Steve talked about wanting new speech technology ... here it is!

thebimbo

I can distinctly remember SJ making a comment that Apple was considering new technology. A month or so back I downloaded the Macosx demo of Elan Sayso and it is impressive... However, it now is apparent that this no mention of new speech technology was made at the WWDC. This is a real shame as Elan Sayso would be a huge improvement!



If you're interested then download the demo at:

http://www.elanspeech.com/demos/sayso.html



My question to you is: what do you think about the current state of speech on the Mac. Any of you use it?? Petition anybody ;-)



Yep I do and have new mails (sender and subject) read to me in Entourage and also alerts in iChat...

ghost_user_name

There are a lot of reasons speech on the mac would be welcomed upgrades. 'Universal Access' is a big part of the crowd that would like to see it improved. Personally, I always thought it should have been built into the system level a bit more... that is so developers could assign speech commands to functions of their programs just like they assign a hot key.



I think there is a lot of work that could be done on Apple's part, and there is no evidence that any of it is

cygsid

wow!!! This is DA BOMB! I've just listened to the demo samples, and if they're anything like the real thing, it's gonna blow your socks off: it is just so damn near perfect. Speech synthesis has finally arrived, et en francais s'il vous plait.

Quote:

Originally posted by thebimbo

I can distinctly remember SJ making a comment that Apple was considering new technology. A month or so back I downloaded the Macosx demo of Elan Sayso and it is impressive... However, it now is apparent that this no mention of new speech technology was made at the WWDC. This is a real shame as Elan Sayso would be a huge improvement!



If you're interested then download the demo at:

http://www.elanspeech.com/demos/sayso.html



My question to you is: what do you think about the current state of speech on the Mac. Any of you use it?? Petition anybody ;-)



Yep I do and have new mails (sender and subject) read to me in Entourage and also alerts in iChat...

murk

Pretty good. Maybe not quite as good as ATT Natural Voices. Either would be a welcome addition. I'm starting to think, however, that the real problem is price.

aquatic

So will new Speech tech make the cut in Panther?

amorph

Well, if Apple can get a license on acceptable terms to both themselves and the vendor (and since Apple can really play hardball, this is not a given), this looks promising. It's sad but true that a lot of the partnerships that seem to make a lot of sense from a design or engineering point of view never happen for business reasons. \

ghost_user_name

I was rather unimpressed by the demo. It's what we have now, but slightly more polished. It's like a '79 El Dorado with a fresh paint job.

johnq

Quote:

Originally posted by LoCash

I was rather unimpressed by the demo. It's what we have now, but slightly more polished. It's like a '79 El Dorado with a fresh paint job.

Locash, did you download the actual demo or just sample the MP3s?



Having pitch shifting in addition to the speed really adds range to the voice.



The cadence is far improved and sound quality is far better.



Give me Elan Sayso over the Mac OS useless joke voices anyday...(only about 3 are actualy usable)

aquatic

Didn't we used to have pitch shifting? If I recall that was Yet Another Classic Feature Neutered from OS X?. Good to see we're getting Classic stuff back, even if it takes a few years. I haven't looked at that demo, I might if I get to broadband some time. But it'd be nice to see 10.3 get new Speech. And yes it should be easier for devs to implement! And is it possible to assign keyboard shortcuts to speech commands, perhaps with iListen (Why hasn't Apple bought them). Wouldn't it be cool to browse in Safari via voice? "Back. Bookmark. Open "As the Apple Turns." Save. Print." Etc. Or games, or just Finder stuff. Speech was always good enough to be cool but not good enough to use as an interface. Just nice to hear if something goes wrong on your computer while you're in the kitchen for example with Speakable Alerts. Now that Windows FP (FisherPrice) has caught up with 1980s Mac Speech tech, let's make them look silly again and leapfrog ahead with new Speech!



Typing naughty stuff into TextEdit and having my Mac speak still impresses and cracks up PC people.

ghost_user_name

yeah, we totally used to have those features. I remember using them on a Quadra AV. Brad and I sat down and downloaded the actual demo, didn't even waste time with the WAV files.



Sure, it sounds better than Macintalk, but I don't want that talking to me. Still not usable in my opinion, but maybe someone else wouldn't mind that voice talking to them.



So yeah, it's an improvement, and it represents progress... but I don't feel this is a hell of a lot of progress over what we currently use, which is very dated.



(By the way, Aquatic, I deleted your double post.)

johnq

Did Macintalk have pitch too? I only remember speed...hm...

ghost_user_name

Maybe it's just been a while for me, but I seem to distinctly remember a pitch control at one point...



So I looked it up



This is from a bullet list of features...

Quote:

MacinTalk 3 requires 33MHz 68030 or faster Macs with System 7, and offers fancier pitch control and effect voices.

I'm pretty sure that means there was pitch control in some form.

johnq

Well Speech Manager certainly has it:



Speech Manager



But I think Macintalk proper did not. But point taken in that "something" prior to ELAN had pitch shifting on the Mac...

thebimbo

Actually if any of you did download the demos... I found the German and French speech more impressive and very realistic compared to English but they were using different voices. Europeans would jump for joy if they could have support for at least these 2 key languages as well as English. Apple has not done a good job supporting this side of the pond for the past few years; Sherlock, Speech, iPhoto bound books, ITMS ... are US only. please take note Apple Paris/Cupertino if you improve speech make sure several languages are supported!!! That's why I think Elan is the way to go and I'm sure a little tweeking of pitch and the voices this would be a very good speech solution for inclusion of Panther. Pretty please Apple ;-)

aquatic

I bet they'll surprise us from way out of left field. Think about it. Panther would be a smash hit and get lots of press if it had a real voice interface and didn't just pay "lip service" to voice recognition and synthesis.