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It's been a dozen years since MacSpeech came out with some of the first speech recognition software for Mac users, but that hasn't stopped the company from innovating.
In the last five months, the 20-employee business has released two major upgrades to its MacSpeech software that have added a slew of new features.
In late February, Salem, N.H.-based MacSpeech released MacSpeech Dictate 1.3. Just a few months before in November, MacSpeech Dictate 1.2 came out. The software costs $199 and includes a headset microphone for dictation.
Here are a few of the new capabilities from the latest versions of MacSpeech's software:
- Phrase training allows users to correct erroneous phrases they have introduced to a document in real time;
- Spelling mode allows users to dictate not just words and phrases, but letters for the purposes of spelling out acronyms and correcting spelling errors;
- Navigation allows users to move the cursor in a document around using voice commands;
- Scanning allows users to scan in already created documents and then edit and add text to them using voice commands.
Humble Beginnings
Back in late 1996, MacSpeech founder and CEO Andrew Taylor saw that speech recognition software for Windows-based PCs was on the verge of leaving the Mac platform far behind.
However, he didn't have the cash to finance the development of speech recognition technology for the Mac.
"We were initially bootstrapped," Taylor told MacNewsWorld. "My parents put in some money and I put in some money."
Taylor came up with a unique solution for his money problems -- he created MacSpeech T-shirts and sold them for $99 each. Every shirt came with a serial number to identify the buyer.
In exchange, Taylor promised that each T-shirt buyer would receive two free copies of the MacSpeech software once it was developed and ready for release.
"We had 800 people send us $100," Taylor said. "It was sufficient to bring in the second round of financing, which came from an investment banking group in Florida called 'Strategica.'"
In July 1999, at the Macworld Expo in New York, MacSpeech gave away free preview release copies of its first speech recognition product, dubbed 'iListen 1.0,' which enabled Mac users to speak to their Macs in a normal, natural voice and have their words appear on the screen.
Years later at Macworld Expo 2008, MacSpeech Dictate won a Macworld Best of Show Award.
For Disabled, Busy Folks and Writers
MacSpeech Dictate's primary audience is people with disabilities, writers, and people who are too busy -- or too unskilled -- to deal with keyboards.
No single segment dominates the bulk of MacSpeech's customer base, though many early adopters tended to be people who could not use a keyboard for one reason or another.
"We get a lot of writers too, who are capable of typing at very high rates of speed, but this way, they can focus on their thoughts and what they're writing, instead of typing," Taylor said.
Despite MacSpeech's popularity, the speech recognition software market is still dominated by Windows-based PCs.
"If you're looking at sheer quantity of machines, then yeah, there's more demand on the Windows side," Taylor acknowledged. "But you could say the same thing about any application. The thing is, there's no one else doing speech recognition for the Mac other than MacSpeech."
The company doesn't tend to target those who use speech recognition software on their Windows PCs. Instead, its focus remains on providing Mac users with the most advanced speech recognition software available, he said.
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