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Apple Spoken Interface

proofread

you would think they could proofread their web pages before just throwing them up there. i saw two errors just skimming.

/pedant
 
This isn't as big as some people think, OS 9 had speech to command built in, but I never knew one person who used it.

Don't confuse this, as Arn pointed out, with ViaVoice or iListen, this wont allow Xers to talk their emails out, only control the computer, it wasn't utilized before, it probably wont be now.
 
elmimmo said:
Apple could at least re-bundle the Spanish (Mexican, not Spaniard, but less is nothing) voices that we had in pre-X systems.
Click to expand...

I agree. I still wonder why Apple hasn't done it yet, after re-creating all the speech synthesys in X it shouldn't be a lot of work to port these voices to MacOS X.
 
silvergunuk said:
It's nice to see apple adding things to their os that makes using the mac more friendlier to people with disabilities such as sight and sound or people with reading difficulties such as myself. Probably has something to do with Steve Jobs himself being dyslexic.
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Odd. I never heard him complain or demand we needed to add this into NeXTSTEP/Openstep or OS X when I was at both NeXT and Apple. He seemed to do just fine for over 20 years without it.

To me it is smart business and a marketing tool to leverage customers, via the OS, to switch to Apple.

If it is done correctly and saves schools money it just makes sense.

For the end consumer, it is even better and I know many people who could benefit from it who otherwise don't even think about computers.
 
It is designed for OS 10.3.3 . . . and "10.4" Apple says.

This is straight from Apple, "At a recent conference for Accessibility in Los Angeles, Apple announced a new spoken interface that will be integrated into the next major release of Mac OS X. Apple also announced it will be making a technology preview of this software that runs on Mac OS X “Panther” available for evaluation by selected customers."

AND . . .

"Because the spoken interface is tightly coupled with the operating system, it will only run on Mac OS X version 10.3.3. Similarly, it is compatible only with applications designed for Mac OS X."
 
I think the MacNET article is based on rumors of this.. somebody said speech. They went to the extreme.
 
simX said:
I did find a link to this video at that speech recognition article, though... seems very interesting, but would be a miracle if they actually got it to work like that.
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Natural language speech recognition is still a long way off. Forget having the processing power necessary to do it... The computational linguists just don't fully understand the mechanics of natural language processing.
 
whoa

Dude,

Everytime I say to my iMac...

"Open the door please, Hal."

And it doesn't do anything!

And Its just like the movie, man!

YEAH!
 
By far the best sounding voices I've heard are those from AT&T's Natural Voices. The speakers sound very decent, and it beats anything Apple has to offer as of the moment. Check out their interactive demo and compare the bundled voices with what it can churn out. The demo allows you to save the short clips -- I use them all the time with Mail actions. :D
 
Photorun said:
This isn't as big as some people think, OS 9 had speech to command built in, but I never knew one person who used it.

Don't confuse this, as Arn pointed out, with ViaVoice or iListen, this wont allow Xers to talk their emails out, only control the computer, it wasn't utilized before, it probably wont be now.
Click to expand...

It certainly won't be unless they make those voices easier to listen to. There's maybe 3 that are intelligible, the rest are just "look at what we can do with LPC"...

I used to use it for some things-- dialogs for example. If I wasn't at my machine I could hear what went wrong. The only thing I use it for now is iChat-- it's good to know which buddy just came or went.
 
Is a good thing

It good to see Apple helping out disabled people. And to a good degree also. I dont think your going to see Microsoft or any otheer company show as much ambition, and then give it away for free.
 
Apple needed to post this on there website. so that schools and users of such technology will realize that they dont have to drop there macs.. and get PC's ,they are trying to keep the users they have and gain new ones.. too.

its a pre-emptive strike.. sort of..
 
mdriftmeyer said:
Odd. I never heard him complain or demand we needed to add this into NeXTSTEP/Openstep or OS X when I was at both NeXT and Apple. He seemed to do just fine for over 20 years without it.

To me it is smart business and a marketing tool to leverage customers, via the OS, to switch to Apple.

If it is done correctly and saves schools money it just makes sense.

For the end consumer, it is even better and I know many people who could benefit from it who otherwise don't even think about computers.
Click to expand...

Personally, I think it's a wise move technically as well. By making it an "accessibility feature" you can develop a technology and it will be useful to some before it will be useful to all.

I tend not to use the speech I/O functions because they're way slower tome than reading an typing. Someone who has more difficulty on one of those tasks will make immediate use of even the earliest speech capabilities.

Then someone who types a little slower than I do, or sits further from their machine than I do will make use of it.

Then I'll use it in certain applications (web browsing comes to mind).

Then we'll all just throw our keyboards and monitors in a box and interact with our iPods... =)
 
adamfilip said:
Apple needed to post this on there website. so that schools and users of such technology will realize that they dont have to drop there macs.. and get PC's ,they are trying to keep the users they have and gain new ones.. too.

its a pre-emptive strike.. sort of..
Click to expand...

Who owns apple.com?
 
frozenstar said:
Natural language speech recognition is still a long way off. Forget having the processing power necessary to do it... The computational linguists just don't fully understand the mechanics of natural language processing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the video goes beyond that. It's not just understanding the language, but it's making common sense judgments...
Woman: "Is this the last minute panic before the lecture?"
Guy: "No that doesn't happen until... *pause*"
Computer: "4:15"

C'mon... It's hard for a human to pick up that kind of cue...
 
Photorun said:
This isn't as big as some people think, OS 9 had speech to command built in, but I never knew one person who used it.

Don't confuse this, as Arn pointed out, with ViaVoice or iListen, this wont allow Xers to talk their emails out, only control the computer, it wasn't utilized before, it probably wont be now.
Click to expand...

you obviously missed the point of the article (you did read the article didn't you?). You also missed the point of Arn's post.

This isn't voice control, it's a screen reader. This allows people with no/low vision to use a graphical user interface. It reads aloud all elements of the screen and provides a consistent set of commands for controlling the interface. This is way beyond the "Speak selected text" feature we all played with when PlainTalk came out. You're right in that you probably won't ever use it. You obviously don't have vision problems (yet).

Screen readers are an absolute neccessity for people with vision deficiencies; they simply cannot operate a gui without one. OS X has no screen readers for it. That means if you are blind and you have a mac, you have to use the screen readers available for OS 9. Not only has that caused a lot of blind users to switch to PCs, but it affects Apple's viability in government IT situations. The ammendments to the Americans with disabilities act (section 508) requires all IT systems purchased by the federal government to be accessible to users with disabilities.

Having this technology integrated into the operating system is incredibly nice; the main problem with other readers (like Jaws) is that they are clunky, ineligant, have huge learning curves, and are nearly unusable. Oh, and they are ****ing expensive fringe products. Making the screen reader just another part of the OS is a huge deal. <insert joke about your lack of vision here>
 
frozenstar said:
Natural language speech recognition is still a long way off. Forget having the processing power necessary to do it... The computational linguists just don't fully understand the mechanics of natural language processing.
Click to expand...

while it's not as fantastical the above movie, there's a video of a new MIT voice recognition program they're working on that works quite well. it's more star trek with the language use requirements, you have to preface a command with "computer:" and wait for a confirmation tone (which is of course the same one you hear on star trek, nerds), and the language has to be pretty direct, but it was much better than viavoice or the current speakable commands.
 
Spoken word for the Mac

Macrumors said:
The following Spoken Interface page has appeared on Apple's website.

The page describes an upcoming feature for Mac OS X:



The technology appears to be related to a previous job opening at Apple for programmers for a "Screen Reader" application.

According to this article, Apple was pressured to release their own solution when the only developer of such software for the Mac discontinued their version. A lack of availability of such software may have threatened Mac OS X's adoption in the education sector.
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This is sadly needed as currently blind folks CAN NOT use a macintosh with out a screen reader similar to windows JAWS. In my work I am forced to use Windows because of this lack. I hope they are serious about getting it.

Ken
 
For anglophiles only?

elmimmo said:
I expect to see this turn in yet another English-only feature...
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Same here, especially as Apple doesn't really seem to care much for the education markets outside the US :(. If you know people with disabilities and a mother tongue other than English, please ask them to fill in the questionnaire to show their interest: Questionnaire
 
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