Beware of Cepstral!
As some of you guys might have read over at maccentral the other day, Cepstral released an OSX compatible voice synthelizer system that integrates with Mac OSX so that you can use their voices in place of the ones apple provides...
http://www.cepstral.com
Well, being as excited as I was of testing this application, I downloaded their demo program. It installed successfully and added some icons in my System Preferences pane. The voice demo does not allow you to really use the voice at all, it just says that it needs to be registered using the voice.
Well, here's the best part... They provide no way to install it, and their files are scattered all across the place because it's integrated into the OS. After e-mailing them this is what I got in reply:
> Our current release does not have a uninstaller. We will have one in
> the next release. When Swift 3.2.1 is released (in approximately five
> weeks) you will be able to download a voice and then uninstall all
> Cepstral components.
>
> You are right that our product puts files many different locations. We
> followed the Macintosh guidelines on where items should be placed. In
> many cases, if you do not follow the Macintosh guidelines the product
> will not work. So while it would be nice if the Cepstral voice
> information could be located a single location on disk, this is not
> possible.
>
> Thank you for you interest in our voices.
>
> Bill Tomer
> Director, Product Development\t
> Cepstral LLC
>
Great... 5 weeks, in a way it was good that I had to reformat the computer...
http://www.cepstral.com
Well, being as excited as I was of testing this application, I downloaded their demo program. It installed successfully and added some icons in my System Preferences pane. The voice demo does not allow you to really use the voice at all, it just says that it needs to be registered using the voice.
Well, here's the best part... They provide no way to install it, and their files are scattered all across the place because it's integrated into the OS. After e-mailing them this is what I got in reply:
> Our current release does not have a uninstaller. We will have one in
> the next release. When Swift 3.2.1 is released (in approximately five
> weeks) you will be able to download a voice and then uninstall all
> Cepstral components.
>
> You are right that our product puts files many different locations. We
> followed the Macintosh guidelines on where items should be placed. In
> many cases, if you do not follow the Macintosh guidelines the product
> will not work. So while it would be nice if the Cepstral voice
> information could be located a single location on disk, this is not
> possible.
>
> Thank you for you interest in our voices.
>
> Bill Tomer
> Director, Product Development\t
> Cepstral LLC
>
Great... 5 weeks, in a way it was good that I had to reformat the computer...
Comments
There shouldn't be much more. Why, what did it scatter across your drive?