{{lowercase, iListen iListen, developed by

MacSpeech MacSpeech, Inc. was a New Hampshire-based technology company that produced software-based speech recognition and voice dictation solutions for the Apple ecosystem. The company's products included iListen, MacSpeech Dictate, MacSpeech Dictate Medi ...

, is a

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

program for the

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

. In 2006, iListen was the only third-party software that allowed inputting text using one's voice that works on newer Macintosh models. Its competitors were

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

's own

software (built into

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

); Dragon Naturally Speaking by Nuance, running under

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

virtualization software In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s with ...

such as

Parallels Desktop for Mac Parallels Desktop for Mac is a hypervisor providing hardware virtualization for Mac computers. It is developed by Parallels, a subsidiary of Corel. Parallels was initially developed for Macintosh systems with Intel processors, with version 16.5 ...

VMware Fusion VMware Fusion is a software hypervisor developed by VMware for macOS systems. It allows Macs with Intel or Apple M series CPUs to run virtual machines with guest operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, or macOS, within the host m ...

; and the discontinued

program ViaVoice by Nuance/

IBM International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...

. In January 2008, iListen was discontinued by MacSpeech, and was replaced by its new speech recognition program, "Dictate" (released February 15, 2008). "Dictate" uses the same speech-recognition engine as Dragon NaturallySpeaking, having licensed it from Nuance. iListen's speech recognition engine was based on software developed by

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), simply branded Philips, is a Dutch multinational health technology company that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, its world headquarters have been situated in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarter ...

External links

MacSpeech company website
Macintosh-only software Assistive technology

See also

External links