Speech to text on the rumored Apple tablet/iPad/netbook?

I was having a conversation with a coworker where I mentioned my skeptical thoughts on the rumored Apple tablet/iPad/netbook device, and he mentioned something that made me freeze in mid-thought and re-evaluate everything.

Suppose the device featured groundbreaking speech to text functionality, he said. And that was all I needed.

The idea of speech to text that works well enough for average people to use it to dictate email as effectively as they could type it on a keyboard is still off in fantasy-land as far as I'm concerned. I know there are some good software dictation products out there now, but they're aimed at niche audiences and haven't broken into the mainstream yet.

It's possible to imagine a future in which we speak to our computers instead of typing, but it doesn't seem imminent.

In other words, a really easy to use, highly effective speech to text interface is exactly the type of thing that Apple could develop and put into a slick, mainstream device. Imminently.

Apple's clearly going down the audio interface road with the iPod- the new shuffle is a case in point, as well as the fact that Apple's high-end iPod headphones come with a microphone (as do all Macs, of course).

So the more I think about this, the more I think it makes a lot of sense.

Perhaps Apple is about to do for speech what they've already done for touch...