VOX3000

Developer: The Retronyms
Category: Entertainment
Version: 1.0.1
Release Date: July 15, 2009
Size: 4.5 MB
Price $0.99
Rating 10/10

The Retronyms are a groovy bunch of iPhone developers. They have some cool apps out in the App Store, and VOX3000 is one of them. Their repertoire runs the gamut from multi person complex to short, simple, even a chimp could do it. VOX3000 is the latter app.

VOX3000 is a speech synthesizer. Just type what you want to have spoken into the keyboard and hit speak and your iPhone recites the text back to you in computer voice.

I fired up VOX3000 and immediately did what I assume everyone else does at first, I made my iPhone say "LUKE I AM YOUR FATHER", "Danger Will Robinson!", "I'm afraid I can't do that right now" (HAL), and (this one dates dates me)"BEEDEE BEEDEE BEEDEE Buck!"".

VOX3000 has an incredibly cool retro-keyboard that makes a typing click when you type that blows away Apple's default click for the iPhone keypad. It has a full QWERTY layout, with the addition of Load, Save, Speak, Last and Delete keys. The keyboard looks vaguely like my old Vic Commodore's keyboard (once again dating myself).

Short but sweet app, VOX3000 does exactly what it says it does, looks cool and is pretty darn entertaining. I've got to give it props. Nothing to complain about here. Another one that the kids love, and I need to mention that it forced my 9 year old to spell things correctly too, so let's toss it into Education also. Think of it as a $0.99 cent electronic speller that makes you laugh on the side.

And if the keys had pictures of bananas and kitties on them, a chimp could definitely make it happen.