Interesting article popped up today on various Mac blogs about Apple intregrating dictation onto the Mac like they did with Siri on iOS. This renewed interest by OS makers to tightly integrate voice recognition and push it to the forefront of Human Computer Interaction is nice to see.

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/05/23/os-x-mountain-lion-adding-offline-safari-reading-list-mode-and-dictation-to-mac/

Max Roth
Maker of DynamicKeyboardOne for Naturally Speaking. 

ErgoArchitect Assistive Technologies - 

ShowNumbers Plus! Addon to Naturally Speaking - 

www.ergoarchitect.com 

Max, I read your bold prediction about DNS 12 being "the last of its kind" with great interest. You and I are on the same page there. Frankly, seeing Dictation in Mountain Lion wouldn't surprise me because I believe that Siri in OS X is inevitable (if not Mountain Lion, than the next big cat release). I'm not sold on this particular rumor though. The Dictation shortcut is "new to 'Moutation Lion'" -- seems like a ridiculous gaffe, even for an engineer :-)

The other thing I can't reconcile is - what's Nuance stand to gain here? There relationship with Apple is so secretive that (to the best of my knowledge) Nuance hasn't even acknowledged that it's doing the heavy lifting with Siri's speech recognition. One can assume that Nuance will be powering the eventual Dictation and Siri on OS X, and one can assume that Nuance is being fairly compensated for this arrangement... but Nuance has pushed Dragon Dictate 2.5 for Mac pretty hard lately. In addition to a fairly robust Dragon option, the Mac App Store also offers the low-cost, bare bones Dragon Express option. In short, if Dictation is embedded into OS X then Nuance will be cannibalizing not one, but two products.

Is the thought that embedded speech recognition will serve as an appetizer for robust speech recognition? "If you liked Dictation, try Dragon!" But I don't see it. Nuance is rather entrenched in the medical and enterprise markets, and has been working to expand the Dragon platform (i.e., Dragon TV, Dragon Drive)... I wonder if Nuance would consider spinning off its consumer speech recognition business?

Usual disclaimer: this is all (barely-)eductated guessing.

Eric Wright At work: DNS 12 Pro. At home: DNS 11.5 Pro,  KnowBrainer 2011, and Utter Command by RedStart Systems; Dragon Dictate 3 for Mac

Appetite for Dictation - My Blog

Great post GDS. IMO, Nuance is being dragged kicking and screaming into this new paradigm as now the real competition is between the big three for voice control on the desktop. The desktop OS is being phased out (like it or not) and the mobile varieties are replacements. We are in a weird middle phase here (look at Windows 8 being two distinct OSs running clumsily alongside each other- this will be fixed though but it shows the inevitableness in the demise of the traditional OS).

Now, Microsoft already has speech and will be deeply integrating it across the entire platform of devices, and so does Google. Apple doesn't so it has to partner with Nuance. Nuance will go along reluctantly because it would risk being shut out of the market entirely if Apple rolled their own. All these other Nuance products are just stop gaps (though highly profitable ones in the near term) really. Eventually, they'll be phased out too as the OS makers integrate voice control themselves and developers start using the builtin APIs. Developer, developers, developers as  Steve Balmer says. Well, once speech aware apps start coming in the thousands, it will be all over.

So, how does Nuance benefit? In this wierd middle period, a lot! The competition still needs to mature their products and Nuance is way ahead. So, voice recongition gets more mainstream users, and their sales go up. Along the same lines was their buying Swype (a brilliant move) in order to buy mindshare on Android and gain a foot hold. It will work for the short term as voice recognition on Android is not much more than a button on the virtual keyboard. So Nuance gets to replace Google's functionality with their own. Unfortunately, as Google integrates voice recognition deeper in their OS, it won't be so easy to replace as is a button on a virtual keyboard. That can be done with money. Integrating a 3rd party voice recongition solution into an OS stack built around voice recogntiion is impossible.

Facebook faces the same challenge as Nuance really as we move into mobile. They are going to be relegated to just a database because social needs to be fused into the DNA of the operating system. Facebook will lose control of how the data is presented in the long run and eventually, the big three will just replace that database with their own and control the full experience. Look, Microsoft is already doing it by integrating facebook into the phone OS. Facebook probably does it reluctantly cause they see what's coming down the road. Nuance is in the same boat.

Max Roth
DynamicKeyboardOne for Naturally Speaking

ErgoArchitect Assistive Technologies - 

ShowNumbers Plus! Addon to Naturally Speaking - 

www.ergoarchitect.com 

Max,

I do note that you seem to have a hard time typing the word "recognition" correctly. Would that be just another materialization of the "phasing out" syndroms that you are referring to?

Rüdiger

Well, it's past the point where we can make any changes in the code, but we can still make changes to the Easter Egg!

Haha! You are right. This new phase has lots of bugs!  

Max Roth

DynamicKeyboardOne for Naturally Speaking

ErgoArchitect Assistive Technologies - 

ShowNumbers Plus! Addon to Naturally Speaking - 

www.ergoarchitect.com 

Oh, forgot to address about spinning off. I thought this should have happened years ago but I was wrong (Chuck is right about predictions!). Nuance still has all these niches and will try to carve out more. They may well grow as voice recognition becomes mainstream and these niches grow. However, my point is that the Desktop is a lost battle. Hence why I believe DNS as we know it is at its end. Niche versions will survive and thrive though.

Max Roth

DynamicKeyboardOne for Naturally Speaking 

ErgoArchitect Assistive Technologies - 

ShowNumbers Plus! Addon to Naturally Speaking - 

www.ergoarchitect.com 

I find all of Max's predictions interesting. However, keep in mind that over the last 25 years there have been many predictions relative to one thing or the other, or the eventual demise, disappearing, or doing away with this, that, or the other thing.

One should note that the accuracy of such predictions falls in the range of about 5%. So, just keep in mind that you're more likely to be wrong than right.

Chuck Runquist
Technical Project Manager
VoiceTeach LLC
Home of VoicePower®: We don't make Dragon NaturallySpeaking, We make it better!

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three. - Alice Kahn

Here's more interesting data about the coming voice recognition apocalypse. Speculation is that facebook is going to release their own phone to try to stay relevant in mobile.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/27/facebook-reportedly-building-phone-with-iphone-engineers/  

As I mention earlier, Nuance faces the same problem as facebook. A good question is if we'll see a Nuance phone? -Looks into crystal ball- Yes! It would be crazy for Nuance not to release an Android variant with deep voice recognition integration. If not for the phone, than for tablets and PCs. They already have something similar for cars and televisions. They could leverage this in health care and still have foot holds on Mac and Windows PC. It's the natural progression.

Max Roth
DynamicKeyboardOne for Naturally Speaking changes lives!

ErgoArchitect Assistive Technologies - 

ShowNumbers Plus! Addon to Naturally Speaking - 

www.ergoarchitect.com 

Another link from Tim Cook at D10 today. Apparently, 'doubling down' on Siri.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/29/tim-cook-apple-doubling-down-on-siri-stay-tuned-on-facebook/  

Max Roth
DynamicKeyboardOne for NatuallySpeaking

ErgoArchitect Assistive Technologies - 

ShowNumbers Plus! Addon to Naturally Speaking - 

www.ergoarchitect.com 

Nuance really has Apple by the balls, at least for now.

Google had the good sense to anticipate the need for speech recognition and thus launched its free 411 service years ago in order to start data collection. That entire Mike:, one of the founders of nuance, to bill the speech recognition engine from scratch.

Apple just watched all of this happen and ended up having to buy a series and also by the technology from nuance. I would be baffled if they hadn't snapped up a bunch of speech recognition engineers and started building up their own technology, though it may be easier for them just to buy nuance at some point. But Paul Ritchie is no dummy, so it will be interesting to see what happens. And I have not heard any reports of top speech engineers joining Apple