[stormy]

Mr Rogers,

I just wanted to let you know I have contacted my credit card company for a status update and have posted on my blog. I would post it here but this has become a very tense thread.

http://stormythought...yer-beware.html

Stormy

[Chris Breen]

Indeed you are wasting everyone's time here. VitaMan, you've been asked repeatedly to deal with Chuck directly. Please do so at your earliest convenience.

[millionblade]

Despite every accusation that has been leveled I will try the product as and when it hits the UK. I am willing to trust the folks who voted for this as product of MacExpo and who provide this forum.

[thechuck]

Thanks for your vote of confidence, Millionblade.

I won't go so far as to say the accusations are unfounded - especially since the incident apparently happened about 7 years ago. But I can tell you two things: everything I said in my replies was accurate, and, like every company, both MacSpeech and Club Mac are run by human beings. Even the best companies sometimes make mistakes, which is apparently what happened here. The best I can do at this point is to apologize and offer to make amends, which I have done.

Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.

[grsilverman]

I am an outside beta tester for MacSpeech Dictate. I am not connected with Macspeech in any other way. I have been dealing with MacSpeech, particularly Chuck and their president, Andrew Taylor. I can vouch personally for their high degree of integrity, honesty and passion for creating great voice dictation for the Mac.
In fact, how I became a beta tester is a terrific example of their integrity. I need to give you a little background for you to appreciate it: I have written three books using Dragon NaturallySpeaking. In addition, as a marketing consultant, I have to write a lot of reports, articles, e-mails and blog posts. I write several thousand words per day. I’m a pretty fast Dvorak typist, and can get up to about 80 WPM occasionally. But, it’s pretty fatiguing and I make a lot of typing errors. I switched to Dragon NaturallySpeaking at about version 4. I have been an extremely satisfied fan of version 9, achieving an accuracy of well over 99.5% with a LOT of training.
I reached a point about five years ago when I could not continue to use Windows because of its unreliability and security vulnerabilities. When I switched to a Mac, I had to leave Dragon NaturallySpeaking behind. I tried ViaVoice and I listen, but was terribly disappointed in both. I maintained a separate Windows machine just to run Dragon. Of course, that meant I could not dictate on the road. After Apple’s switch to the Intel chip, was one of the first people to get Dragon NaturallySpeaking working on the Mac through VMware and Windows XP. I was pretty satisfied, except that I could not dictate directly into the Mac programs that I had come to depend upon: Apple Mail, Scrivener, and Microsoft Word. I kept trying iListen after continual reassurances from their customer support that I could get up to Dragon’s accuracy. They spent hours on the phone with me helping me improve the accuracy, but the accuracy was not quite there, and the interface was just too clumsy for the volume of the writing that I was doing.
I was openly and publicly critical of iListen on my blog and in many other places. To my surprise, Chuck Rogers invited me to be a beta tester for iListen 1.8. After much struggle, I still found it unacceptable. I stopped using I listen and went back to Dragon.
You can imagine how frustrated I was and how negative I was toward iListen. However, I was very impressed with MacSpeech’s commitment to improving their program and keeping their customers happy.
Then, I broke my arm skiing mid-December. IBy an amazing stroke of coincidence, Macspeech contacted me two days later and they asked me to be a beta tester for a “top-secret project.” They made me sign another nondisclosure agreement, then sent me a program called MacSpeech Dictate which they swore was totally different from iListen. I was totally skeptical and a very cranky from my pain. My arm was completely immobilized and moving it even slightly was excruciating. I had a major report due, and cutting and pasting from Dragon was very painful. So, I reluctantly decided to give MacSpeech Dictate a try, even though it didn’t have a voice correction module.
After a few false starts, where the program wouldn’t install, I finally got to train my voice in what looked to me like a ridiculously short voice training module, about six minutes.
Then came the moment of truth: I put the cursor into Microsoft Word and started dictating. Wow! The accuracy was unbelievable, right from the start. It took all of the words at Dragon was able to transcribe, including “Dragon NaturallySpeaking.” In fact, it felt just like Dragon, except that it was more accurate, faster, and dictated directly into the programs that I use, so I wasn’t distracted by switching over to my other screen just to dictate a quick answer to an e-mail. Later, I found out that, in fact, it was Dragon NaturallySpeaking’s engine.
Throughout this whole deal, I have had to interact with both Chuck and Andrew dozens of times. I found them to be open, and honest in all of my dealings with them. They openly acknowledge the fact that there are quirks in MacSpeech Dictate, and it still does not have the correction module. But it has such extraordinary accuracy that all of us agreed with MacSpeech’s decision to stop selling iListen and rush this program to market in its present state. Based on my direct dealings with them, I have absolutely no doubt that they will work day and night to fix what needs fixing and develop this program into something that is even better than Dragon on Windows.
This childish nonsense about a product return misunderstanding, together with a preference to keep arguing rather than get the problem resolved, pales in comparison to the amazing achievement of bringing such an awesomly accurate product to the Macintosh platform.
If you do a lot of writing, and you’re doing it on a Mac, you just have to have this program!

BTW, this entire posting was dictated on MacSpeech Dictate directly into Firefox, with very, very few corrections.

George Silverman,
President,
Market Navigation, Inc.
Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing

[stormy]

Mr Silverman,

I read your book about two or three years ago (I "borrowed" it from my husband - he was reading too slow. LOL). Great read!

Thank you for your testimony. Sadly I don't have an intel based computer so I can not use Dictate.

I was contacted today my MacSpeech support. We are in the process of getting me replacement CD's for ilisten 1.8.

After reading your story I am rather apprehensive now. But, I will try it. I suppose I will install it on my own computer and see if it works prior to putting it on my daughters. I am currently writing a book myself and will try it out.

I will give you all an update.

Thank you to Mr Rogers for reading and responding to my posts.

[jim1348]

I have just sent an email off to Chuck Rogers. I do not care for the tone on this forum. As I understand it, Mr. Rogers has made every effort to explain and offer options. I have taken the option of going to him on a personal basis. I did mention that I am not happy with how I have been treated by Macspeech but I am willing to go to him for assistance.

I do not side against or for Vitaman at this time, but I do not care for his methods. I am willing to accept Mr. Rogers as being true to his word. How he handles my situation will determine for me, how accurate his statements on this forum are.

Vitaman, you may have gotten a bit hot under the collar here and I am sorry for that. I suggest that you call Chuck and speak (ear-to-ear) as opposed to email/blog/forums where it is easy to write things that we can be sorry for later. A talk between the two of you could get this issue to a place where it can be see as an opportunity to mend fences. Using his email address you could get a phone number.

For the rest of you lurking on this forum, or actively engaged on it, I did purchase the Mac Dictate programme last night. As Mr Rogers states, I have 30 days to test it out. As to how that goes, we'll just have to wait and see.

Jim

[jim1348]

I sent off an email to Chuck just before posting the previous entry. I have already had a reply.

[MikeTT]

You might want to read:

http://messages.fina...ahoo.com/Stocks(AtoZ)/StocksA/threadview?m=tm&bn=60&tof=13&rt=2&frt=2&dir=f&ri=244040&t=c

Here is the message.

MacFixIt: Massive iListen Complaints 16-Aug-02 04:07 pm

Yeeeeeouch. Read on. From dedicated Mac site MacFixIt.com.

http://macfixit.com/

FRI: August 16, 2002
Late-Breakers
Updated 12:10 ET

iListen 1.5 Complaints

Chuck Rogers, currently Chief Evangelist for MacSpeech Inc., sent MacFixIt a lengthy criticism of the recently released iListen 1.5, pointing out several bugs and recommending users not obtain the software:

"One week ago, I was eagerly anticipating the internal release of iListen 1.3b1. For the past couple of months we have been testing alpha versions of iListen, the latest of which was 1.5a6 - that's right ALPHA build 6. During this time we introduced many new features, including improved accuracy, a new, faster Correction method, playback, and transcription from a voice file.

"This morning, I was shocked and dismayed this morning to find a virtually untested version of iListen, labeled 1.5, has been released to the public. This was done without my prior knowledge or approval. The released version has known bugs. Overall, it does not standards our customers have come to expect from MacSpeech. Correction still has problems. Playback does not stay in sync. Transcription has known issues as well. I feel tremendously frustrated by this development and, for the first time, feel this company has turned away from its commitment to make a quality product.

"It is no secret MacSpeech is a struggling company, like many Mac-only developers making the transition to Mac OS X. For MacSpeech, it is harder than most because speech recognition uses system resources more intensively than perhaps any other type of program.

"My intent was to release version 1.3 to the public as soon as problems in Correction had been worked out. This would give us time to iron out the remaining bugs in Playback and Transcription for versions 1.4 and 1.5, respectively.

"I still believe in the company and its vision, and believe we can turn this around by giving the product more time to mature in our testing incubator. But the writing may be on the wall. As a service to the existing and future customers of MacSpeech I must regretfully say that I do not believe the 1.5 release is representative of the quality a MacSpeech product should have, and strongly advise against downloading it."

[thechuck]

Ah, yes. An oldie, but a goodie. As I said. I don't BS. Ever. I got fired for sending that.

I am pleased to report that subsequent versions of iListen did redeem the company - and I rejoined MacSpeech once they were back on track.

Chuck Rogers, Chief Evangelist
MacSpeech, Inc.

[stormy]

Mike,

The first link you posted does not work.

The second link you posted has nothing related to ilisten or MacSpeech on that page.

As for the letter you posted, if it is true I will say the following:

1. It is five years old.
2. It is a very old version of ilisen.
3. It is true what they say that Mr Rogers is a man of honesty and integrity. So, I must believe in 1.8 because he is so adamant that it works, just as he was adamant that 1.5 did not.

Thanks for the post.

[stormy]

I have posted a MacSpeech update on my blog. Thank you Mr Rogers (wish you were my neighbor. LOL - sorry, couldn't resist any longer).
http://stormythought...-macspeech.html

[zoda]

Hello all,

I wonder if anyone else's email box has been bombarded with notifications of developments in this rather crochety thread. Vitaman your general point about aftersales service being the poor relation compared to sales does have a ring of deja vu.

However your six posts in which you accuse The Chuck of being a liar appear to have been sparked off by your annoyance that he claims to have remembered receiving a message from you from years ago. I just notice that a tag at the top of the post you complain of indicates The Chuck was replying to Stormy when he said that, not to you - ie he was talking to Stormy about a much more recent message he had received from Stormy, not talking to you about a message he had received years ago from you. I think the confusion arises because this forum doesn't allow people to quote the extracts they are responding to.

[Dan Frakes]

zoda said:

I think the confusion arises because this forum doesn't allow people to quote the extracts they are responding to.

As you can see, it surely does ;)

When typing a reply, click on the quotation-mark button in the editing toolbar; this pastes the original message, complete with quoted-text formatting.