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."