Warning: computer content ahead…

Really? Am I the only person in the world who actually wants to use the OSX Dictation & Speech features? Trying to find support for some of the lesser-explored features is a nightmare.

There’s a text to speech feature in OSX that’s nice to have for, say, blind, poor-sighted, dyslexic, etc. But the default voices provided by Apple are sometimes hard to follow.

Newer versions of OSX claim to let us change that boring automaton articulation into something more agreeable…and understandable.

System Preferences > Dictation & Speech > Text to Speech > click the System Voice drop-down then click Customize…

Now, choose a voice (or two) that don’t suck. For example, select Samantha, Tom, Fiona, Tessa, whatever. Then click OK.

Because these are more natural-sounding voices, and not just simple algorithms, there’s a download involved. So, click Install at the “Are you sure you want to download and install the voices…”  Yes, I’m sure, you moronic lump of aluminum and silicon — why the hell else would I have clicked on OK just a moment ago?

Obligatory Apple Software license agreement — sure, I agree that I won’t reverse engineer anything. Really, who reads those things anyway?

Clicks Agree…

The little “Finding software” scroller pops up. Oh, good, it looks to be doing something useful, so I go away for a minute or two and come back to:

The software is currently unavailable. Voices aren’t available to download at this time. Try again later.

Been trying for about a week now. Same thing, every time. Makes me wonder if they exist at all.

If anyone ever gets those things to work, let me know, will ya?