Anyone else remember the classic PlainTalk (MacinTalk text-to-speech) characters? It's like they've been wiped from the face of the earth!

This screenshot is from this book.

Very odd there's so much other retro-Mac info out there, but I could only find a few references to the PlainTalk voices that were showcased on the Quadra 660AV/840AV and early PowerPC era. The older MacinTalk voices have more recorded history, like this video. But I haven't found one yet for the PlainTalk-onwards generation.

They weren't just voices, they also had animated little "avatars".

Here's another quaint historical article, no pics tho.

Would appreciate memories from anyone else who remembers these characters!

“The light you see at the end of the tunnel is the headlight from a fast approaching train”

“Pssst! You! Yeah you! Who do you think I’m talking to, the mouse?”

“Congratulations you just won a sweepstakes and you don’t have to pay income tax again…”

The avatars are gone, but the voices still exist. If you go into the Accessibility settings, you can access a whole pile of voices, including the original MacinTalk ones. Most languages have "male" and "female" voices, but American English also has a "novelty" section for voices like "Bells".

I prefer the talking moose.

I do remember those, OP! They were actually fun to activate and have them as a companion on your desktop for a while.

I remember these guys looking at me and moving around a bit. Even back then it didn’t sell the idea that the computer was any more intelligent than an electric typewriter. Having to learn or figure out what it would accept as a question got old fast.

After all these years technology is almost at the stage a commercial product might pull off the promise these were selling. To be able to tell a computer to do something for you without you having to make it happen yourself.

The drawings are gone, but at least some of the voices still live on. Try some of these in a terminal window:

say --voice "Zarvox" "This is a test"
say --voice "Albert" "This is a test"
say --voice "Ralph" "This is a test"

You can view a list of all voices with:

say --voice '?'

I remember a Marvin when we first got our LC630, but after running an update we had the usual Fred, Whispers, Pipe Organ, etc, etc.

I forgot all about the images, but was pleasantly surprised to find the voices still exist on my M2 MBA.