I've been thinking about tech commentators like Rene Richy, (spelling) who, memorably for me, said that Dolby Atmos couldn't be put on iPhones, when it's been on Android phones for a few years at that point. He like does this "you poor viewers just don't know about tech" laugh, and says it's not possible. And then on the iPhone 11, boom, spatial audio.
I've not listened to have much in the last year or so, but tech reviewers should be diving deep into all available operating systems, to better understand what is possible, and push companies to actually compete. Like the blind android users, they didn't know about iOS 16 allowing people to make new voices for iPhones.
Granted, this is new, but they leaned their argument that Google couldn't possible get a license for Eloquence on Android, because Apple had to get it because they're the supposedly only people that can make voices for iOS. Granted, both companies could have had Eloquence, the new Vocalizer voices, and so on for years, and I'm sure Apple pushed all that through because Ukrainian voices, but the point is, they have the voices. Google doesn't.
Meanwhile, CodeFactory could be sitting there supporting Eloquence for new Android versions, maybe with the awesome dictionary files to improve pronounciations, and future-proofing it for 64-bit and Android 14. But nope. If Voxin on Linux can do this, and Apple can do it, I'm sure CodeFactory can. The Apple a11y team isn't *that* big.
@devinprater I don’t think Code Factory has the actual Eloquence source code. They have the app they wrote around it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they got the core library in binary form. if Nuance never released an Android 64-bit variant of the library, there’s nothing anyone can do.
So now some Android users are going to the cell carriers about all this. It's really sad, and there is blame to share among all companies, especially Nuance and the split off TTS company who could have open sourced Eloquence 10 years ago. But Apple now has the voice, no matter how bad it sounds and how unconfigurable it is. Android won't for much longer at all, and new users can't buy it. I'm sure there are cracks though.