Vista's Windows Speech Recognition has the "cool factor so characteristic of Apple products"

It's always fun to hear comments about what we're working so hard on here at Microsoft in the Speech group. Today, another interesting blog post hit my radar. You can read it for yourself here.

Here's an excerpt:

On a lark I decided to tinker with the voice recognition software shipped with Vista and to my surprise I was extremely impressed! Did I say extremely …no, let me make that profoundly impressed as in blown away. Not only is it intuitive and easy to use but it is almost as accurate as my well trained DragonDictate. I had heard this was a hidden gem in Vista and I agree.

Training Vista to type as you speak is extremely simple and for a Microsoft program the interface is uncharacteristically intuitive, beautifully designed and user-friendly. Imagine that, an intuitive Microsoft application that just plain works. I’m sure Apple users would feel very comfortable with it. One can only fantasize how the world would change if the Vista speech recognition development team were allowed to reengineer the operating system.

The sophistication and exquisite implementation of the Vista speech recognition software is only superseded by Microsoft’s negligence in not taking advantage of it to promote Vista. A demonstration of the software illustrating how easy it is to take control of your PC, using a simple headset, would make one very impressive commercial. I’m sure, even if the potential customers had no intention of using speech recognition technology would be impressed. It definitely has the cool factor so characteristic of Apple products.

If Microsoft ever decides to really market this technology, they could become the company setting the bar for speech recognition. The folks at Nuance should be sweating blood but I suspect they are relieved most Vista users don’t know they no longer need DragonDictate.