Turn Off Filename Extension Warning
In Leopard, Apple fixed an annoying aspect of working with the Finder in Tiger. Previously, if you changed a file's extension, the Finder prompted for confirmation. But since no one has ever accidentally changed a filename extension, Apple thankfully added an option to turn that warning off in the Leopard Finder's preferences. Choose Finder > Preferences, and in the Advanced screen, deselect Show Warning Before Changing an Extension.
Written by
Adam C. Engst
Recent TidBITS Talk Discussions
- Alternatives to MobileMe for syncing calendars between iPad/Mac (1 message)
- Free anti-virus for the Mac (20 messages)
- iTunes 10 syncing iPod Touch 4.1 (2 messages)
- Thoughts about Ping (16 messages)
Related Articles
- TidBITS Watchlist: Notable Software Updates for 05-May-08 (01 May 08)
- Automating Text-to-Speech Video Narration (11 Mar 08)
- Catching Up with the Voice of Macintosh: Fred (01 Apr 03)
Published in TidBITS 897.
Subscribe to our weekly email edition.
- AT&T Runaround for Early iPhone Adopters
- Daylight Saving Time Rules Fixed for New Zealand
- iPhoney Baloney Browser
- Starbucks To Give Away 50 Million iTunes Songs
- Yugma Provides Free Web Conferencing
- iPhone Launch Set for UK and Germany, with Murky Data Plan
- New York Times Frees Old Articles
- QuickerTek Expands Inexpensive Wi-Fi Options for Macs
- OWC Ships 802.11n Adapters for Older Macs
- Confusion Over Santa Rosa: What's in a Name?
- Take Control News: Make the Most of Apple Mail and .Mac
- Hot Topics in TidBITS Talk/24-Sep-07
Macs Speak Clearly with Infovox iVox
The Mac OS has long boasted speech synthesis - the capability to read text aloud - but honestly, the quality of the voices, though perhaps better than the competition, is still pretty awful. No one with a choice would listen to Victoria's robotic intonations all day long, although Jeff Carlson's interview with Fred was a hoot (see "Catching Up with the Voice of Macintosh: Fred," 2003-04-01). (For Leopard, Apple is promising a new voice - Alex - that's supposed to be much better than the current built-in voices.)
For a far better listening experience that you can try today and that reflect worldwide speech patterns, check out the speech quality of the voices in Infovox iVox. They're not perfect; you won't mistake them for real people speaking, but they're a big improvement over the voices Apple ships in Tiger. Designed by the Acapela Group and distributed by AssistiveWare, Infovox iVox provides a wide variety of male and female voices for American English, British English, French, Canadian French, Spanish, American Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Dutch, Flemish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and Finnish.
I particularly like the high-quality British English voices, perhaps because the slight British accent marks the voice as foreign to my ears, thus causing me to forgive any mispronunciations or hesitations, or rather, to assume that they're part of the accent. And although I'm not sufficiently conversant in any of the other supported languages to understand what's being said, some of them sound even better because of this.
You can listen to the samples on the AssistiveWare Web site, and you can also download the voices to try for a limited time on your Mac. Beware that the voice packs are huge downloads (200 to 600 MB each). The voices work with any application that's compatible with the Apple Speech Manager; Mac OS X 10.3.9 is required as a minimum, but Mac OS X 10.4 is recommended. After running the installer, you can choose different voices in the Speech pane of System Preferences; to test with your own text, look for controls in the Edit menu's Speech submenu (you can always use TextEdit if your preferred writing tool doesn't offer the Speech menu). Through 31-Oct-07, the American and British English voices cost $99 (normally $149 and $219), the non-Scandinavian voices cost $149 (normally $219), and the Scandinavian languages cost $269 (normally $359, but you get the Swedish Chef for free... just kidding).
Needless to say, anyone who relies on the Mac's text-to-speech capabilities will appreciate the Infovox iVox voices (AssistiveWare provides a video showing how a blind translator uses the product), but I wonder if higher quality voice might cause text-to-speech to become more commonly used by those who haven't previously considered the feature before.
![](/file/11593/db.tidbits.com.tar/db.tidbits.com/images/badges/mark-space.gif)
address book, music, photos and much more between your phone
and Mac. Supports ANDROID, BLACKBERRY, PALM PRE and many
other phones. <http://www.markspace.com/bits>