Editing MacSpeech (section)

=== MacSpeech Dictate ===
In January 2008, iListen was discontinued, and replaced by  "MacSpeech Dictate" (released February 15, 2008). The firm abandoned the Philips speech engine in favor of the speech-recognition engine Nuance used in its [[Dragon NaturallySpeaking]] product for PC. MacSpeech Dictate was a winner of the MacWorld 2008 Best of Show award.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.macworld.com/article/131642/2008/01/bos.html|title=Macworld Expo Best of Show award winners|work=macworld.com|accessdate=16 July 2016}}</ref> In 2009, the firm released several editions of its   products for the MacIntosh, including MacSpeech Dictate Medical, MacSpeech Dictate Legal and MacSpeech Dictate International.

MacSpeech Dictate ran as a Mac-native application. It used the Dragon speech recognition engine (v9 or v10), licensed from [[Nuance Communications]]. This is the same technology that powers speech recognition in Dragon [[NaturallySpeaking]] for the PC, although across platforms there are significant differences in features, functionality and integration. One major difference with MacSpeech Dictate was that it did not allow training by typing misrecognized words as Dragon NaturallySpeaking products do on Windows. Another notable difference was the lack of a transcription feature for recorded voice dictation, as found in NaturallySpeaking. MacSpeech released a separate product, [[MacSpeech Scribe]], to handle this.

MacSpeech Dictate Medical, a version with specialized vocabularies for doctors and dentists, was released in June 2009.<ref>{{cite web |date=2009-06-18 |title=MacSpeech, Inc. Releases MacSpeech Dictate Medical |url=http://www.macspeech.com/article_info.php?articles_id=324 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110101105208/http://www.macspeech.com/article_info.php?articles_id=324 |archivedate=2011-01-01 |accessdate=2010-06-25}}</ref> MacSpeech Dictate Legal, with specialized vocabulary for lawyers, was released in July 2009.<ref>{{cite web |date=2009-07-01 |title=MacSpeech, Inc. Ships MacSpeech Dictate Legal |url=http://www.macspeech.com/article_info.php?articles_id=328 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110101105105/http://www.macspeech.com/article_info.php?articles_id=328 |archivedate=2011-01-01 |accessdate=2010-06-25}}</ref> MacSpeech Dictate International, with support for speech recognition in English, French, German and Italian, was released in September 2009.<ref>{{cite web |date=2009-09-15 |title=MacSpeech, Inc. Ships MacSpeech Dictate International |url=http://www.macspeech.com/article_info.php?articles_id=335 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100108130736/http://www.macspeech.com/article_info.php?articles_id=335 |archivedate=2010-01-08 |accessdate=2010-06-25}}</ref> Localized versions of MacSpeech Dictate are available in German, French and Italian.<ref>{{cite web |date=2009-09-15 |title=MacSpeech Dictate Localized In German, French and Italian |url=http://www.macspeech.com/article_info.php?articles_id=334 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100124070231/http://www.macspeech.com/article_info.php?articles_id=334 |archivedate=2010-01-24 |accessdate=2010-06-25}}</ref> It has never been available in Spanish.

The original release used Dragon's v9 speech recognition engine. Version 1.5 was released in May 2009, and gained Microsoft Word integration, vocabulary editing features, and the Dragon v10 engine. Version 2.0 was released in September 2010, after the Dragon acquisition, and was renamed Dragon Dictate for Mac. Version 2 had the Dragon v11 engine, new voice commands for text editing, and a text-to-speech proofreading feature.

MacSpeech Dictate 1.0 was reviewed by [[David Pogue]] of ''[[The New York Times]]'', who said it filled a "big [hole] in the Macintosh landscape", but criticized it as inferior to Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9.0 for Windows.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Pogue |first=David |date=2008-01-24 |title=New Tools to Bolster Mac's World |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/technology/personaltech/24pogue.html |access-date=2023-02-04 |issn=0362-4331}}</ref>