The voices on the iphone are provided by Nuance. That engine is called nuance vocalizer. Those voices are available for windows desktops and that engine is called nuance realspeak. I actually wish these voices were available for the mac, though I would not expect apple to include them. But, as yet, nuance has not released a version for the mac. So, Apple probably could not bundle them with 10.6, even if they wanted to. On Aug 24, 2009, at 4:19 PM, David Niemeijer wrote:
> > Hi, > > I notice a lot people are complaining that Apple did not include the > voices they now include with the iPhone 3Gs also in Snow Leopard. > There may be a lot of reasons why they have not done that. I am not > sure it is fair to say it is ridiculous of Apple without knowing the > reasons behind it. Maybe the company they are licensing those voice > from for the iPhone 3Gs is asking a ridiculously high amount per copy > of Snow Leopard Apple will sell. Snow Leopard is sold much cheaper > than most updates yet has been worked on for two years by a large team > of engineers. I think that is nothing to sneeze at. Also, while people > accept the lower quality of those voices for a mobile device, would > the majority of Mac users accept it for Mac OS X on a desktop machine? > Furthermore, do those voices support all the features needed for > Speech Manager compatibility, or would that first require years of > work? And, what about the third party voices? For Mac OS X there are > multiple third party voices available for a wide range of languages. > Should Apple just kill that business and possibly stifle innovation on > the Mac platform in the voice area because voices in multiple > languages already come free with the OS. For third parties it is hard > to compete with free stuff, even if the third party stuff is of better > quality. I know it would be bad for our business, but in the long run, > it might actually also be bad for end-users. Things are not simply > black or white. > > Anyway, I think there may be plenty of reasons for Apple's decision > that we as outsiders do not know about. Some of those reasons you and > I might consider good others we might consider bad, but I personally > do not think we know enough about the issues involved to call it > ridiculous, especially after all Apple has been doing these last > couple of years in the accessibility area. > > Cheers, > > david. > > On Aug 24, 2009, at 9:04 PM, James & Nash wrote: >> The voices from Acapella are great but it's rediculous that Apple >> keep >> avoiding the answer on whether or not they will ever include other >> language >> voices as they do in the IPhone. If they can do it in the IPhone >> they can do >> so in Mac OS X 10.6 +. This is especiallly true considering that >> they are >> based in California whre are large percentage of the population are >> Spanish >> speaking. The same is true for Braille. > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
