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

Tuesday February 16, 2010 7:05 am PST by Eric Slivka
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.
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thogs_cave
26 months ago
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:
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MCIowaRulz
26 months ago
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.
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MacFly123
26 months ago
Why do I get the inkling that Apple might end up buying this company in the future? :eek:
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Dicx
26 months ago
I hope Nuance doesn't ruin it.
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cogitodexter
26 months ago
It would be nice if Dragon Dictation was available on the UK iTunes store...
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SFStateStudent
26 months ago
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:
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distortedloop
26 months ago
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.
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MacSlut
26 months ago
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!
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Friscohoya
26 months ago
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.
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RaZaK
26 months ago
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
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