I have announced few days ago the testing of the iOS app here: https://www.applevis.com/forum/ios-ipados/speech-central-next-gen-testing
As Mac app is now finally approved by Apple, it is ready for the testing and is available from this link: https://testflight.apple.com/join/fE1jdPLV
This is based on the same code as the latest iOS beta version - it should be very stable even as if it is beta. As it uses some of the latest technologies from Apple, it requires macOS Ventura to work.
Other than that some remarks from the iOS post remain, so I'll copy and paste them here:
soon there will be 10 years from the release of the first version of Speech Central (at that point it was called Share to Speech and was released for Windows).
As part of that event a completely new version of Speech Central for iOS and macOS rewritten from the scratch is being prepared.
It features more than thousand of improvements. In this post I won't announce the list of those improvements, but I do announce that this is getting few months from the final release (the current expectation is January 2024) and things are getting close to production level, so beta testing is now opened.
There is some more information regarding the beta testing here: https://speechcentral.net/2023/11/17/beta-testing-of-the-next-gen-of-speech-central/ .
While the accessibility is certainly even better at the conceptual level, some testing and feedback would be highly appreciated! Of course reports on any other problems are highly appreciated too!
Comments
Crashing
Hi,
I'm using an M 1 MacBook Air and try to use the app. I imported a pdf file but I can not read it in the app, when I tried to open the pdf file the app instantly crashed, this happened for several times. I couldn't read anything unfortunately.
RE: Crashing
Thanks, I did receive around 10 crash reports from just one user (all others had no crashes at all).
Based on data from crashes this seems to be caused by some 3rd party voice (like CereProc or Acapela) and its unusual properties that trigger some bug.
I'll publish the possible fix soon, but I can't test it as I can't reproduce the problem.
re: Crashing
Interesting. I don't have any third party voices but the app keeps crashing. I'm using Mac OS Sonoma 14.1.1.
RE: Crashing
It is certainly caused by some voice, I would expect it to be 3rd party as there are nearly 100 testers now (iOS + macOS as this logic is the same) and no other user had crash because of this, but it could be that some specific combination of selected voice and installed voices may cause the crash.
Anyway, the update has been just pushed, ensure that you have received it and see if that works for you, I would guess that it should work now. And please report back so that I can know the results :).
solved
I downloaded the update and the crashing bug is fixed. Thanks.
By the way, How can we use the Microsoft voices in the app? And , If this is possible, I think you can also use eleven labs voices because they are very realistic and multilingual.
Best regards.
RE: solved
Great to hear that the bug is fixed.
As currently there are no Microsoft voices in the official Mac release they aren't covered by the Mac help article, but the iOS help article can be applied: https://speechcentral.net/ios-help/#azure
The new version is made to be modular regarding this, so certainly there will be serveral more voice providers in 2024 after the official release of the new version.
difficulty importing files
I'm trying to import an ePub, but selecting a file in the table just takes me back to the first item in the list, and the import function just hangs without importing the file. I don't recall having similar problems with the stable version. Am I doing something wrong, or is this a genuine bug?
RE: difficulty importing files
There are many millions of epub files and if one file works it doesn't mean that some other file will work, or if one doesn't work that another won't work. Most notable reason for epub files not to work in Speech Central is as they are based on the zip compression and there are variants of that compression that Apple doesn't support.
I can tell that the old version couldn't import every single epub file, and the new version has thus far imported all files that are expected to work.
However whether there is some particular file that may cause some problems and did work previously I can't tell anything without having it to inspect.
Importing
I think there is a bug about importing a file. When you press Command+O, the app opens the import windows but it doesn't import the file. You have to go to the toolbar and press the add popup menu and import a file from there which is interesting. I tried the process with some pdf files.
RE: Importing
Thanks for clarifying.
Main menu on the Mac is far from over. While SwiftUI made the development of most things a joy, brought many new opportunities for improvement of the app and made the app future-proof, I have to say that Apple still hasn't figured out how to make this work with the main menu. Certainly everything can be made and will be implemented in the end, but making the main menu work in multi-window application is an adventure.
This is the reason why app requires Ventura, as before it you couldn't make a great Mac app in SwiftUI.
The good thing is that Apple is going to be mostly focused on SwiftUI in the future, so unlike any other app that uses old technologies, Speech Central is now fully prepared for that future.