Comment by benologist | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by benologist | Hacker News Reader

1) it's baked into operating systems as features that most people don't use:

http://lifehacker.com/215764/hack-attack-make-your-macs-spee...

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/set-up-speech-re...

2) there's already an ecosystem of dictation / voice-assisted software that the overwhelming majority of the world doesn't want:

http://alternativeto.net/software/nuance-dragon-naturallyspe...

Joe Random Public can convince Google they want this as soon as someone convinces Joe Random Public they need this.

Sure, but more and more Siri and Google Now are doing that training. And having used Dragon, I can say it's a very heavyweight solution that requires a great deal of training, not just of the system but of the user. I would vastly prefer a lightweight mic box next to each input field.

I think on mobile it's lost to the keyboard as well as a general purpose input tool - the hardware and networks weren't there to support it initially, on-screen keyboards have (massively) improved and people have grown more familiar with them, and devices have grown considerably as well which allows for an even better typing experience.

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