I’ve heard a few people searching for a solution that would make the iPhone audibly speak the name of their contacts. So I thought I’d pass on this tip from a reader over at our sister site, Mac OS X Hints. While it’s not automated, it does offer a somewhat streamlined process, taking full advantage of OS X’s built-in speech capabilities—though, to be honest, depending on how difficult your contacts’ names are to pronounce, you may need to do some tweaking. Also, depending on how many contacts you have, this process may be prohibitively long.
You’ll need Garage Band and a brief foray into the Terminal in order to make this all happen, but it’s not to complicated, so don’t fret. The full instructions are over at Mac OS X Hints. While the process could probably be automated, I think that’s going to take someone with more AppleScript/Automator skills that I possess.
I played around with this concept as soon as ways to hack customized ringtones were available for the iPhone. It's too much work and too kludgy a solution for something that could soooo easily have been built into the iPhone.
My friends' cheap LG and Samsung phones do this speaking of the caller id automatically, and will speak out loud the phone number if it doesn't recognize the name.
Just another list of disappointing "basic" features the iPhone lacks.
I wouldn't have any other phone (at this time), but the iPhone still disappoints in many many ways.
For such a revolutionary phone not to have voice recognition is bizarre. Seriously, I've had it with previous phones for years. This announces the name of the contact, but the picture usually will suffice. What we need is a way to be able to speak the contact name and have it dial the contact. Is that asking too much?
@JSotir -
I disagree that the caller's picture showing is sufficient. What if the phone is across the room? Or in my pocket? I can't see the picture easily/quickly in those situations when I am screening calls.
The lack of voice dialing is a completely different issue; and one that I agree with you on.