Dragon Systems today announced that they have postponed development of their speech recognition program for the Mac, Naturally Speaking. This letter came from a Go2mac reader, who initially signed up as a beta tester:

February 18, 2000

Thank you for your interest in the Dragon System beta program for speech recognition for the Apple Macintosh. We really appreciate your interest in our efforts, and your desire to work with us. We really believe in the future of the Macintosh and understand how important the Macintosh is to users.
Unfortunately, at this time, Dragon has chosen not to pursue developing a Macintosh speech product for the current Macintosh operating system. We will be evaluating this decision again for OS X. However, a decision will not be made until OS X is available for testing. We will keep your registration information on file for consideration for beta testing if and when we decide to pursue a product for the Macintosh on OS X.
Again, thank you for your interest.
Dragon Systems

“OS X available for testing,” were up to DP3!! How is it that Dragon Systems, whose software is so desperately needed in the Mac market, cannot get a copy of OS X DP3? And what hurdles could they be facing? In a quote from their initial release at the WWDC, May 10, 1999:

“We have received many requests for a Macintosh version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and working with Apple we’re going to deliver a high quality speech solution for Macintosh users,” said Dragon Systems Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder Janet Baker, Ph.D. “Over the last year we have seen Apple bring out some very innovative products and we think Dragon Systems will offer the ideal speech recognition solution for anyone who wants to extend the capabilities of their iMac, Power Macintosh G3, or PowerBook G3.”

I guess the Macintosh community will have to look toward IBM, to provide the “ideal speech recognition solution” for the future.