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February 2001, Week 1

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From:
LLTI-Editor <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 7 Feb 2001 08:48:14 EST
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--- Forwarded Message from Philippe Delcloque <[log in to unmask]> ---

>From: Philippe Delcloque <[log in to unmask]>
>To: "'Language Learning and Technology International Information Forum'"     <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: RE: #5910.11 an all-digital Mac LL ? (!)
>Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 14:57:58 -0000

------------------
> ------------------
> Thank you Mr Delcloque.  When you say that Apple is partly to
> blame, you are probably right. (And look at what they've
> done with HyperCard -- it's unforgivable).
> 
I suppose the least said about this, the better, Hypercard was never truly
supported by Apple from the moment it was invented in 1987.  It is now well
superseded by its clones (Macs and PCs).

> However, my suspicion is that if these three competing companies did an
> earnest market study, based not on the needs of the worldwide business and
> home markets, but on the educational market that buys this product, they
> would conclude that it doesn't make sense to ignore the Macintosh
> platform.  Or at least one of them would reach that conclusion, and pretty
> much run without competition in educational institutions favoring
> Macintosh.  It's not 1997 anymore!
> 
Probably true generally, clearly Macspeech.com think so as they offer voice
recognition for the Mac (inc. dictation), before them Articulate, an
offshoot from Dragon did.  The desperation which we, apple-friendly speech
developers, face, however, is that there is no off the shelf ASR toolkit for
the Mac for languages other than American English and Mexican Spanish (and
even the latter may only be synthesis rather than recognition), so when I
want to develop a game for teaching French to anglophones using Director, I
can only develop for the PC if I use speech recognition (which is
fundamental to this particular game).  The same predicament is faced by much
larger players such as The Learning Company/Softkey or Transparent Language
who offer Mac products.

> We are probably going to end up with a couple dozen Windows machines in
> our revamped lab, and I'm not very pleased about that.
> 
Maybe, someone is listening at Apple?  The interface is brilliant especially
OS X so why can't we have Speech Recognition in several languages, some of
the best researchers in speech recognition have worked for Apple in the past
2 decades!  What are Apple's plans for ASR?  Clearly Microsoft and Windows
have big plans!

Philippe





> Kirk Anderson
> Dept of French Studies
> Wheaton College
> 
> 
> 
> >--- Forwarded Message from Philippe Delcloque 
> ><[log in to unmask]> ---
> >
> >>From: Philippe Delcloque <[log in to unmask]>
> >>To: "'Language Learning and Technology International Information 
> >>Forum'"     <[log in to unmask]>
> >>Subject: RE: #5910.7 an all-digital Mac LL ? (!)
> >>Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 09:47:13 -0000
> >
> >------------------
> >This is obviously something which has changed relatively recently, as I
> >said, in Europe in 1994, the UK Tandberg rep. told me that the company
> had
> >been forced to integrate the Mac in labs due to (world-wide) demand (I
> >presume mostly in the USA and Australasia).
> >
> >You can't blame developers and hardware manufacturers like
> Tandberg/Teleste
> >or Sony, Can8, etc...  They have to consider the size of the market.  It
> is
> >a vicious circle because it means Macs are used less and less in labs.
> >
> >It seems to me though that the biggest mistake lies with Apple who has
> NOT
> >plowed enough effort in the speech interface (speech recognition in
> >particular).  It has to be ironic that the company who brought out the
> first
> >widely available talking computer in 1984, who then produced half decent
> >speech synthesis with MacinTalk has not been able to push the envelope
> with
> >SR, ironic indeed because if you type the expression "Speech Technology"
> in
> >a good search engine such as google.com, the topmost site is Apple's
> speech
> >section!
> >
> >Plaintalk has been developed for 2 languages, American English and
> Mexican
> >Spanish and its functionalities are basic compared to the best speaker
> >independent tools available from SR companies.  This will matter in the
> >Language Lab. interface of the present and future.  We just have to
> >collectively lobby Apple.
> >
> >Philippe
> 

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