Why didn't we see a Nuance announcement during WWDC?
One major rumor missing from the WWDC keynote yesterday was voice control. It was just last year that Apple purchased Siri, a popular voice companion app for iOS. Apple was also rumored to be working with Nuance to offer some form of voice control in its software.
References to Nuance were recently spotted in a developer version of Mac OS X Lion, and sources claim Nuance software is running at Apple's North Carolina data center. Even the Chief Mobile Technology Architect at Nuance was spotted in the WWDC audience yesterday.
Despite this mounting evidence, voice control was a no-show at WWDC. Both TechCrunch and Robert Scoble heard from sources that Apple's voice technology was not ready for a WWDC demonstration. It's there, and Apple is still working on it, but it's not quite ready for prime time. Perhaps Apple will wait to roll out this feature and use it to drum up added excitement when iOS 5 finally arrives this fall.
