Hi Josh
I agree the price of MS is outrageous. However, one must compare the
functionality of an iPhone with pre-rendered speech against a phone
with Mobile speak. I'm afraid, in this case, the iPhone with pre-
rendered speech falls way short of the mark. This approach is fine for
the iPod Nano, where you already know in advance most of what you will
encounter. The iPhone is too dynamic for this to work and, if given
the choice of a wm-powered phone with mobile speak or a pre-rendered
iPhone at the same cost, I'd have to go for the former unfortunately.
I've heard all kinds of horror stories about the AT&T mobile speak
deal. I didn't have to deal with that, I'm on T-mobile. While that
means I didn't get a deal, it also meant that I didn't have to even
think about the headache, and got to pick the phone I wanted without
worrying about whether customer service would give me hell at a later
date. :)
Hopefully this is not the approach Apple ends up taking, and I doubt
they will. The Apple accessibility team certainly seems to know what
they're about, and I'm sure they will have taken this into
consideration.
What this demo is, however, is an interesting concept about how the
touchscreen could work. Not how I would have done it, but an
interesting concept demonstration all the same.
On Jan 26, 2009, at 15:14, Josh de Lioncourt wrote:
Hi Jacob,
While I totally agree with your comments on pre-rendered speech, I'd
like to point out that any WM6 powered phone with a mobile screen
reader is going to run you as much or more than a new iPhone at
$199. MobileSpeak is outrageous, and the AT&T subsidizing of MS is
a complete joke. My GF has the same exact phone as I do, we're both
on AT&T, and her voice plan is the same as mine, and yet they will
not sell her MobileSpeak, though they had no problem selling it to
me. It's ridiculous. Their reasoning? They say it doesn't work on
that model of phone. It does, their web site says it does, and i've
been using it on my phone for ages.
Anyway, sorry for the rant. If we could get an iPhone that was
accessible out of the box, it would be a much cheaper proposition
than a WM 6 phone.
Josh de Lioncourt
...my other mail provider is an owl...
On Jan 26, 2009, at 11:53 AM, Jacob Schmude wrote:
Hi
The only problem with having pre-rendered speech on the iPhone is
that the device has way too many capabilities to be covered by any
type of pre-rendered speech. It may be able to pre-render the main
menus and the phone book, and your music library. Then what? Web
browsing? Email? Applications? Text messaging? None of that would
work, and that's what makes the iPhone worth having IMHO. Otherwise
I'd just by a new wm6 phone at half the price.
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