional:

• Enhanced Text Macro Capabilities -- Instead of just 128 characters, you can insert very large standardized or predetermined phrases and text - with a single spoken phrase
• Additional Command and Control Capability -- Speech control of the computer through built-in normal language and individually created commands
• Customized Scripting -- Automation of individual and multiple sequential script commands
• AppleScript Compatible -- Ability to take advantage of Apple's built-in scripting language
• Proposed Price in the $250 - $350 range

Speech Ready Application

A Speech Ready Application is a program from another company that has been modified to use speech input resulting in faster, more accurate dictation and a more powerful user interface. A Speech Ready Application knows about speech as an input device just like it knows about the keyboard or mouse. Instead of receiving a keystroke at a time, a Speech Ready Application can receive blocks of text and complex commands, which means a much faster response to your dictation and commands.

Speech Ready Applications can also define text macros and scripts to help you use the application more effectively. An Example might be:

"Select paragraph, make it bold."

Speech Ready Applications use our own Application Programmers Interface (API) to achieve these capabilities.

MacSpeech's Speech Ready Software Developers Kit is a simple API and tools to integrate dictation and command and control with custom vocabularies into software products. The result is faster and more accurate dictation and the ability to control applications by voice. Custom scripts can be added to vocabularies to simplify complex tasks, allowing special products to be built with speech as the central user interface.

The company is tentatively expecting to release its MacDictate products by the end of 1999.

You really gotta wish these guys well. MacSpeech is soliciting input from the Mac community on what we are looking for in a dictation software product. You can fill in a survey form at their Website .

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November 21, 2008