David Pogue is a great writer. I’m a huge fan. A recent column praising NaturallySpeaking says something really stupid. Like starting a myth stupid. And I quote:
NatSpeak also runs beautifully on the Macintosh. The setup is a bit involved: you need a recent Intel-based Mac, Apple’s free Boot Camp utility, a copy of Windows XP, and a U.S.B. adapter on your headset. And you have to restart the Mac in Windows each time you want to use NatSpeak. But if you can look past all that fine print, NatSpeak on Macintosh is extremely fast and accurate.
The setup being a bit involved is a huge understatement. The first sentence is all anyone will see. The Macintosh is more than just the hardware. As such, NatSpeak *doesn’t run beautifully on the Macintosh. It doesn’t run at all. Now a new marketing campaign by the NatSpeak developer’s can include that misleading sentence.
Thanks to Boot Camp, this may be only the beginning.
[via Daring Fireball Linked List]
To me, the sarcasm is pretty clear, but I admit that sarcasm doesn't always translate well on the Intarweb.
And besides, anyone who's seriously examining getting into something as involved as speech-recognition most certainly WILL read past the first sentence!
--Pogue
Yeah the first line was a tease, but the rest was an undiluted cold shower. Maybe next version.
Pogue did not say anything wrong. He said it runs beautifully (as, in his experience, it does) on the Macintosh, not Mac OS X.