Voice recognition software for the Mac OS X operating system continues to be available for quite several years now, but the performance of the Mac programs has not been as good as the PC applications that are identical until fairly recently. When the Intel processor was embraced by Apple a large progress became possible, and today Mac users are not at a relative disadvantage.
The development of voice recognition applications for computers was a popular target that proved to be a large challenge for software suppliers during the 1980s. It took quite a long time to evolve into dependable and efficient systems that were adequately practical to get a substantial following of users.
From the late 1990s there were two main suppliers in this market for the Apple Mac computers. They were IBM with their product ViaVoice, along with a modest start-up company called MacSpeech using a product called ListenDo! In 2000 IBM produced a Millennium version of ViaVoice and MacSpeech established iListen, both of which were major improvements in operation that worked well enough to win on a growing marketplace. The two products shared the Mac market around half each.
Meanwhile Windows PC voice recognition software users were presented with a choice between IBM’s ViaVoice along with a product produced by Dragon. Dragon Naturally Speaking emerged as a stronger offering and by 2003 IBM announced that it was withdrawing in the voice recognition software marketplace for both the Windows PC and Mac marketplaces.
Dragon Naturally Speaking dictation applications and voice recognition came to control its sector of the marketplace for the Windows PC. The quality of the software continued to evolve and is now a practical and very useable alternative popular with many users.
Using the withdrawal of IBM’s ViaVoice software for the Mac, MacSpeech became the main voice recognition software supplier for the Mac.
A part of the problem that MacSpeech in fitting the operation of the Dragon applications had was related to the technology differences between the PowerPC processor used on the Intel processor and also the Mac used on the PC. MacSpeech produced, in 2008, a fresh version of its own software called MacSpeech Dictate, when Apple chose to switch to utilizing the Intel chip technology in the Mac.
Mac users aren’t any longer at a disadvantage in comparison to PC users when it comes to voice recognition and dictation applications, now. Speech recognition applications enables rewarding productivity increases, and gives access to computers to those people who have trouble utilizing the usual keyboard and mouse devices to input data and commands.
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