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."

Comments

Sorta Ironic

[soapvox]

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?!

More productive.

[heldlikesound]

Fitter,happier,moreproductive,
comfortable,
notd rinkingtoomuch,
regularexerciseatthegym
(3daysaw eek),
gettingonbetterwithyourassociateemployeecon tempora ries,
atease,
eatingwell
(nomoremicrowavedinner sandsaturatedfats),
apatientbetterdriver,
asafer car
(babysmilinginbackseat),
sleepingwell
(noba ddreams),
noparanoia,
carefultoallanimals
(neve rwashingspidersdowntheplughole),
keepincontactwit holdfriends
(enjoyadrinknowandthen),
willfrequen tlycheckcreditat(moral)bank(holeinthewa ll),
favorsforfavors,
fondbutnotinlove,
charity standingorders,
onSundaysringroadsupermarket
(no killingmothsorputtingboilingwaterontheants),
carw ash
(alsoonSundays),
nolongerafraidofthedarkormi ddayshadows
nothingsoridiculouslyteenageanddesper ate,
nothingsochildish-atabetterpace,
slowerandm orecalculated,
nochanceofescape,
nowself-employe d,
concerned(butpowerless),
anempoweredandinform edmemberofsociety
(pragmatismnotidealism),
willn otcryinpublic,
lesschanceofillness,
tiresthatgri pinthewet
(shotofbabystrappedinbackseat),
agoodm emory,
stillcriesatagoodfilm,
stillkisseswithsal iva,
nolongeremptyandfranticlikeacattiedtoastick,
that'sdrivenintofrozenwintershit
(theabilitytol aughatweakness),
calm,
fitter,
healthierandmore productive
apiginacageonantibiotics.

So he perfers Victoria's voice? So do I!

[Alex Thorpe]

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.

Victoria

[mrpuffypants]

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.

Re:Victoria

[mbbac]

Why doesn't Apple have any higher quality Macintosh voices in Mac OS X? If you look around on the Web at AT&T and other places you'll find very high quality voice synthesis (and I'm sure you get them on your voice mail quite a bit too). Modern Macs have more than enough power to generate something more realistic than what we've got now.

Anyone? Anyone?

Re:Is this a new record?

[andfarm]

See this documentation on phoneme mode. There's a way to make TTS (text-to-speech) take input as phonemes instead of words: for example, try "[[inpt PHON]]mAYkAXl".

Re:It was all about MacTalk...

[cei]

Talking Moose. That's what it's all about.

Air

[Draoi]

Fred also appears on Air's album, '10,000 Hz Legend'. Listen to the track, 'How does it make you feel?'. Victoria also makes a 2-second appearance ...

Track can be heard on Amazon

Any good site to get Macintalk voices?

[Arcturax]

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...