UPDATE: as lot of people are still coming to this page, it is useful to know that the new generation of the app has been successfully tested and published and you can get it now from the regular App Store on iOS and Mac.
New things are coming
Some great news to share!
After a full year of development, a completely reinvented Speech Central is getting close to the release. It features over 1000 improvements including the new integrated Apple Watch experience. This is the biggest update of any text-to-speech app ever. To my best knowledge no other text-to-speech app had improved its features and foundations this much even in 5 years time of their development.
Testing is (mostly) safe
- Apple states that in some cases installing the beta version may delete the previous app data. This doesn’t appear to happen frequently, but if data is of high value to you you should consider to backup your device to iCloud or Mac and restore it from there if something goes wrong.
- Your old app storage won’t be deleted during the testing so if you find any problem that is a deal breaker for you, just report it and install the currently official version from the App Store and continue where you left!
- The app is based on much more safer technologies and internal architecture that is significantly less error prone. Which quite narrows the window for problems. My personal expectation is that the quality level of the beta release won’t be below the level of the currently official app even though it isn’t as much tested. Some initial data shows confirms this.
Areas that may need an improvement
- Headlines feature has not been completely implemented.
- The performance of the very long content (> 10 hours) would need some improvement.
- Localization of the new textual content is not done yet.
Join the testing
To join the testing of the new iOS and Apple Watch experience, ensure that you have TestFlight installed on your iPhone/iPad (Apple’s official app for beta testing) and then use this link to acquire the app:
- iOS: https://testflight.apple.com/join/XrOTSdnm
- watchOS: after installing the iOS app, tap on the app’s icon and turn the “Show App on Apple Watch” on.
- macOS: https://testflight.apple.com/join/fE1jdPLV