Edit: Well that was weird. See comments below.
So I was greeted with a surprise last night on my Mavericks machine—a software update notification!
I thought, that's weird, let's see what's going on!
![Screen Shot 2020-03-14 at 11.51.57 AM.png]( "Screen Shot 2020-03-14 at 11.51.57 AM.png")
Some background: When I originally set up this machine, I downloaded the "Enhanced" versions of the Samantha and Tom System Voices (System Preferences → Dictation & Speech → Text to Speech). I think they sound pretty good, as far as these things go.
Now seeing updates available, I figured, "Oh, nice, I guess when Apple updates their voices, the changes still get pushed back to Mavericks too!" Big mistake. After installing the updates, I found that these two voices didn't work—nothing happens when I click play.
If not for the fact I'm fairly technically-adept, there would have been no way to fix the problem. I had to delete the folders Tom.SpeechVoice, Tom.Compact.SpeechVoice, and Samantha.SpeechVoice from /System/Library/Speech/Voices/, and then reinstall the older versions, which I'd previously downloaded from Apple's servers for safekeeping (luckily, I back up all this stuff because I'm paranoid the servers will go offline someday).
Apple, I don't expect support for a seven-year-old OS, but if you haven't tested a piece of software on a particular platform, pretty please don't push it out to everyone on that platform as an update.
I thought, that's weird, let's see what's going on!
Some background: When I originally set up this machine, I downloaded the "Enhanced" versions of the Samantha and Tom System Voices (System Preferences → Dictation & Speech → Text to Speech). I think they sound pretty good, as far as these things go.
Now seeing updates available, I figured, "Oh, nice, I guess when Apple updates their voices, the changes still get pushed back to Mavericks too!" Big mistake. After installing the updates, I found that these two voices didn't work—nothing happens when I click play.
If not for the fact I'm fairly technically-adept, there would have been no way to fix the problem. I had to delete the folders Tom.SpeechVoice, Tom.Compact.SpeechVoice, and Samantha.SpeechVoice from /System/Library/Speech/Voices/, and then reinstall the older versions, which I'd previously downloaded from Apple's servers for safekeeping (luckily, I back up all this stuff because I'm paranoid the servers will go offline someday).
Apple, I don't expect support for a seven-year-old OS, but if you haven't tested a piece of software on a particular platform, pretty please don't push it out to everyone on that platform as an update.
Last edited:
