MacSpeech

MacSpeech Dictate

Voice recognition isn't really mentioned that much, but I do imagine things being like Star Trek one day. I'd like to say 'lights, lower' or 'play me something relaxing' and it just happens. Mac OS X does have some speech recognition built in, but it's for more simple input, like asking what time it is, or closing windows etc.

Until now, to get really decent speech recognition you had to look at the PC, mainly products like
Dragon's Natural Speech software.

Well finally there appears to be a decent product for the Mac, without having to rely on BootCamp or a virtualizaiton product. It's called
MacSpeech Dictate which uses the same technology behind the Dragon software!

This should free up a lot of people that may have wanted a Mac, but had to go down the PC route because they needed this sort of technology. It's not really just for people too lazy to type, but is an important way to input text for those who may have no other means to do so.

It may be still in Beta, but that didn't stop it picking up a Best of Show award at MacWorld 2008 recently. It should ship in February.