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Apple announces new "Spoken Interface" technology

updated 07:15 pm EST, Tue March 16, 2004

Apple\'s \"Spoken Interface\"

Apple announced new , which it says will help it develop the technology, which will be included in Mac OS X 10.4.

 
Previous Comments

voices

03/16, 08:13pm reply

This is great, but it looks like we are still stuck with the old voices. Would be nice if Apple put some work in to improving the voice quality.

curmi

Senior User

Joined: Apr 2001

0

nice to see...um, hear

03/16, 08:15pm reply

It's nice to see Apple reinvesting their time into the technologies they pushed aside a few years back. Now that Apple is more stable, the time is, um, ripe to dabble is areas like this.

pdot

Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Aug 2000

0

GO APPLE!!!

03/16, 08:22pm reply

Dear Steve,
You rock. Keep up the awesome job.

macimmortal

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

0

Macintalk Pro

03/16, 09:17pm reply

It's about time... I've been looking forward to Apple embracing text-to-speech technology for years! (Think about it: they could easily sell any old book online, and have your Mac automatically turn them into audiobooks. This would be a boon to the early education market and the handicapped. Even sync the audio to the iPod! No more need to hire narrators, and the download would be tiny. Call the new app "iBrary" and usher in a new era of publishing. )

Now I really hope Apple retires those voices from 1988 already. They're downright embarrassing and barely recognizable.

Just check out AT&T Labs' demo to see a sampling of how far speech synthesis has come in the last 10 years:
http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos

I really hope Apple overhauls this area of our OS. The available voices haven't changed since OS 7.x days!

JoshFofer

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 1999

0

Holy c***...

03/16, 10:33pm reply

Wow -- I just gave a listen to http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos

...and I'm amazed. Those voices make the Apple "voices" sound like a bad sci fi flick with crappy production values. I really hope Apple is cooking up some new voices to go with this new technology.

I think the "Mike" voice sounds better than the "Crystal" one -- it's less choppy and flows more naturally. For the first sentence or two I almost forgot it was a computer generated voice.

Nostromo

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Oct 2001

0

Computer...

03/16, 11:12pm reply

Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.

Buran

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2000

0

Don't Knock the voices

03/16, 11:19pm reply

Hey now, let's knock the voices... You know, they have made alot of cameo appearences in songs like Benny Benassi's - Satisfaction. "Push me, and then just touch me...

Just kidding, let's bring on the AT&T voices!

QualleyIV

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

0

Re: Holy c***...

03/16, 11:32pm reply

After trying a few random sentences, I found the Crystal voice to be more natural most of the time. The U.K. English version was really bad. It must be harder for programmers to get the british accent right. The female voice was also better than the male one in this case.

In Apple's defense, the text-to-speech capabilities is roughly a decade old and I doubt there was many resources to further its development since then.

pdot

Mac Enthusiast

Joined: Aug 2000

0

Now To...

03/17, 12:42am reply

Finally overhaul the Speech Recognition engine. C'MON APPLE! :-)

zachs

Mac Elite

Joined: May 2002

0

Here's more

03/17, 01:08am reply

http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html

JoshFofer

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 1999

0

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