[MV] Which Voice Recog Software for Transcribing

[Chuck Rogers]

All:

Here's the thing about David Pogue. We love David. He's the closest  
thing for the Mac to Guy Kawasaki since Guy left Apple (not that  
David works for Apple, but you catch my drift).

But we also have a problem with David. And it is such a small  
problem, really: we need him to look at a recent version of iListen.

In (I think) December 2004, he wrote in a column in the NY Times that  
he had tried ViaVoice and iListen, but did not find them as accurate  
or as capable as Dragon NaturallySpeaking. At Macworld Expo in  
January of 2005 we had many people come up to our booth, distressed  
about those comments. So I asked David directly: when did he last  
look at our product. He replied that he hadn't looked at it in 2 years!

That means his comments were based on software that ran on Mac OS 9  
in 2002 and really had little bearing on the constant improvements we  
had introduced since then.

I immediately sent him a copy of our software, and he assured me he  
would try it. Since then, we have emailed back and forth a couple of  
times, and each time I ask if he has tried iListen again - each time  
he did not favor me the courtesy of a reply (which is OK, he's a busy  
guy). The last time I emailed him, incidentally, I asked if there was  
a time I could come to New York - at his convenience - to show him  
through the software, since I realize he may be too busy to fully  
work through it on his own. (Again, no reply.)

We totally understand if he wants to continue using Dragon  
NaturallySpeaking for his own work. Like I said, he's a busy guy, and  
we certainly can't expect him to expend all the effort that would be  
necessary to create a totally new profile from scratch with iListen.  
We aren't asking that. We just want him to try it, and be able to  
tell people "yes - it's improved. I can see where someone just  
starting out could use this very well."

The bottom line is that a well-trained profile is like a broken in  
pair of shoes, or that cast iron pan that you've seasoned. Starting  
over would require a lot of effort breaking the new thing in. We get  
that. But until he actually tries a more recent version of our  
software, he can't be relied on to have an informed opinion about how  
ours fares, that's all.

(Oh - there's a lesson in there somewhere. Backup your profile  
frequently.)


Best Regards,

Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.


On Feb 22, 2006, at 9:41 PM, Wyldceltic1 wrote:

> Sounds like David Pogue. He's written all sorts of tech books for  
> Mac, but uses a PC and dragon Naturally Speaking. Then he sends the  
> texted manuscripts to his Mac.
>
> On Feb 22, 2006, at 6:53 PM, Damien Fox wrote:
>
> hands down, dragon NS for windows :-(
>
> no, im not a troll, just a sad (reverse)switcher... with three macs  
> still, but an CP box for VR.
>
>
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