Apple says it is incorporating speech technology into new versions of its OS X operating system which will make Macs more accessible to users who are visually impaired as well as people with learning difficulties. Additionally, Apple released today updated Powerbooks and iBooks. BBC has an article about the G5-based laptops in the future.
Macs Get Their Voices Back
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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This issue has come up before on the board. While I applaud Apple’s attempt to make the computer use less exclusionary, as a Mac user I have a selfish interest in this development. Namely, this is a technology I won’t use, and for my purposes, it will simply bloat the OS (which a 3rd party app would not do if I didn’t install it). Voices are quite large, and even though storage is ample and cheap, that doesn’t mean bloat should continue. I hope the next revision of OS X that incorporates this technology makes it optional during the install, or else some clever person will find a way to eliminate it after the install (as Delocalizer does with superfluous languages).
Right now, screen reading (and even voice commands) aren’t an input method I prefer. Perhaps when the technology is developed further my interest will change.
I think this is a great idea, I like to use Text to Speach some times and also play around with it. I don’t use a Mac, but I plan to buy one as my next computer. I have two comments on this issue:
1. I would like to see Apple use AT&T’s Natural Voice technology for this. They could get AT&T to give them (or licence) a low quality version (such as the 8k samples for only one voice). This would serve AT&Ts purposes because it would be a demo for people to see. If people wanted to (for example people who use TTS alot), they could just buy more voices or the higher quality samples (16k) and be able to use that. Everyone gets great sounding TTS (better than most, such as the default MS TTS engine), AT&T gets great advertising, and a way to sell more copies. Considering you can buy a CD of the 8k samples for two voices on the internet for $30 or so, this wouldn’t add much (if any) to the cost of the computer.
2. As for the “Bloat” argument, I can see that. But as long as the engine is not running all the time (and why would it?) it would only take up hard drive space and it could just be an option to install. It’s only “bloat” if it’s forced on the computer, IMHO. If you have a choice not to install it, who cares (as long as it doesn’t make 10.4 cost $300 instead of $120 for example).
I’m sure you could just install the items you want, as usual. Remember when you did an OS install there was a “Customize” button? I unchecked all the extra languages, unneeded printer drivers, _speech_ voices etc
Plus most of the extra Mac OS X functionality is neatly kept in certain folders in /Library or /System
In Panther i can make messages get spoken aswell as text under the mouse get spoken. Also if i highlight a portion of text, i can left click on it, go to speech and then start speaking. Why is this big news? I must be missing something…
I still have my XGA 12″ Powerbook since Feb 2003, and I am ok with it.
For their high-end laptops, Apple should offer higher resolutions, as the PC world does: 1600×1200 on 16″/15.4″ and 1440xXXXX on 15″ high-end PC laptops from Dell/Toshiba and others. So, if the high-end 15″ Powerbook had the resolution of the 17″ and the 17″ had a 1680×1024 resolution, I would definately consider a buy today. It is the only thing that’s keeping me back to the 12″ (which I love because it’s small, however if the big Powerbooks had THAT much higher resolution, I would trade the 12″‘s small factor for them).
I did online schooling using the speech function. I read along while it spoke and it really helped but it was kind of a pain in the a$$.
Highlighting each new page is annoying, and the voices sounded robotic.
There’ plenty of room for improvement.
@Anonymous (IP: —.65-104.adsl.ij.net)
Her comment is ON TOPIC. RTFA. And I agree with her on the resolution bit for the Apple PCs.
I am still looking forwards to the second generation G5s.
I think we will see them much sooner then later. The 90nm 970s put out like 25 watts of heat, that’s not much at all. I think apple may be trying to stretch their money making out more with these ones for now. Once sales have completely died for the G4 model, then pop the G5’er out. If anything they are spending the time making new features and styles for the next gen laptops. Engineering a way to get a 2 button mouse and a track point in them
. I can wait for the G5 models. Higher res screen would be nice too.
At the time they did the G4 switch their was probably much less of a push for it, also I would think it was a bigger jump in heat. I think that some of the gens of the G4s they have used in power books put of more then 25 watts, but i could be wrong.
Apple very well could be testing the water with the 1.5s today. See if they sell very good. If not then they have tapped the market and people are waiting for the G5 and they know it’s time to get it out the door.
I think this update kills the idea of G5 PBs June 28th. Maybe next january or so. Darn.
Well, time to save more money.
Brad says, “The 90nm 970s put out like 25 watts of heat…”
If this were true, the PPC970FX would have been in Powerbooks before servers.
However, in reality, the PPC970FX 90nm seems to have heat/power issues just like Intel’s Prescott. The die shrink from 130nm and “misc fixes” did not go well.
On the system eval boards for a 1.4GHz 970FX 90nm, 80W of power is required per CPU. So there is no giant power savings vs. Intel/AMD here.
And when it comes to the PPC970 130nm, obviously this chip is a heat/power monster.
Apple wouldn’t need 9 fans, a fancy case, and a 600W power supply for a low power chip.
When it comes to the 1.5Ghz G4 laptops, they are a placeholder until IBM figures out how to fix the 970FX.
Inside Apple Steve is screaming because the 970FX is not low power and low heat like he was promised. Steve so wants to ship G5 Powerbooks.
As it stands today, there will have been 64-bit PC laptops on the market for over a year by the time Apple fields a 64-bit Powerbook. It is doubtful Apple will even beat the launch of 64-bit Windows later this year.
well, you could be right, but I don’t know. I guess the IBM spec sheet mentioned in a thing i was reading before was wrong. Could be they flubbed, but i would think IBM would have a working chip first.
The Powermac doesn’t need 9 fans, they did that for noise. Big slow fans covering the whole front for nice flow. The chips hardly need it. The heatsinks are huge because there was no reason not to go big, and it made things nice for good airflow.
I think the other thing is that in no way should anyone expect a full 2ghz chip in the powerbooks. Would be nice, but I don’t expect it. I was expecting something like a 1.5 ghz version of the 90nm 970.
IBM could be screwing Apple here, Moto master that art, but then at the same time it’s Apples fault to, they pick whole they hitch their wagon to. And they can lay on the pressure. If Jobs was making statements about non-exsistant chips, then that was dumb. If he said 3.0 ghz in a year and they were in no way sure if that was a solid thing he should have never said it.
I do think what you say makes some sense, the fact there had been no mid 2+ ghz 970s yet seams very odd. I would say the idea of going from 2 to 3 in one step is a dream.
Still, maybe I will just go for a powermac in a few months and wait on a power book.
I also can’t see the 970 being as bad as a prescott. The prescott is just a craze beast thats trying to set intel headquarters on fire. I don’t know whats up with that chip. AMD seams to be doing just fine with heat these days for their performance, intel goofed big time. That thing complete messes up the trend line of heat to performance x86 cpus have. Guess it should be called and outlyer and ignored.
Hello eveyone,
Does anyone know if the display technology on the Powerbooks has been updated? Sony and Fujitsu have new screen technology, with Sony having what they call Xbrite screens and Fujitsu having MVA screens. These screens look excellent.
teller
well, from this IBM pdf as of feb 24th 2004 they still list the 970FX as i said above, and at 1.4ghz putting out 12.3W
http://www-306.ibm.com/chips/techlib/techlib.nsf/techdocs/7874C7DA8…
I would hope they would have updated it, if the numbers were no longer correct. Maybe Optimisium is Forever. The do have a disclaimer. But sorta ruines the point of putting out spec sheets if they are pointless. Though its not the most technical thing ever, it’s what I could find.
In my English Class I had to do a 3 page paper on this subject, I choose Apple. Spoken Interface is cool, because it will come with all macs and not a add-on software costing $1000.00(from what Newsweekonline said) or so. I just wish I thought English was cool……..
Apple is including this so they can comply with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act. This means that any technology equipment acquired by the federal government must be accessible to people with disabilities. This is a very good move on Apple’s part….
Unfortunately processors don’t run on a piece of paper. While I appreciate IBM has made some spectacular claims for the PPC970, I have yet to see real world evidence.
Until someone takes a Xserve G5 (the only machine currently with a 970FX) and checks it out, we won’t know *in reality* what is going on with IBM’s new 90nm.
It takes an active enthusiast community of people who muck with their hardware to see what really is. There really isn’t much of one for Macintosh, so it’s rare to find any information about Macintosh hardware expect basic hardware flaws.
From what I’ve heard, though, there are serious problems with heat/power.
Two more months and it will be a year with no PPC970 speed increases. Either the fundamental PPC970 design is broken and cannot scale in clock speed, IBM’s 90nm CMOS process is busted, or the particular implementation IBM chose for 90nm has heat/power issues but would otherwise scale to higher clock speeds.
As the only real world data points to serious heat/power issues, that is what I am going with in my discussions.
“From what I’ve heard, though, there are serious problems with heat/power.
Two more months and it will be a year with no PPC970 speed increases. Either the fundamental PPC970 design is broken and cannot scale in clock speed, IBM’s 90nm CMOS process is busted, or the particular implementation IBM chose for 90nm has heat/power issues but would otherwise scale to higher clock speeds.
As the only real world data points to serious heat/power issues, that is what I am going with in my discussions.”
I haven’t seen any proof either way about heat issues. A lot of speculation started when a few G5’s had broken power supplies (it was fixed very quickly, btw). I have also heard that the 90nm chips don’t sit on the motherboard the same way the 130nm ones do, and it was causing a redesign in the motherboard and surrounding components, cheaper to do that than redesign a chip. As for the lack of speed bumps, Apple never promised any until late this summer, and why go into hurried production on a new design when sales of the current one hasn’t slowed down? Not to say I wouldn’t like another dual G5 with a speed bump at work though, the faster the better I say, but we need to stay rational from both our points of view and Apples.
I don’t thhink that the powerpc970 FX has a problem of heat. A powerpc970 FX has a typical power of 12.3 watts at 1.4 ghz and 24.5 watts at 2.0 ghz. That’s very low for this class of cpu, lower than a G4 7455 at 1.4 ghz (Official number from IBM).
Of course a laptop is not just a cpu, we have to consider as well all the components of the motherboard, as the system controller, the I/O chipset, the hard drive, etc…..All that compinents make heat, just imagine a system controller running at 1 ghz in a laptop. Apple has to use as well a 90 nm process for their system controller, because the PowerMac G5 13 nm system controller make too much heat for a laptop.
I think that one of the reason of the delay of the powerbook G5 is simply the poor production of 90 nm G5 that IBM is able to do now. We saw the delay of the Xserves, and now the delay of the Powermac G5 using a G5 FX, and i think it is today completely impossible for Apple to have enough G5 Fx for the Xserves, PowerMacs and Powerbooks. It seems that IBM , like Intel, has difficulties with the 90 process.
Not like intel at all. IBM is having some ramping troubles, Intel can’t do it at all.
If IBM falsely advertises 12.3 watts at 1.4GHz, then they are at risk of being sued. I think their official specs. on power consumption are pretty accurate. Apple just needs more chips, already saturating IBMs supply capacity .
Sony and Fujitsu have new screen technology, with Sony having what they call Xbrite screens and Fujitsu having MVA screens. These screens look excellent.
I saw the Sony Xbrite at a Micro Center, and was amazed at how much the screen reflected. In low light, I could see my reflection as if it was a LCD screen with a highly reflective surface on top. That negative side effect overpowered anything positive that could have been said about it.
“As for the lack of speed bumps, Apple never promised any until late this summer, and why go into hurried production on a new design when sales of the current one hasn’t slowed down?”
no, steve jobs at wwdc on June 23, 2003 promised 3ghz within 12 months. That is the first week of summer, not late summer if you live in the northern hemisphere.
no, apple gives no clear roadmaps generally, another reason to not deal with a secretive company that has you spend thousands on equipment not knowing if you wait a week you could do better by yourself. instead you just get surprise sunday announcements about updates.
no promises but if you don’t release a faster cpu for 10 moths something is seriously wrong. but then slow cpus and delayed releases for cpus have been par for the course with powerpc chips for years…with both motorola and ibm.
and it clearly has nothing to do with sales. powermac sales that were announced just last week were lower for the quarter that just ended versus the quarter before.
apple said they hoped for at least 200,000 in powermac sales per quarter and they fell short of that self stated goal. they only sold 174,000. 19% less than the previous quarter. the g5 is flopping.
the pro macs (powermacs and powerbooks) both had shrinking sales from one quarter to the next. and that in the middle of an increase in sales for pcs of 15% quarter to quarter.
http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2004/04/14/unitsales/
IT’s SUCKS!!!
read the sales article again, part of the problem was the hickup in G5 manufacturing and the backlog of orders. I also know as time goes on companies hold out buying until the next major release. This also has a factor on sales.
G5 is flopping ya ………
oh no how are we gonna shut them up again….?