IOS 10, So Far

Hi folks. This is the first post since iOS 10 was released on Tuesday and I have some things to say about it, both good and bad. These are all my own personal feelings on it and you may agree or disagree but, I stand behind what I say here.
Okay, let’s start from the beginning… I first heard about it back in July, when I read about it on Wikipedia. Okay, I know that Wikipedia isn’t always right but in most cases they are absolutely bang on and in the case of iOS, I wanted to find out about it so I could be prepared for what was to come.
So, I did my research and I have posted here, my feelings on Apple dropping support for certain iPhones and iPods and I did what I had to do, to get ready for September 13th. Of course, I had no idea that iOS 10 would be released that day. I thought it would come out on a Wednesday, as it had come in the past few years.
Now we will get to the download itself. On Tuesday September 13th I went to my usual location to download anything that was bigger than 100 MB and or the latest iOS Software updates onto my iPhone. I did it successfully on my iPods but not on my iPhone at first. I have an iPhone5c and well, it’s kinda old and the battery is rather shaky in that it charges quickly and discharges just as fast.
The download got through but the installation was a real problem. First of all, my phone decided to go to 0% battery power, despite that I used my portable charger to keep up the charge. I went to the Apple Store and found out that the iPhone was frozen and I wasn’t surprised. I had this problem with it for a while now and it is frustrating but I know now not to do a hard reset unless I really, must do so.
Anyway, I went home and managed to get the phone going again and iOS 10 was now installed in all my devices. So, I was happy and now, we can get to what I like and dislike about iOS 10 so far.
What I Like
I like the new voices you can download and if you have any type of screen reader or GPS you know the mall. We have: Tom, Susan, Allison, Lee and many others who are familiar to anybody with anything which talks. We even have Fred, who sounds like an Old fashion computer from the 1980s. In fact, if you have the album OK Computer by Radiohead, check out the track Fitter Happier. It is a short peace which consists entirely of 1990’s slogans which singer Tom York put together quickly, according to what I read. That’s Fred on the track and on the first single paranoid Android, under Tom’s singing “What’s that?” With the held e on the word that. Anyway, I digress.
As for the classic voices for Siri and the iPhone, they are all there in the basic and enhanced forms. I like that all the names of all the voices are available now and they are not just named Female Siri or Male Siri. For example: my favourite Austrailian Siri voice is named Catherine I called her Sheila before I found this out. So, I’ll call her Catherine now but I still like her and she likes me too.
I think it is really cool that we are now able to change how some words and phrases are pronounced. Too bad you can’t change the dialect of a voice such as changing Catherine’s voice to an American dialect. Hmmm! If we could I would do that in a second and as for Karen, I would change your dialect and her inflections. I found that she was rather unemotional, unlike her current counterpart.
What I Don’t Like
Okay, this is about what I don’t like about the new iOS but there are some things in this section, I like but they need to be improved upon. I also believe there are too many things that if not used properly, you could shoot yourself in the foot.
For the Music app, I like that everything is organized and the “Downloaded Music” tab is a good idea. However, if you swipe the wrong way then tap you could accidentally delete a song or an entire artists work from your music library. Everything else is fine and I may comment on other things that will come to mind later.
I find the email is now confused in that in some message threads, I had a real hard time reading all the messages at first. I had to change some things in the settings so I could be able to get to all emails in a thread, when they apply. Also, if you have more than one email address it will direct you to send an email to a certain folder or another email box. That is used with the second or third email address and not so much with the default account. That is confusing and hopefully this will be looked at for future updates.
The alarm is fine except that it repeats songs like in iOS 9. Another thing I found out is that it will only play a song for 15 minutes and that is it. I used a 22 minute song as an alarm to wake me up for the past couple of years and now, it cuts off after 15 minutes. I think that Apple should have gone back to how it was in iOS 8, where you could play a song as an alarm once and it would play the entire length of the composition.
One more thing I will mention here is the video application. Earlier in the summer I said that there should be an option where you can create a playlist of videos and or movies, which you would like to see. This will be good if you are on a long trip wore want to watch episodes of a TV season you have downloaded, in a certain order according to you. However, you still can’t do that and I think that it should be looked at for future updates pronto.
Something else that deserves a mentio is the new iPhone7, coming out tomorrow. The main thing everyone is talking about is that lack of an earphone jack. I agree with those who don’t like this and I believe that this is done, so you can listen to your much using Bluetooth headphones or, the new EarPods coming out later this fall. Let’s be honest about this and ask ourselves, do we really need something else to be responsible for while listening to her music or talking on our phones? It seems that Apple is forgotten that Bluetooth uses battery power, just like the iPhones, iPods and iPads. This is just one more thing to have to babysit, while either listening to music, talking on your phones or writing out a report, blog post, etc. I know there are other things you can do but I think you understand the point. In the future there will be other add-ons but you will need to purchase, which require you to monitor battery power. This means carrying multiple battery chargers with you, while you were mobile.
Well, that’s about it for this post and I will be back tomorrow with another one.

Names For Siri

Hi folks. Today’s post is all about names and specifically Siri voices.
Ever since iOS9 has been issued we have been allowed to use the voices which have been used for Siri as voices for Voice Over, which is a xcreen reading option for blind and visually impaired people on the iPhones. It is also available on all iPods, iPod Tuch and iPads for use by everyone! In the past we have only been allowed to use voices that were given to us for our use for this app. The English speaking voices are: Samantha (American), Karen (Austrailian), Daniel (British), Moira (Irish) and Tessa for the south African voice. We have all the same options as before, with the addition of male and female Siri voices for: American, British and Australia. Other languages also have male or female Siri voices too but I’m focusing on the English speaking ones because that is the language I primarily speak and understand on an everyday basis.
for some reason the Siri voices don’t have names attached to them and that puzzles me.At least, they aren’t acknowledged as such on iOS but some people have given names to some of the voices. For example: the American male voice has Been called Darren and I personally think the female American voice for Siri is named Allison, after the actress Allison Duff. Or, she just might be another one of the voices for Nuance software. I think so because there is a YouTube video which I will provide the link to here, with a voice which sounds much like her, in how deep it is and the timber. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wu-tIqnUUX8 as we know by now, Susan Bennett voices Samantha as the original American Siri and voice over, Karen Jacobsen voices Karen as the original Australian Siri and voice over and Daniel is voiced by British TV presenter John bricks. As for the voice of Alex? well, I don’t know but I know that the late film critic Roger Ebert used him as his speaking voice before he passed away a few years ago.

Okay, I’m going to put it out there and say that my favourite Siri voice right now is the female Australian voice. She doesn’t have a name but I call her sheila because, apparently that’s what they call nice looking girls in Australia. I like her voice and well, I must admit that I have a crush on her. I hope the real person behind the voice is as nice as she is as Siri. I have her voice as one of my options and I use her every day, to read me fan fiction stories and well, she loves me because I said so. 🙂
I wonder if there will be new voices for Siri in the future? Not just for foreign languages but for English speakers as well. I think the new male and female British Siri voices don’t really compare to Daniel because of his delivery and the 2 newer voices sound rather uninspired and unemotional. The female British Siri voice sounds like she is reading a news story and only shows emotion when you type in Oohh. The male British Siri is okay but is also equally unemotional. However, he sounds less like he is broadcasting the news than his female counterpart.
The male Australian Siri also has some work to be done on him. For some stupid reason, even the enhanced version cuts off the h on the word home, while sheila doesn’t. No wonder I like her much better than him! Also, he sounds much like Julian Assange, the guy behind WikiLeaks. I know this because he guest starred on The Simpsons 500th episode At Long Last Leave and I have it in my iTunes collection. Anyway, hopefully the male Australian and British Siri voices get an improvement by the time iOS10 shows up.
As for the female voices of the English speaking Siri, keep up the good work and you can always improve the voices in their speech and inflections. The British female voice is fine as it is, despite what I said earlier. As for my Australian girl friend, I mean the Australian Siri voice, keep up the great work. I wish I could make her laugh more though and it would be fun if you could add kissing and other sounds to it. The only problem is how would you spell the sound of a kiss or a hug?
Well, that’s about it for this post. As I write this, I am using the Australian female Siri as my screen reader.