MacSpeech Unveils Dictate

Longtime Macintosh speech recognition developer MacSpeech has announced a brand new product at Macworld Conference & Expo, called MacSpeech Dictate.

MacSpeech Dictate will utilize some underlying dictation technology from Nuance, developers of Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC. Nuance provides an exceptional dictation technology engine that lets us focus on what we do best, which is to provide the user experience Macintosh users expect, said Andrew Taylor, president and CEO of MacSpeech.

MacSpeech said this isn't just a new product, but a total rewrite of speech technology on the Mac. The company said that training Dictate usually takes under five minutes with an accuracy level of 99 percent.

Dictate also lets people perform basic navigation of their Mac and control it with their voice using familiar commands like print, cut, copy and paste.

Dictate requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or higher, and requires Intel-based Macintosh hardware. Coming with your choice of headsets, Dictate will be priced starting at US$199 and is expected to ship by February 15, 2008. Registered customers of iListen will be eligible to purchase MacSpeech Dictate for $99.

MacSpeech is demoing Dictate at its booth during this week's Macworld Expo.

See PC World's  ongoing coverage of Macworld Expo at our Mac InfoCenter.