All throughout my life with technology I’ve used add-on software to help kludge my way around. Macs had accessibility features built right in from the word go – though mouse-drags were problematic. DOS & early Windows required external software to handle mouse-drags until the click-lock functions appeared in XP. It seems given time OS software acts like a black hole- sucking in all the ideas and assimilating them ‘Borg-like’. I’m not saying this is a bad thing-just an observation.
It happened with CD burning and more recently DVD burning. Now it seems voice recognition has ‘come of age’as it will be incorporated in the upcoming Windows Vista:
Vista will include a built-in speech recognition engine, and new and improved speech synthesis. Assuming it works as well as it should, you’ll be able to dictate emails or give voice commands for web navigations without buying additional speech recognition software.
[via Extremetech]