My voice is my password.

aryayusharyayush
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hello!

I recently saw the keynote in which Steve and Phill demo the VoicePrint feature in Mac OS 9. It sounds like a really cool feature, puns aside. I ran a search for 'voiceprint' on this forum and came up with no result at all. Then I searched for it on Apple's Discussions board and there was only this one thread about it.

Here's a page detailing the feature.

Does someone know why this feature was nipped from OS X? Is there some third party application to enable it? Though seeing the level of interest in this feature, there is very slim chance of that.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    chrisgchrisg Posts: 239member
    hahah..."Afghanistan banana stand"



    I'm guessing they dropped it because it didn't work so well.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    feynmanfeynman Posts: 1,087member
    heh Yeah I remember that. That's when I worked at CompUSA and I would set it up to show customers and half the time it worked and half the time it didn't. Hard to believe that was almost ten years ago
  • Reply 3 of 8
    aryayusharyayush Posts: 191member
    But I am sure they have better voice recognition technology now. It looked awesome when Phill demoed it. I sooooooo want it.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    -df-df Posts: 136member
    Verify me.
  • Reply 5 of 8
    smashbrosfansmashbrosfan Posts: 139member
    Wow... And I thought I was the only one to see Sneakers....
  • Reply 6 of 8
    feartecfeartec Posts: 119member
    "No, no no. What did you hear?"

    "I heard a cocktail party."



    I'm going to watch that right now.....
  • Reply 7 of 8
    feartecfeartec Posts: 119member
    Voice passwords are too iffy. The government was the first to make a whole lot of security measures and despite the movies, voice implimentation is the last thing they will do. Too many variables make voice passwords sloppy, and even if programs were perfected, I doubt that Apple will take a vested intrest in such a program. I can still remember Dragon Naturally speaking, it worked fine, but unless blind didnt make anything easier. I could see a third party putting out an awesome edition of something that would use the latest technology, but for such a small client base the price would be over 300 bucks U.S. and I doubt that Apple would be able to fork over the dough for such a piece of code.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    agent_orangeagent_orange Posts: 87member
    Yes I recall this feature. I briefly used it on my iMac.



    Anywho, I think it was dropped because it was infrequently used and not that reliable. While voice recognition technology has progressed since OS 9, Apple don't seem to have much of an interest in it since speech recognition software in MacOS hasn't really changed since they first implemented it. Remember that commercial? "Macintosh, print letter. Macintosh, fax letter. Macintosh, shut down."

    Mac: "Goodbye."



    However, with the demo of "Alex", the new speech synthesis voice in OS X, maybe they are finally taking voice activation and synthesis seriously.



    Further, in a world where passwords are becoming a less and less secure method of providing security, we're going to have to start looking at other methods such as biometrics and voice recognition could be part of that
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