iListen, developed by MacSpeech, is a speech recognition program for the Apple Macintosh. In 2006, iListen was the only third-party software that allowed inputting text using one's voice that works on newer Macintosh models. Its competitors were Apple's own speech recognition software (built into Mac OS X); Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance, running under Windows virtualization software such as Parallels Desktop for Mac or VMware Fusion; and the discontinued speech recognition program ViaVoice by Nuance/IBM.
MacSpeech, Inc. was a New Hampshire-based technology company that produced software-based speech recognition and voice dictation solutions for the Apple ecosystem. The company's products included iListen, MacSpeech Dictate, MacSpeech Dictate Medical, MacSpeech Dictate Legal, MacSpeech Dictate International, and MacSpeech Scribe. On February 12, 2010, Nuance Communications, Inc. acquired MacSpeech.
Speech recognition is the inter-disciplinary sub-field of computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enables the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition or speech to text (STT). It incorporates knowledge and research in the linguistics, computer science, and electrical engineering fields.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, that designs, develops, and sells consumer electronics, computer software, and online services. It is considered one of the Big Four of technology along with Amazon, Google, and Facebook.
In January 2008, iListen was discontinued by MacSpeech, and was replaced by its new speech recognition program, "Dictate" (released February 15, 2008). "Dictate" uses the same speech-recognition engine as Dragon NaturallySpeaking, having licensed it from Nuance. iListen's speech recognition engine was based on software developed by Philips.
Koninklijke Philips N.V. is a Dutch multinational technology company headquartered in Amsterdam, one of the largest electronics companies in the world, currently focused in the area of healthcare and lighting. It was founded in Eindhoven in 1891 by Gerard Philips and his father Frederik, with their first products being light bulbs. It was once one of the largest electronic conglomerates in the world and currently employs around 74,000 people across 100 countries. The company gained its royal honorary title in 1998 and dropped the "Electronics" in its name in 2013.
MacPaint is a raster graphics editor developed by Apple Computer and released with the original Macintosh personal computer on January 24, 1984. It was sold separately for US$195 with its word processor counterpart, MacWrite. MacPaint was notable because it could generate graphics that could be used by other applications. Using the mouse, and the clipboard and QuickDraw picture language, pictures could be cut from MacPaint and pasted into MacWrite documents.
IBM ViaVoice was a range of language-specific continuous speech recognition software products offered by IBM. The current version is designed primarily for use in embedded devices. The latest stable version of IBM Via Voice was 9.0 and was able to transfer text directly into Word.
PlainTalk is the collective name for several speech synthesis (MacinTalk) and speech recognition technologies developed by Apple Inc. In 1990, Apple invested a lot of work and money in speech recognition technology, hiring many researchers in the field. The result was "PlainTalk", released with the AV models in the Macintosh Quadra series from 1993. It was made a standard system component in System 7.1.2, and has since been shipped on all PowerPC and some other 68k Macintoshes.
Nuance is a U.S. based multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, United States on the outskirts of Boston, that provides speech recognition, and artificial intelligence. Current business products focus on server and embedded speech recognition, telephone call steering systems, automated telephone directory services, and medical transcription software and systems. The company also maintains a small division which does software and system development for military and government agencies based in Westborough, Massachusetts, allegedly called Twined.
Newton OS is the discontinued operating system for the Apple Newton PDAs produced by Apple Computer, Inc. from 1993–1997. Newton OS was written entirely in C++ and trimmed to be low power consuming and use the available memory efficiently. Many applications were pre-installed in the ROM of the Newton and to save on RAM and flash memory storage for user applications.
Stevenote is a colloquial term for keynote speeches given by Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple, at events such as the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, Macworld Expo, and Apple Expo. Because most Apple product releases were first shown to the public at these keynotes, "Stevenotes" caused substantial swings in Apple's stock price.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a speech recognition software package developed by Dragon Systems of Newton, Massachusetts, which merged with Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products and was later acquired by Nuance Communications, formerly known as ScanSoft. It runs on Windows personal computers. Version 15, which supports 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 7, 8 and Windows 10, was released in August 2016. The macOS version is called Dragon Professional Individual for Mac, version 6 or Dragon for Mac.
Speakable items is part of the speech recognition feature in the classic Mac OS and macOS operating systems. It allows the user to control their computer with natural speech, without having to train the computer beforehand. The commands must be present in the Speakable items folder though but can be created with something as simple as a shortcut, AppleScript, keyboard command, or Automator workflows.
A voice-user interface (VUI) makes spoken human interaction with computers possible, using speech recognition to understand spoken commands and questions, and typically text to speech to play a reply. A voice command device (VCD) is a device controlled with a voice user interface.
DragonDictate, Dragon Dictate, or Dragon for Mac is proprietary speech recognition software. The older program, DragonDictate, was originally developed by Dragon Systems for Microsoft Windows. It has now been replaced by Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows, and has since been acquired by Nuance Communications. Dragon Dictate for Mac 2.0 is supported only on Mac OS X 10.6. Nuance's other products for Mac include MacSpeech Scribe.
As of the early 2000s, several speech recognition (SR) software packages exist for Linux. Some of them are free and open-source software and others are proprietary software. Speech recognition usually refers to software that attempts to distinguish thousands of words in a human language. Voice control may refer to software used for communicating operational commands to a computer.
The Macintosh is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Inc. since January 1984. The original Macintosh was the first mass-market personal computer that featured a graphical user interface, built-in screen and mouse. Apple sold the Macintosh alongside its popular Apple II family of computers for almost ten years before they were discontinued in 1993.
The family of Macintosh operating systems developed by Apple Inc. includes the graphical user interface-based operating systems it has designed for use with its Macintosh series of personal computers since 1984, as well as the related system software it once created for compatible third-party systems.
The Voice Navigator was the first voice recognition device for command and control of a graphical user interface. The system was originally designed for the Apple Macintosh Plus and released in 1989. Subsequent versions were created for Microsoft Windows.
MacSpeech Scribe is speech recognition software for Mac OS X designed specifically for transcription of recorded voice dictation. It runs on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The software transcribes dictation recorded by an individual speaker. Typically the speaker will record their dictation using a digital recording device such as a handheld digital recorder, mobile smartphone, or desktop or laptop computer with a suitable microphone. MacSpeech Scribe supports specific audio file formats for recorded dictation: .aif, .aiff, .wav, .mp4, .m4a, and .m4v.
Dragon Dictation started as speech recognition application for Apple's iOS platforms, including iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The app provided automatic speech-to-text capabilities. It was developed by Nuance Communications, and released in December 2009 as a free app. It is now commonly found licensed in vehicle infotainment systems and healthcare equipment.
Michael "Mike" Phillips is the CEO and co-founder of Sense Labs and a pioneer in machine learning, including mobile speech recognition and text-to-speech technology.