For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking stock of Apple’s carefully orchestrated, gradual disclosure of the iPad’s pricing, capabilities and accessories on the Apple Web Site; the device’s native applications and use cases (as illustrated in this video tour); as well as 3rd party apps available through the iTunes Store.

Heck, Apple features access to its Software Developers Kit as prominently as its “How to Order” link. So it is no wonder that the cottage industry that is “user generated content” will be bigger for the iPad than it is for the iPhone (well, at least that’s my prediction).

But can it talk? Thus far, it has been hard to discover the full spectrum of applications that run on the iPad. Apple claims there are already 150,000 iPad Apps. Yet search for “iPad” in the iTunes App store delivers a scant 2 pages. But wait! A search of the iTunes store for “iPad apps” that feature “Speak” yields a number of applications that don’t appear when the “Select All” option is invoked. These include:

Speak4It from AT&T Interactive R&D (listed under “Lifestyles”)
Speak It! Text to Speech (listed under “Utilities”)
iSpeech for the iPad (listed under “Education”)

Thanks to this article in Gizmodo, I was clued into the fact that a version of the Dragon Dictation app that I have on my iPhone has been made available for the iPad. The availability was confirmed in this press release from Nuance, which contains a link (which opens iTunes and delivers you to the iTunes Store where the app is tagged as “Business”.

Clearly, “speech enabling” apps defy categorization. I dare say that, before I shell out $69+tax for an iPad keyboard/dock or wireless keyboard, I will try my hand at dictating email using the free version of Dragon Dictation.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Apple, mobile speech, iPad