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Catching Up with the Voice of Macintosh
klktrk writes "In an article from TidBITS, Jeff Carlson interviews the man who inspired the 'Fred' voice known to early Macintosh uses, and fans of Radiohead."
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please make me say curse words
Seemed to be slashdotted with 1 post.
At my school, all of the Apple computers have had their text-to-speech capability removed - too many AppleScripts involving cursing, or something to that fashion.
Once, I wrote an entire script for a media production specifically for Fred. Of course, this involved spelling phonetically - it never did quite get "Check ell slo vahk ee ya" right.
I got a giant kick out of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Hush," which had a techno-savvy professor communicating using Fred when her voice was stolen.
As apple fools jokes I CLI'd into my co workers OS X box and played fittier happier through the osascript command! Apple and Radiohead, does it get any better?!
Fred figures greatly in the little-known microphone work of the great physicist Stephen Hawking. I particularly recommend the searing F*ck Tha Creationists . (warning for the bandwidth-challenged: 2.2MB MP3 file).
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Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
So let's hear about her!
It is interesting that Stephen Hawking's voice is based on his as well. That voice is also featured on Pink Floyd's song, "Keep Talking", from The Division Bell.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
I don't know about everybody else, but all I need to get up in the morning is the sweet, caressing sound of Victoria (High Quality) in my ear.
You fool. It's an April Fool's joke. Hawking's speech system was made entirely by Intel.
Way back with a Mac Classic.... that brings back memories. I thought that was the coolest thing when I stumbled across it when I was 10 :)
Never knew the name "Fred" though.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
Track can be heard on Amazon
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
In Serial Experiments Lain, there's a whispering voice used to introduce the title of each episode. That voice is... you guesed it... Whisper from the Mac set of voices.
It's still there in OSX, in fact. Make up your own Lain episode titles!
Every time you hear a phonetic-engined voice, it's not just one program. Fuckin pompous idiots.
Bryan Duncan used a Mac to speak the opening lyrics to this song. I'm not familiar enough with the various voices to know which it was, and I'm not at my Mac now. :(
Constitutionally Correct
Uses a few Mac voices, "Victoria" included, in a few of their songs. Namely "Kathy's Song". Damn April/Apple Fool's day! I read the whole article thinking "cool..." then i listened to the audio sample....that bastard! ;)
"Published 01 Apr 03"
Then listen to the recording of the interview... it seems eerily IDENTICAL to if, say, I select the text and hit "Speech->Start Speaking"
(Not to mention "Apple couldn't get the Speech Synthesis working in time, so they just recorded my voice...")
Can anyone say "April Fools"?
I've also heard the macintosh voices in several manson songs.
Also, I've heard quite a few psy trance songs with it as well. Such as "Shpongle".
Apple's had this speech technology for years and years now, but I've always wondered if anyone has made any new voices? Is there a tutorial out there on how to make your own voices for it?
;)
I've always thought it would be cool to have the Star Trek computer voice for my Mac
So, are there any sites out there for this? I've had no luck finding them via google...
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs