One of the Holy Grails of home computing is achieving a natural sounding, conversant computer voice, like the LCARS voice of the Starship Enterprise, or HAL in 2001. Ok, maybe not HAL so much.
The built-in voices of OS X are better than most, to be sure, but it’s not quite Majel Barrett-Roddenberry level yet; the choices we currently have are still a bit wooden and mechanical. Certain third-party apps can do better, as we’ve previously posted, but we’re still a long way.
With Leopard, we’ve come much closer though.
Welcome Alex, the new voice of Mac OS X.
Apple’s new synthetic voice is more lifelike and natural, based on patented technologies they’ve developed themselves. There are new techniques for pausing and fine breath control that makes Alex sound much better than Bruce or Vicki.
Listen to a sampling of Alex here.
