Powerful New Apple Speech Technology Software Included with New Power
Macintosh Systems

New and Improved Utilities Give Power Mac Users Command and Control with
Speech, New Spanish Voices for Text-to-Speech

BOSTON, Massachusetts--August 7, 1995---Apple Computer, Inc. today
announced that the new version of Apple's advanced speech technologies
software, PlainTalk, will be included with the newly announced Power
Macintosh 7500s and 8500s, and comes complete with a PlainTalk microphone.
PlainTalk 1.4 has significant new abilities, and makes the new Power
Macintosh systems the most speech-capable of all the desktop systems on
the market today.

PlainTalk is a collection of software from Apple that enables Macintosh
computers to speak written text and respond to spoken commands. There are
three components to PlainTalk 1.4: English Speech Recognition, English
Text-to-Speech, and Mexican-Spanish Text-to-Speech. The software will also
be available on the Internet, eWorld, AppleLink, and on the new System
7.5.2 release CD.

New Speakable Items

English Speech Recognition includes an all-new productivity utility called
Speakable Items, which gives the user "command and control" of the
computer, via speech. Any item stored on the computer can be made
"speakable" by placing it in the Speakable Items folder; speaking the name
is like a double-click -- it opens or launches the spoken item. This
allows quick and easy access to stored information: documents,
applications, etc. The item can reside anywhere on a hard drive or server,
buried in the hierarchy of folders, and the user can open it simply by
speaking its name. For example, a user wanting to check her stock
portfolio without opening four files and launching an application, would
just say "check stocks," and the Macintosh would do the rest.

"We believe we have provided a set of speech tools which will act as an
intuitive extension to the graphical user interface," said Dr. Kai-Fu Lee,
director of Apple Interactive Media group. "The new Speakable Items
utility is so effective and easy to use -- we expect users to be hooked on
this great productivity boost in no time."

Apple has incorporated new features into Speakable Items which make speech
recognition easy to use and extremely reliable. PlainTalk is able to
recognize virtually any English-speaking voice, even those with an accent.
Misfires, a problem common to most voice-recognition systems, have been
virtually eliminated with a new feature called "Push-to-Talk." Misfires
result when a computer picks up on a sound and executes a command, when in
fact that sound was not meant to be a command. With

Speakable Items, the user speaks the computer's name (assigned by the user)
before speaking the command, or uses the "Push to Talk" feature. He or she
simply pushes a key which has been preselected by the user, thereby
notifying the computer that the next spoken words will be a command. This
is ideal for those who have put off using this type of technology due to a
noisy environment or difficult acoustics. Users may develop their own
commands using AppleScript, and example scripts are provided with the
software.

The Mac Speaks Back

Apple's text-to-speech technology is one of the most sophisticated
available, and offers a variety of voices that range from the best quality
in the industry, to the most efficient in size and speed, to the most fun
and entertaining. There are 22 different voices in all, and all are
created via synthesis. True speech synthesis means there are no recorded
sound bytes to take up valuable disk space and RAM. Game developers,
educational software developers, and CD-ROM developers can have any amount
of text read aloud from their applications using Apple's text-to-speech,
with a small, fixed amount of space taken up on the CD.

An example of the synthesis advantage is Scholastic's Wiggleworks for the
Macintosh, a consumer education title which reads stories to children
while the text and images are up on the screen, and allows the children to
add their own text, which the program will also read aloud. Without
Apple's text-to-speech synthesis, such a function would be impossible. The
range of things a child can enter into a keyboard is enormous, and many
words would not likely be stored in a recorded dictionary, making
text-to-speech synthesis the only technology capable of providing such
interactive ability.

New Spanish Version

Apple is now also providing text-to-speech for Mexican-Spanish. This new
product allows CD-ROMs, educational software, and any other application
which takes advantage of the technology to be read aloud in Spanish with a
Latin American accent. Apple continues to synthesize many more languages,
and will provide Chinese, French, Italian, and Japanese in the future.

Applying Speech to Applications

Apple's text-to-speech technologies can be easily incorporated into third
party applications with the use of Apple's Speech Manager APIs. In most
cases this can be done with just a few lines of code, resulting in more,
inexpensive applications on the market with this powerful text-to-speech
ability. There are numerous applications available today which use Apple's
text-to- speech synthesis. The Speech Recognition Manager, a new set of
APIs which will allow developers to incorporate Apple's new speech
recognition technology into their applications, is expected to be
available in Fall 1995.

Apple Computer, Inc., a recognized pioneer and innovator in the information
industry, creates powerful solutions based on easy-to- use personal
computers, servers, peripherals, software, online services, and personal
digital assistants. Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Apple (NASDAQ:
AAPL) develops, manufactures, licenses and markets products, technologies
and services for the business, education, consumer, scientific &
engineering, and government markets in over 140 countries. Apple's home
page on the World Wide Web: http://www.apple.com/

Customer Information Contact: If you are considering the purchase of an
Apple product and would like to have product information faxed to you,
please call 1-800-462-4396 in the U.S. or (415) 598- 4392 in Canada. If
you do not have a fax machine or would like to locate an Apple authorized
reseller near you, please call 1-800- 538-9696. Customers outside the U.S.
should contact their local Apple representatives for information.

Apple Computer Inc
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
408-996-1010
 
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