Mac OS X Tiger

[microdmitry]

So I've installed the damn thing tonight. Runs like buttah and quite a bit faster. Spotlight works as advertised, Safari is much improved, etc. etc.

And then I've discovered one thing that simply startled me. I went into the clock menu and made it announce the hours. Then I went into the voice selection menu, and in the Novelty section there were three "voices" that Mr. Vai obviously used on Fire Garden. The voices are named "Deranged" and "Hysterical" and "Whisper". That's where those "mechanical" voices on Fire Garden come from. It's not Eventide or anything.

Now every Vai fan has an excuse to buy a shiny new Apple iMac G5.

[darren wilson]

1) Go into System Preferences -> Speech. You can select the default speaking voice there.

2) Launch TextEdit. Type anything you want. Then select Edit -> Speech -> Start Speaking.

This isn't new to Tiger. I'm running Panther (and unfortunately will have to continue to run Panther until my office finds a Tiger-compatible, cross-platform contact and calendaring app) and Speech functionality works there, too. (As it did in OS 9 as well.)

[Artist]

Yep those voices have been with apple for ages, maybe even system 7/8. Radiohead also used one for 'fitter, happier' on OK Computer.