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Developer Cepstral has announced that its professional-quality text-to-speech (TTS) voices are now available for use with Mac OS X v10.2 or higher, including the upcoming version of Mac OS X 10.4 known as "Tiger," which will feature a new spoken interface technology called VoiceOver.
Cepstral's voices integrate directly with the Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Speech Manager in all compatible versions of the operating system, making them available to every application and service on the Macintosh that uses text-to-speech.
Emerging Technology
VoiceOver will offer TTS support systemwide, enabling users to access it in all applications, whether or not developers consciously include such functionality.
Cepstral was previously unavailable for the Macintosh operating system, which has long been at the forefront of integrated text-to-speech capabilities.
"Text-to-speech is an emerging technology," Cepstral CEO Kevin Lenzo told MacNewsWorld. "It's about information delivery, so it's getting integrated into everything. You can have your cell phone tell you who's calling, for example, or a school can use it when calling the homes of absent students."
Given its use across a wide range of industries, Lenzo is unsure about the size of the TTS market, but companies like Cepstral stand to benefit from any sector that employs computer technology. Lenzo said that TTS was originally created as an assistive technology for users with disabilities, making it "the back door into everything."
When it comes to general users, however, Lenzo noted that TTS is "a new way to interact with devices. It's not strictly necessary, but it's an increasing part of people's lives, especially with new things such as podcasting."
Podcasting Possibilities
Podcasting is a new phenomenon that describes audio shows created by users who make them available for others to download and listen to on an MP3 player. Given the iPod's overwhelming popularity, the term "podcasting" came to describe it.
Shareware developer ZappTek integrated podcasting with text-to-speech technology when it released iSpeak It, a utility that turns any document, including Web pages and RSS news feeds, into an audio file that can be loaded onto an MP3 player.
Based on anecdotal evidence, ZappTek President Michael Zapp told MacNewsWorld that he estimates only 10 to 20 percent of his customers use iSpeak It as an assistive technology. The rest of them use it because they like the ability to place files on their MP3 players and listen to them, for example, while commuting to and from work.
Zapp refers his customers to Cepstral because the voices Apple includes with its operating system "have long been the Achilles heel of iSpeak It. Most people, myself included, can't listen to [Apple voices] Victoria or Bruce on a long document without getting a headache. I'm often asked about alternative voices, and now that Cepstral has some reasonable ones, I have an answer for them."
Lenzo doesn't see any conflict between what Apple and Cepstral offer, noting that his company simply "enhances what Apple offers. Our voice files are bigger, which enables us to create voices with higher fidelity."
While Windows XP does offer TTS technology, Lenzo said that it's not as deeply integrated with the operating system, which forces developers to make a decision whether or not to include it.
Various Platforms
Cepstral sells all of its voices -- U.S. and UK English, Canadian French, Americas Spanish and German -- for Mac OS X as well as Windows CE, Palm, Linux and Sparc-Solaris. It also sells a software development kit for developers who want to implement cross-platform voice capability in their software.
Looking ahead to Tiger's release, Lenzo is excited. He's currently running a beta version of the software and said: "I use VoiceOver all the time. For example, I have it read news to me from a Web browser while I'm doing something else. Apple has taken a giant step in making accessibility handy for the average user."
An Apple representative was unavailable for comment.
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