David I agree with you and Scott. Apple have done a fantastic job with VO and I have not said otherwise. The quality of the third party voices such as the ones you provide David are much better and yes of course i would rather use those than the voices I've heard on the IPhone. However, the reason I mention the IPhone voices is that if Voice Over continues as it has in Leopard - only speaking in English - then non-native English speakers who do not feel comfortable enough with English to install or work with their OS in may not be able to afford the superb quality of DAvid's voices for some time. That was my only point, although I did not express it clearly enough and for that I apologize.
Take care all and I'm sorry for any offense I caused. ----- Original Message ----- From: "David Niemeijer" <li...@assistiveware.com> To: <macvisionaries@googlegroups.com> Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 10:19 PM Subject: Re: voices on os x > > 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 macvisionaries@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
