Hi David,
Thanks for your quick response. It certainly clarifies things.
Unfortunately, those of us who bearly scrape by financially and don't
have our technology purchased for us through government agencies or
other institutions often get lost in the shuffle with these things.
It's a sad fact.
If there ever comes a time when a restructuring of the pricing model
is to be renegociated, I hope that a per voice model, perhaps limited
only to individuals, might be made available. Even at $40 or $50 US
per voice, a substantial markup if one breaks down the pricing of
voices in the language packs, would make it worth it to those of us
who simply want specific options and haven't got funds to waste.
All that being said, I completely appreciate the position you're in.
Thanks for your candid responses.
Josh de Lioncourt
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
...my other mail provider is an owl...
On Aug 10, 2007, at 4:51 AM, David Niemeijer wrote:
Hi Esther and Josh,
As Esther was so kind to cc-me on her reply I will give you some
info from the AssistiveWare side of things regarding the iVox
pricing and options.
I think just about everything Esther wrote is correct.
Regarding the fact that voices are sold per language instead of per
voice. This is not an AssistiveWare decision, but the decision of
Acapela Group who makes the voices. Selling per voice only works
well if the voices are only sold online. Many (but certainly not
all) people who need these voices (blind users, users with other
disabilities, teachers) can either not buy online because of
regulations or because they purchase these kind of things through
funding and require paperwork by a dealer in order to be able to
purchase. This kind of distribution model only works well for high
volume products or higher priced items. iVox is not a high volume
product, so it's price has to be sufficiently high to make it
interesting for resellers to sell it and do paper work for their
customers.
Another thing you may want to know is the fact that these voices
are far more expensive on the Window's side. We negotiated long and
hard to have Acapela Group offer them at a lower price level for
the Mac. Whether they offer enough value for money is everyone's
own personal decision. As VoiceOver allows use of up to 6 voices
for different things I think the fact that you get multiple voices
is a definite pro. Yes, you could use one voice per language, but
having multiple has benefits. Also the fact that for many languages
you get a good male and female voice is not a bad thing I would say.
If you want a foreign language then getting iVox for that foreign
language will get you the Heather US English voice for free as
Esther pointed out. So if you need one foreign language and don't
want multiple US English voices, this is your cheapest option. If
you really want multiple languages then buy iVox and get additional
language packs for half the price.
The iVox voices work system wide and can be used with just about
any other Mac application. You can use multiple iVox languages with
GhostReader or VisioVoice. The GhostReader voices are cheaper
because they only work with GhostReader (so we have to pay a much
lower royalty to Acapela Group). Note also that they are compressed
(to about 50% file size) and thus are slightly lower quality with
some sound artefacts here and there that the iVox voices don't have.
I hope this clarifies things a bit.
I seem to have some trouble getting the MacVisionary email right
now so please see me on my personal address if you want to continue
this discussion.
david.
