IBM’s new ViaVoice
for Mac delivers the power of continuous speech recognition to
make good on the promise of convenient, hands-free computing.
“This allows people to use voice instead of keyboard for things
like dictation and editing text,” says Ozzie Osborne (no
relation), general manager for speech systems at IBM.
“It takes full advantage of the Mac interface and the Mac OS. And
we didn’t just match the Mac software interface.  We
also developed a microphone that accepts different color accents, so
you can clip on a color to match your system.”
It’s Flexible
Handling tasks such as reports, letters, email and other writing
projects, ViaVoice for Mac lets you speak in a continuous, natural
manner, then transfers text to your favorite Mac program such as
AppleWorks or Microsoft Word. More than one person can use ViaVoice
for Mac on the same computer.
“ViaVoice for Mac is part of our continuing effort to make it
easier and more natural for people to interact with their
computer,” says Krishna Nathan, director of consumer voice systems
at IBM.
IBM speech recognition technology is based on the company’s 30
years of research and development in the field. With a portfolio of
more than 100 patents, IBM boasts an established R&D business
that includes researchers worldwide and a robust, proven speech
technology available in many languages.
ViaVoice for Mac includes a 64,000 active word vocabulary and
integrates Apple’s text-to-speech function to let Apple computers
read text back to the user. Also included is a newly designed noise-cancelling
microphone for Mac users.
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The Apple Store offers
convenient online ordering—24 hours a day, every day.
It’s smart — it knows how to handle numbers, dates, times,
measures and prices, along with custom dictation macros which
establish shortcuts for recognizing your most commonly used
expressions.
Just Close Your Eyes…
What do real-world users think? Writing for The
San Diego Union-Tribue, David Horrigan raves, “A column that I
would normally spend four or five hours writing now takes half that
time, and both the software and I are still learning. I can close my
eyes and imagine the scene as I describe it to the reader, and as
fast as the words flow out of my mouth, they’re on paper. It’s a
sight to behold.”
Announced by Osborne and Apple iCEO Steve Jobs during the July,
1999, Macworld/NY
keynote, ViaVoice for Macintosh is just arriving at stores.
“We’re shipping it now — you can get it through the catalogs
— and it should be in major retail and office stores very shortly
if it’s not there already,” says Osborne.
IBM’s Ozzie Osborne
described the wonders of ViaVoice at Macworld Expo/NY in July, 1999. |
