Announcing Dragon NaturallySpeaking Semi-Pro 11
No, its not true. Nor am I practicing for April's Fool. But it has become obvious that Nuance needs to reconsider its marketing line-up vis-à-vis WSR. They tried various sub-Preferred variants, and I think there is still a Standard option in the line-up.
But the real gap lies between Preferred and Pro, where WSR has bridged the gap with a single product. Historically the Pro product was needed to maintain relationships with vendors and to provide cash flow, but I think both of those conditions have vanished in the new competitive market. Basically WSR is continuing to bleed away non-physician Pro users simply because it's scripting capabilities are potentially far more powerful.
Admittedly the Pro-scripting market is this sub-niche of a niche, but it is still a significant group of people in the user community because of their high rate of participation in aftermarket support groups like speechcomputing.com and MSspeech.com -- basically they are trendsetters and opinion makers who have disproportionate influence on other users and purchasers.
What Nuance can do to address this new, changed market is to introduce a product that provides affordable scripting capabilities. If they are unwilling to simply change the price of the Pro line, then a feasible solution is to acquire the rights to an external scripting product like Vocola, or Unimacro, or VoicePower, or KnowBrainer.
Microsoft has used this model to extend its product line from the beginning -- indeed, that is how they acquired an SR product. Admittedly Microsoft has a lot more money to play with than Nuance, but surely they're throwing off enough cash now to think about how to expand the product to counteract the competition.
I offer them this advice gratis -- they don't even have to thank me 
Bruce
Dragon NaturallySpeaking SemiPro
Dear Bruce,
I agree wholeheartedly!
The gap is between preferred and pro.
And it's big, both in terms of functionality AND price.
I don't recommend Nuance try to acquire any of the existing external scripting systems such as vocola, Unimacro, VoicePower or KnowBrainer. First this costs money, second they'd only acquire one or two at most and then, to recoup their investment, make sure the others would cease to work.
Instead they should simply include scripting capability as-is into the SemiPro version. And, they should officially allow the external scripting systems to work with their software.
With the dependence on Joel Gould's software they should challenge the community of external scripting developers to work with them to produce a replacement or upgrade of Joel's software to assure the continued possibility for the external scripting systems to work.
Allowing and indeed encouraging the external scripting systems is good business sense. There is minimal to be invested and maximum gain (and/or minimum loss of users to MSR).
Dragon once produced its own microphone and dictation machine. Now they simply buy mikes from manufacturers, and certify mikes (although Chuck has indicated that certification isn't what it once was). This makes common sense as the field of good microphones and hand-held digital dictation machines has grown. Dragon / now Nuance could never meet all the various demand options.
The same applies to add-on functionality to the basic speech recognition software. So many different users with so many different needs and/or personal preferences exist that no single macro package could ever cover them all.
Most of us agree that each of the add-on packages which currently exist has its good sides, and each has at least some drawbacks. Some are better for users with programming skills, some for those without. Some are great for quickies, but less useful for more complex needs. Some, such as KnowBrainer, address the needs and preferences of users who want as much as possible already there, hence the thousands of macros in the package.
In the recent challenge on this forum about what cannot be done by Nuance's own professional macro functions that vocola can do, the simple answer was the _anything feature. This is a great example of an option essential for lots of users, but beyond what many others would ever need or want.
The disappearance from the Nuance basic product of functionality to convert numbers from text to digits and vice-versa is another example where Nuance could simply leave it up to 3rd party add-ons to cover this feature which they, in their wisdom decided was no longer an essential need.
If Nuance fails to recognize these needs they will loose more and more of the professional users to MSR. And that will be a VERY BAD THING, not only for them, but for us as a community.
Therefore, thanks Bruce, for starting this discussion. I hope many others will chime in, and perhaps somehow a whiff will reach Nuance ...
olaf-michael
Subset of much larger challenge
And that challenge is getting nuance to respond at all. To be fair, nuance is treating the product like a business concern and not a research project. if I understand the internal dynamic correctly, if a feature or even a bug fix cannot show direct correlation to increased revenue through sales or upgrades, then there is no reason to implement the feature or bug fix.
That's a very sensible approach. If there was competition, this approach would result in continuous improvement in the product. Without competition, we have multi-release bugs that persist such as the problems with the natural text and the really abysmal user interface for corrections. If memory serves, many of the user interface elements of NaturallySpeaking are fundamentally unchanged from their speech recognition-user-unfriendly form in version 1.0. But again, this is a commonsense approach because most users will actually speaking have working hands and it's only a fairly small minority of users that are disabled. (witness the relatively small population on this board, previous mailing lists, etc.)
If I were King? I would do more than just open up the macro engine side of things. I would open up the dictation box, the user interface for corrections, and create a useful API. This would do more than anything to tie people into Dragon if it is truly useful, flexible and helps people get their work done.
And Bruce, they don't need to do anything special to create the scripting version that works with a third-party scripting tool. Preferred works just fine. All they need to do is change the license so that we can do it we want without looking over our shoulders at a possible legal onslaught.
plugh wrote: And that
And that challenge is getting nuance to respond at all. To be fair, nuance is treating the product like a business concern and not a research project. if I understand the internal dynamic correctly, if a feature or even a bug fix cannot show direct correlation to increased revenue through sales or upgrades, then there is no reason to implement the feature or bug fix.
That's a very sensible approach. If there was competition, this approach would result in continuous improvement in the product. Without competition, we have multi-release bugs that persist such as the problems with the natural text and the really abysmal user interface for corrections. If memory serves, many of the user interface elements of NaturallySpeaking are fundamentally unchanged from their speech recognition-user-unfriendly form in version 1.0. But again, this is a commonsense approach because most users will actually speaking have working hands and it's only a fairly small minority of users that are disabled. (witness the relatively small population on this board, previous mailing lists, etc.)
If I were King? I would do more than just open up the macro engine side of things. I would open up the dictation box, the user interface for corrections, and create a useful API. This would do more than anything to tie people into Dragon if it is truly useful, flexible and helps people get their work done.
And Bruce, they don't need to do anything special to create the scripting version that works with a third-party scripting tool. Preferred works just fine. All they need to do is change the license so that we can do it we want without looking over our shoulders at a possible legal onslaught.
Interesting comments, plugh, but you and I are talking in different channels. My point was how to expand the product range and appeal by means of an intermediate scripting capability, a niche now richly populated by third-party and freeware offerings. My comments had nothing to do with research but rather a genuine business opportunity that now seems to have been taken.
I don't agree with some of your points, as follows:
The correction interface seems just fine to me -- try out WSR to see an inadequate user capability. But Nuance should be embarrassed at the various snafus that prevent flawless use of the existing capabilities, like the occasionally errant operation of "Select n" etc. I suggest starting a topic dedicated to your problems with/proposals for the correction interface.
Again, the dictation box works fine for me, but if not for you, I suggest opening a separate topic to detail your problems/proposals.
Finally, I'm incredulous that you aren't cognizant of the massive incremental improvements in DNS over the years! I mean such things as:
- Astoundingly improved accuracy
- Vastly more efficient user training protocols
- Usefully improved word property manipulation
There are other improvements I pass over.
Finally, excuse my obtuse mind, but I don't understand your problems with the user license, which Nuance has crystallized and liberalized to suit users' practices by alowing multiple installs of the same licensed copy, like home and office machines and portable devices. I suggest a third topic to expand your thoughts on this issue.
In sum, you have a diversity of rich topics to expand on. I hope you will expand our discourse in each of these areas!
Bruce
BruceCyr wrote: The
The correction interface seems just fine to me -- try out WSR to see an inadequate user capability. But Nuance should be embarrassed at the various snafus that prevent flawless use of the existing capabilities, like the occasionally errant operation of "Select n" etc. I suggest starting a topic dedicated to your problems with/proposals for the correction interface.
I can't drive it by speech only. the problem has been around since dns 1.0 (and I still have those cd's)
Finally, I'm incredulous that you aren't cognizant of the massive incremental improvements in DNS over the years! I mean such things as:
- Astoundingly improved accuracy
- Vastly more efficient user training protocols
- Usefully improved word property manipulation
There are other improvements I pass over.
dication box and "improved recognition" are the only things that have made a difference. and recognition is not all that improved. it is better but more fragile.
Finally, excuse my obtuse mind, but I don't understand your problems with the user license, which Nuance has crystallized and liberalized to suit users' practices by alowing multiple installs of the same licensed copy, like home and office machines and portable devices. I suggest a third topic to expand your thoughts on this issue.
re lisc.
they want you to pay a tribute to do what you should be free to do and they give you what in return. I've been paying my upgrade fees on dns pro since 1.0 and I feel a little burned. I wish MS would finish WSR and give nuance a wake up call.
this also tells me that DNS has so little product differentiation between versions, that they are vulnerable to creative little 3d party shops.
in the end, I'll keep paying a tribute to nuance because I have no choice and praying my critical bugs line up with their to-fix bug lists.
plugh, Sorry you declined to
plugh,
Sorry you declined to share your thoughts despite the profusion of verbiage you superfluously quoted.
Maybe the best thing for you is to raise specific issues and solicit feedback with the hope of improving your practices. So much experience yet you still seem to have newbie-like problems! Why not start with the correction dialog problems?
Bruce