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What if the guy some day goes on a killing spree? Or has 30 bodies buried under his house? Or is a drug kingpin? Or is a porn star?

Better to have these yahoos anonymous.

Gilbert Gottfried for Aflac.

That British guy for Geico.

Examples on why anonymous is good.
 
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So since the voice was recorded 6 years ago, there is no chance words they didn't record back then will be added in?

It says in the article that the took the sentences apart and seperated it into sounds. So they can string sounds together to make new sentences.
 
Clearly he is not sexy enough to the ladies and $AAPL doesn't want to have him associated with Siri in a public way. It's better to leave it to one's imagination.
 
I'll stay on my side of the curtain... if you'll stay on yours.

Not to mention simply that his original contract might not give him the right to claim credit for the use of his voice in clients work. It's not uncommon when you do voice bank work such as what he did.

This is common, and when you're the voice of someones product, they want the spotlight on the product not the person they paid to record something. He's the equivalent of a studio musician... Amazing skills w/ an instrument, but often paid to stay nameless and let the Album artist have their lime light.
 
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macaddict06 said:
...Or is a porn star? Better to have these yahoos anonymous.


:confused: Why would that matter? Being in porn isn't illegal. Yes, Steve had his issues with it, but really, Jon's not part of the company.

Porn isn't even in the same league as serial murder, dude.

*Edited to clarify that I'm talking about Jon and not Steve in the sentence

My reaction to his post as well. Nothing wrong with being a porn star. North America is so sex negative.
 
How do you change voices for Siri? I noticed the British male voice on one of the videos after the iPhone 4S announcement.

I don't see any way in settings to the change the voice.

Is the voice determined by your region automatically?

Yes, the voice is directly determined by your language/region setting for Siri. It's somewhere under Settings -> General. For English, you can choose between US, UK, and Australian dialects.

Each one comes with its own distinct voice, but changing that setting also completely changes the voice recognition, and the dialectic aspects of what Siri says and understands. So if your goal is to get Siri to talk with a British male voice, the accuracy will be less unless you also talk to Siri in (a passable approximation of some type of) a British accent, and perhaps also use British instead of American expressions, where relevant.
 
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My reaction to his post as well. Nothing wrong with being a porn star. North America is so sex negative.

Yet so sex crazed at the same time..
 
Interesting, But I Still thing Alex on Mac OS X Is by FAR the best Text 2 Speech Voice EVAR, Whats the new one thats In Lion??? Its really clear to, but just isn't the same as Alex.
 
I don't understand how he could call Siri's voice "the best that's out there" when right around the corner there's http://www.ivona.com/en/ - it's text to speech quality is unmatched by anything I've ever heard. Try it out. Check out how many different voices are available :)

Siri's voice is robotic, while Ivona's voice is very natural and seems like spoken by a human. Frankly I'm disappointed Apple didn't choose Ivona for their text to speech.
 
Mr Briggs is, of course, in his full right to speak his mind unless any legal contract obligations with Apple hinders him from doing so. Since that does not seem to be the case, this proves as an example of Apple Incs arrogance and control freak attitude the company's late CEO infected the company with.

I have to admit, that after having read the autobiography of Steve Jobs, my regard for the man and the company he built has diminished dramatically. The cult of Mac really has its dark and dubious sides.
 
Apple are nuts about secrecy. The odd thing is this USUALLY goes the other way around. Look at Vocaloid, most of the Vocaloids (but not all, and not the most popular ones because there's fame at that point - for example Miku is voiced by Saki Fujita), the person providing the voice samples is unknown. Because THEY wanted to remain anonymous.

Apple's trying to do it opposite, LOL
 
Did he sign any non disclosure contract with Apple?

If not, then he is free to speak and Apple ****! Oh Apple, your products are overall good, but ****, you are so petty.
 
Did he sign any non disclosure contract with Apple?

If not, then he is free to speak and Apple ****! Oh Apple, your products are overall good, but ****, you are so petty.

He may have signed one with ScanSoft...
 
Macrumors, do a better job at summarizing!

Sheesh, is it so hard to summarizing another publication's reporting without distorting it? This is the entirety of the Daily Telegraph's reference to Apple contacting Mr. Briggs:

The notoriously secretive Apple has, it should be said, asked Briggs not to talk about Siri – “We’re not about one person,” they told him – but, since Briggs pointed out that he had never had a contract with them, the company has not been back in touch.

Where in that paragraph supports Macrumors' characterization that Apple "isn't pleased with Briggs' newfound fame"? It seems to me that someone at Apple mistakenly thought Mr. Briggs was either an Apple employee or did freelance work for Apple to do the voice work. Had that been the case, it would have been fair for Apple to request confidentiality. However, Mr. Briggs pointed out to Apple that he did the work for another company many years ago and Apple, upon realizing its misunderstanding, dropped the matter. Move along, nothing to see here.

Of course, that's not juicy enough to drive web traffic to Macrumors, is it? Macrumors tarts it up with a false characterization - Apple is mad - that's entirely unsupported by the article. Nor is such an innocuous explanation enough for forum readers who haven't even bothered to read the original piece but [t]rolls out the anti-Apple rants. Why be fair and balanced when cheap, inaccurate, tiresome and repetitive potshots will do?
 
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My brother was right! It's the voiceover man from The Weakest Link :)

Would love to see him have a conversation with himself on an iPhone 4S ;)
 
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jowie said:
My brother was right! It's the voiceover man from The Weakest Link :)

Would love to see him have a conversation with himself on an iPhone 4S ;)

Oh wow. Apple should put that on the iPhone box.
 
I'm glad this guy told Apple where to go. It's disappointing they actually felt necessary to phone him and give him some kind of 'warning'. There's no harm at all in him coming forward and giving us all 5 minutes of his insight.

There really must be a few PR people in Apple who have their heads up their backsides.
 
Porn Obsessed

Mildly interesting article on the voiceover dude.

More interesting, we now know who is both: 1) a commenter on Macrumors; and 2) addicted to porn.
 
Apple's hush-policy is getting ridiculous: don't they realize that public scrutiny comes with the territory? Sometimes they behave like a religious cult - and worst of all, they expect everyone else to follow suit. The company isn't "about one person"??? Right... unless that person's name is Steve Jobs :eek:
 
Apple Secrecy

It's run as an adjunct of the publicity department, of course.

Tell someone whose voice is now in millions of iPhones, who recorded his voice 5 years ago for another company, to stay silent? Not going to happen. So Apple gets the publicity, no doubt better, and more than they'd get if you sent out a press release or got them interviewed by ET or Tech News Today. And it gets the Android and Windows types all outraged at Apple Mussolini doing outrageous things to someone or other's hypothetical freedom. And that brings out the Apple stalwarts and the blood flows freely.

"Siri's British voice is a guy! Really cool tech! Blah, blah..."

Six nerds read that and make sure their pocket protectors are in place.

But a secret, now that just squirts out all over the world.
 
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