news.scotsman.com — Next-generation iPods are expected to have speech facilites, supposedly to enhance the device's hands-free capability. Apple state that their device will feature "voice talent", allowing users to have song titles read out by their favourite actor.
Jul 9, 2006 View in Crawl 4
bevansdesignJul 10, 2006
Ha, Apple's really grasping at straws now. Looks like the beginning of the end of the ipod era is coming.
whozyodaddyJul 10, 2006
Bonzi Buddy is spyware.
ahmedbJul 10, 2006
It's a little weird having your iPod talk to you, but the issue of 'safety' is important I think, even on busy roads having to play with the car stereo, change stations or this or that is dangerous, it doesn't take much for an accident and unless you know exactly where the stereo is, most likely you will move your eyes of the road even for a split second, now if you can 'request' a particular song from your iPod, that will be very neat, you can request the songs you want without moving your eyes of the road...However, having someone tell you what the next song is is stupid to me...1. You can 'wait' and figure out what the song is when it starts playing.2. You can look at the screen (moving your eyes of the straight again!!!!)Unless you are going to be changing the order of the songs again when you 'hear' or are 'told' what the next song is -> more playing with the iPod -> more taking your eyes off the road -> higher probability of accidents....
Closed AccountJul 10, 2006
That perfectly fits with the era we are in.People load thousands of songs in their ipods. Songs they never head of, songs they don't like. Songs they don't know.They don't even know what an "Album" is anymore. Bands organize their tracks so it means something to them. Ipod owners just randomly plays the 2 hit singles. and they don't even know the names.i know every song i listen. I know the lyrics. i know the title, i know the album and i know the tracklist.geeez.
danglermanJul 10, 2006
i'm hoping this will just be a firmware update
acaloiarJul 10, 2006
This is nonsense...according to the article, the Ipod itself will not employ any text recognition at all. "The ingenious system will rely on home PC processing power and clever software. The computer being used to download tracks will analyse each album title, song name and artist and convert them into sound files. These will be loaded into the iPod, along with the song files."That's ridiculous, and not even remotely "ingenious". It's going to use your PC to generate audio files which will waste valuable storage space on your Ipod. Wow, real inovation there.
crilen007Jul 10, 2006
You're playing Eminem Now Dog!
6tonJul 10, 2006
I don't care how credible the guy or his story is. The ability to streamline a handset device by voice activation is better than thumbing up my screen, ie, next gen ipod. Especially with the possibility of ipod expansion into phone and other handhelp services.
nanobuilderJul 10, 2006
Somehow this article doesnt seem all that plausible. Especially the consumers losing interest. Besides, who needs a talking ipod, what we need is a bigger screen and better battery life
boweJul 10, 2006
more voices. Some with foreign Accents,. oh joy./<a class="user" href="http://www.vioio.com/voices.htm">http://www.vioio.com/voices.htm</a>
afruff23Jul 12, 2006
To all you people saying this is useless:There are blind people with iPods you know? Rockbox.org even ahs a specific section for them and they already have text to speech and it doesn't require any preprocessing on the PC. Also, this is just a rumor just like the touchscreen ipod(stupidest idea ever; you smudge your screen and now videos suck).