Nuance Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Nuance announces Dragon Drive, Siri-like functionality for cars

by Steven Sande (May 25th, 2012)

If you can't get enough of Siri's dulcet tones, then you'll be happy to hear that Nuance -- one of the companies behind Apple's intelligent assistant -- has announced a similar type of functionality that should be coming to cars soon. Dragon Drive replicates the power of Siri so that drivers can ...

Nuance updates its PDF converter for Mac

by Megan Lavey-Heaton (Apr 9th, 2012)

Nuance has released the newest version of its PDF Converter for Mac software. New features introduced include direct connections to cloud services such as PaperPort Anywhere and Evernote, and a FormTyper that converts PDF and paper into electronic forms that can be used online. The release ...

A second look (and listen) to Evi voice recognition for iPhone

by Mel Martin (Feb 7th, 2012)

Evi is the sort-of Siri clone. The $0.99 iPhone app is aimed mainly at people who don't have an iPhone 4S and want a Siri-like voice control experience. When I tried Evi some weeks ago it was a complete disaster. In a week of testing I could not connect once because of server issues. The developers ...

Daily Update for December 21, 2011

by Steven Sande (Dec 21st, 2011)

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the inline player ...

Nuance to acquire rival Vlingo

by Mike Schramm (Dec 21st, 2011)

Nuance, the company behind the Dragon apps and a whole slew of other popular software suites, has decided to acquire its rival Vlingo, another voice-to-text software developer. VentureBeat says it's for an undisclosed sum, but even though the two companies have sued and counter-sued over a ...

The man who provided Siri's voice in the UK

by Steven Sande (Nov 10th, 2011)

Despite Apple's request that he remain anonymous, British voiceover artist Jon Briggs revealed to The Telegraph that he is the voice of Siri in the UK. Briggs received a call from an Apple PR representative last month after the iPhone 4S was launched, and was told that he should not talk ...

Will Dragon speech apps remain in the app store for iPhone 4 owners?

by Mel Martin (Oct 5th, 2011)

It was a bit of a shock to learn yesterday that the terrific Siri app, now owned by Apple, will get pulled from the app store. It's being done, I'm sure, to encourage people to get the Siri technology built into the new iPhone 4S. Although an interview with the co-founder of Siri indicated that ...

Daily Update for September 29, 2011

by Steven Sande (Sep 29th, 2011)

It's the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You'll get all the top Apple stories of the day in three to five minutes, which is perfect for a quick review of what's happening in the Apple world. You can listen to today's Apple stories by clicking the ...

Dragon Go for iPhone gets smarter

by Mel Martin (Sep 29th, 2011)

Dragon Go!, the all-purpose voice recognition search app from Nuance, is getting a significant upgrade today. In fact, it's almost a preview of some of the functionality we suspect will be in iOS5. The free app lets you speak conversationally with your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. Say things ...

Changes to Nuance developer program will result in a flood of voice enabled apps

by Mel Martin (Sep 27th, 2011)

The company behind the Dragon speech recognition applications for computers and iOS devices has announced a new developer program that will allow software to access Dragon Voice technology at no charge. It could result in a tidal wave of apps that harness the power of the Nuance speech ...

Dragon Dictate 2.5 offers support for Microsoft Word 2011

by Steven Sande (Jul 25th, 2011)

Nuance has announced Dragon Dictate 2.5, a free upgrade to the company's Mac voice control/input app for version 2.0 customers. The new version dramatically improves mouse and keyboard entry in Microsoft Word 2011, among other features. According to Nuance, Word 2011 is the most commonly used app ...

OS X Lion introduces new, multilingual, high-quality text-to-speech voices

by Chris Rawson (Jul 24th, 2011)

First announced in March, then found in developer previews, one of the little-heralded new features of OS X Lion is its inclusion of several high-quality text-to-speech voices in 22 different languages. The last major addition to Apple's built-in OS X voices was Alex, a higher-quality voice ...

iOS 5's final release may include "Assistant" speech-to-text feature

by Chris Rawson (Jul 23rd, 2011)

Apple has included limited voice control functionality in the iPhone since the debut of the iPhone 3GS, but the company's plans for voice control in iOS 5 are reportedly far broader in application according to 9to5 Mac. While no such feature was announced at WWDC and it has yet to show up in the ...

Dragon Go! is a must-have voice search app for your iPhone

by Mel Martin (Jul 14th, 2011)

Like the proverbial genie in the bottle, you can ask a lot of Dragon Go! and have a pretty good chance of the app granting your wish. Dragon Go! is the latest free app from Nuance, creators of Dragon Dictate for the Mac and Dragon Dictation for iOS devices. In this latest app, Nuance has ...

Noterize acquired by Nuance, points to more iOS voice savvy

by Michael Rose (Jun 20th, 2011)

The popular note-taking app Noterize made the short list of apps that D7 Consulting leveraged in its iPad trial; it also made it into Apple's 'Iconic' TV ad in January. It's been absent from the App Store for a bit, though, and now we know why. TUAW has learned that Noterize has been acquired ...