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iOS 5's final release may include "Assistant" speech-to-text feature
Apple has included limited voice control functionality in the iPhone since the debut of the iPhone 3GS, but the company's plans for voice control in iOS 5 are reportedly far broader in application according to 9to5 Mac. While no such feature was announced at WWDC and it has yet to show up in the iOS 5 betas, 9to5's sources claim Apple's test units are already testing out an "Assistant" feature meant to introduce widespread speech-to-text functionality in iOS 5. Those of you who have used Siri or the recently-launched Dragon Go! know how powerful third parties have been able to leverage speech-to-text in iOS already. Apple purchased Siri outright in 2010 and has reportedly been working with Dragon's parent company, Nuance, in further expanding the speech-to-text functions of iOS 5. Apple's partnership with Nuance has even extended to OS X, with several of Lion's optional text-to-speech voices coming directly from Nuance's stable of high-quality voices (and we'll provide you with an overview of those new voices in an upcoming post -- spoiler alert, they are awesome). 9to5 notes that since these new features have been missing from developer betas of iOS 5, it may imply that the new voice navigation "Assistant" feature may be an iPhone 5 exclusive. However, it's equally probable that since the feature has only just entered testing within Apple, Apple is not yet ready for developers to begin prodding at it in the betas. Given how well Siri and Dragon Search function already, there doesn't appear to be any technical reason why the iPhone 4 or iPad 2 wouldn't be able to run the "Assistant" feature as it's been described. According to 9to5's additional findings, a "start" button on the systemwide keyboard will initiate the speech-to-text function with a popover microphone screen. Similarly to how Dragon Dictation works, the system may then translate that speech into text at the user's option. The implications for systemwide speech-to-text functions in iOS 5 are fairly extraordinary. Siri and Dragon Go! have already shown how naturally spoken language can be leveraged in web searches, and if the same function can be expanded to the rest of the iPhone's functions, it may be possible to navigate the iPhone's functions entirely by voice. Apple has already filed a patent including such features, so this is far more than pie-in-the-sky musing on our part. This obviously wouldn't be an out-and-out replacement for the traditional touchscreen interface, but as a supplement to the touchscreen, a voice nav system would be a very powerful tool. I'm already picturing a day when I can ask my iPhone for directions to the nearest petrol station without having to pull off to the side of the road and fiddle with the screen first. Hopefully the "Assistant" feature will be a bit smarter than VoiceOver when navigating my music library by voice, so I'll have less instances of my iPhone translating "Play album: Kid A" into "Calling 555-8888." Although 9to5 has found some powerful evidence that Apple's working on integrating this feature, there's no telling when it will actually debut. If it's ready in time, I wouldn't be surprised to see it as one of the marquee features of the rumored September iPhone event.
Dragon Go! is a must-have voice search app for your iPhone
Like the proverbial genie in the bottle, you can ask a lot of Dragon Go! and have a pretty good chance of the app granting your wish. Dragon Go! is the latest free app from Nuance, creators of Dragon Dictate for the Mac and Dragon Dictation for iOS devices. In this latest app, Nuance has delivered what they consider the next generation of voice search, and after several days of testing I have no reason to doubt it. Here's the deal. Speak just about anything to Dragon Go! and it will try to parse your meaning and bring up the right set of tools to complete your search. Ask for news about Libya, or news about Libya from the New York Times and the app complies. Ask for reservations for 2 at a favorite restaurant and Open Table is queried. Directions from your current location to the nearest hospital will launch Google Maps with the route. Say a product name, like JBL speakers and an Amazon page comes up with the JBL speakers Amazon sells. It gets better. Ask it to play an artist on Pandora, and if you have the app installed it will launch and start playing the artist you asked for. Say "Play the Beatles" and if you have the Beatles on your device the music will play. You can also direct a query to a particular site. I tried "stories about Apple TV on TUAW" and it brought up a list from our website. Then a tough test. I asked to see pictures of obscure character actor Whit Bissell and the images popped up right on cue. Check our gallery. Holy Moly! No app is perfect, and every so often Dragon Go! botched a search, but most questions I asked delivered useful answers. It may seem like the app has a bit of overlap with Siri, which is also powered by Nuance Technology. There is some, but Dragon Go! reaches deeper and takes you to the appropriate place on the web, rather than try to contain the info within the app itself. The sources Dragon Go! is using are displayed at the top of the screen. You can change those sources manually if you want. The default search engine is Google, but Bing and Yahoo! are fine if you'd rather use them. I found Dragon Go! an extraordinarily useful app in day to day use. I can only scratch the surface of its capabilities in this review. You must try it for yourself. I was often wishing this kind of technology was built into my iPhone at the system level, and I'll bet Nuance wishes it were too. Of course with Apple buying Siri, we may see something similar. Dragon Go! is free, and iPhone-only at this point. According to Matt Revis, VP of Product Management at Nuance, the app is US English for now. It will come to Android sometime in the future, and also to the iPad. For all intents it replaces Dragon Search, which is not as full featured. The app will continue to function, but it won't be downloadable from the US app store. My guess is that most people will replace it with Dragon Go! anyway. I'd seriously recommend you download and give the app a test drive. It's a great iPhone demo, and I think it will work its way into your daily routine. Share your experiences with us, and tell us what you like and what you don't like. %Gallery-128357%
Noterize acquired by Nuance, points to more iOS voice savvy
The popular note-taking app Noterize made the short list of apps that D7 Consulting leveraged in its iPad trial; it also made it into Apple's 'Iconic' TV ad in January. It's been absent from the App Store for a bit, though, and now we know why. TUAW has learned that Noterize has been acquired by Nuance, adding to the voice technology company's recent slate of purchases (SVOX, Equitrac). While iOS app acquisitions have happened before, this one is particularly interesting. If all the rumors swirling around the newly enhanced relationship between Apple and Nuance are true, specifically for the integration of voice recognition at the system level in iOS 5, then there will have to be showcase apps ready this fall to take advantage of the new features. It only makes sense that Nuance itself would want to brand such an app, and make it work spectacularly well with voice recognition. Annotation and markup are great use cases for voice recognition and dictation, especially for mobile professionals who might want to quickly turn around their notes on a document or presentation. Tap the relevant spot, dictate your feedback, and moments later the converted text annotation is in place and ready to be emailed (or iCloud-ed) back to your colleague. Let's hope that Nuance makes the most of Noterize's potential.
Nuance buys SVOX ahead of iOS 5 release
There's a whole trail of rumors hinting at an upcoming deal between speech recognition company Nuance and Apple. For quite a while now (ever since Apple picked up personal assistant software maker Siri), the scuttlebuzz has claimed that the folks in Cupertino would make a deal with Nuance for some kind of speech recognition, most likely an iOS-level integration that would allow you to ask your iOS device for whatever you want, and get it quickly and easily. But even if that deal is on, that hasn't stopped Nuance from slowing down. The company has acquired another speech recognition firm, SVOX, the creators of high-end speech recognition and text-to-speech services. That's a natural fit for Nuance, of course, and the release says that the new deal "will advance the proliferation of voice in the automotive market, and accelerate the development of new voice capabilities that enable natural, conversational interactions between consumers and their connected cars, mobile phones, and other consumer devices." Sounds exciting to us. We didn't actually get to see either Siri or an updated voice control service show up during the iOS 5 announcement at WWDC, but that doesn't mean it's completely out of the cards yet. Maybe a deal like this is just what Nuance needs to set up the partnership that Apple's reportedly been seeking for a while.
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11.5 updates your Facebook, turns your iPhone into a wireless mic
All your sci-fi dreams of being able to talk to your gadgets and have the do your bidding are slowly becoming a reality. Nuance, the company behind Dragon NaturallySpeaking, has been at the forefront of the technology since 1997 and, with the release of 11.5, it has added a few neat tricks to its dictation-taking repertoire. On the desktop side, new widgets allow you to post updates to your Facebook and Twitter accounts simply by saying "post to" you social network of choice before spouting off your status update -- perfect for drunk tweeting when those beer goggles make it hard to hit the keys. Nuance also released the Dragon Remote Mic App for iOS, which turns your Apple device into a wireless mic that beams commands and dictated notes straight to your PC. We're pretty excited for all this voice control stuff -- so long as our computers don't start refusing our requests in a detached monotone. Check out the PR after the break.
Dragon Remote Mic lets your iPhone dictate to your PC
Nuance's Dragon Remote Mic is now available in the App Store. It turns your iPhone into a Wi-Fi connected microphone for dictation, but buyer beware: it is compatible with Dragon Naturally Speaking for the PC, not the Dragon Dictate Mac product. Chances are, we'll see compatibility with the Mac app in an upcoming release. While there are plenty of rumors swirling around Nuance's presumptive major role in iOS 5, this app is not part of that mix. It's designed to work only as a microphone for the desktop apps. The purported settings screenshots from iOS 5 that surfaced this weekend imply that on-device dictation powered by Nuance's code will be available as a system-level service on iOS devices, and that wouldn't require that users run a separate Nuance front-end app. Even though Nuance's absence was notable during WWDC last week, Nuance voices were found in the developer's preview of Lion and references to speech technology were discovered in iOS 5's internal preferences.
Weekend rumor roundup: Apple Retail event, new MacBook Airs, unlocked iPhones, more
Several rumors with varying degrees of credibility came up over the weekend. According to AppleInsider, Twitter user @chronicwire (reportedly a source of past Apple leaks) reports that Apple's retail stores are setting up to launch Apple's annual Back to School promotion on Wednesday. The same source initially reported that the Back to School promo will coincide with the launch of new MacBook Airs, but he has since retracted that claim. Instead, Chronic claims the part numbers he initially thought represented new MacBook Airs indicate that Apple will start selling versions of the GSM iPhone 4 that are not carrier-locked to AT&T. Although the MacBook Air is widely expected to have a refresh soon, this is the first we've heard of unlocked iPhones being offered for sale in the U.S., and it's something we'll file under "We'll believe it when we see it." The iPhone is already sold free and clear of carrier locks in several markets, but GSM model iPhones sold in the U.S. remain carrier-locked to AT&T unless you jailbreak. Chronic has also released screenshots that supposedly come from an "internal build" of iOS 5. These screenshots show that Nuance voice recognition, expected to be integrated in iOS 5 but not discussed at WWDC, is still in development. Other sources have claimed these voice recognition features weren't ready to be shown off at WWDC but should be good to go by the time iOS 5 launches this fall. Finally, a reader has informed us that New Zealand's online Apple Store is now showing shipping times of 5-7 business days for the 1 TB Time Capsule and 1-2 weeks for the 2 TB model. These extended shipping times are also showing up in Apple's Australian and UK stores, and the Canadian Apple Store is showing a 1-2 week delay for the 1 TB Time Capsule. The U.S. store and most international stores are not showing the same delay, but they're further indicative of the Time Capsule supply constraints we reported last week, which may mean a product refresh is imminent. We'll be keeping a very close eye on Apple's online store on the Tuesday overnight shift, and we'll let you know if anything new comes up.
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.
Nuance voice samples provide a taste of Lion text-to-speech
As we reported on May 14, Lion Developer Preview 3 includes a number of voices from Nuance's RealSpeak Solo software that can be used for text-to-speech (TTS) operations in the OS. These voices are a good improvement on the existing voices used by Mac OS X, and could point to a greater use of speech recognition and TTS as a user interface feature in Lion and iOS 5. If you have a hankering to hear just how good these voices are, OS X Daily has linked to a number of samples that are available on the NextUp Nuance Sample page, some of which are listed below: • Samantha - American English Female • Serena - British English Female • Sangeeta - Indian English Female • Felix - Canadian French Male • Karen - Australian English Female • Lee - Australian English Male • Yannick - German Male • Monica - Spanish Female • Paolo - Italian Male My current favorite on the list is Karen, the Australian English female voice. What voice do you want to hear coming out of your Mac or iOS device speakers in the future? Let us know in the comments.
Nuance voices found in OS X Lion, patent application suggests new iPhone speech / text capabilities
Apple's certainly no stranger to speech recognition, but it looks like it may have enlisted a bit of outside help for the next version of OS X, otherwise known as Lion. As Netputing reports, some of the text-to-speech voice options available in the developer preview of Lion just so happen to match the voices available from Nuance -- which would seem to suggest a partnership or licensing agreement of some sort, as the voices themselves cost $45 apiece directly from Nuance. In somewhat related news, Apple has also recently filed a patent application that would bring some fairly extensive new speech recognition options to the iPhone -- if it ever actually moves beyond a patent application, that is. In short, it would let you either instantly have a phone call converted to text, or send some text and have it converted to voice on the other end -- which the application notes could come in handy both in noisy environments or in situations where you simply aren't able to talk. It would even apparently incorporate a noise meter that could automatically trigger various options when the ambient noise hits a certain level. Hit up the source link below for a closer look at how it would work. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Nuance voices found in Lion Developer Preview 3
Yesterday, we told you that Apple had seeded Lion Developer Preview 3 to developers. We noted at the time that among the new features in Developer Preview 3 were a new boot animation, new graphical elements in the Finder's toolbar, new desktop wallpapers and that Reading List is now enabled in Safari. Other details of the latest Lion preview have emerged, but perhaps the most important is that Nuance voices, shown in the image above, have been discovered in the OS itself. Nuance is, of course, rumored to have entered into a major partnership with Apple for its speech recognition technology being incorporated into iOS 5. But now it appears Apple is going to be pushing speech recognition as a feature across all of its operating systems. As discovered by NetPuting, a quick check of Lion's speech preferences finds that a number of voices from Nuance's RealSpeak Solo software are now integrated directly into Mac OS X Lion. Earlier today an Apple patent emerged describing a way Nuance-like speech recognition software could be used in iOS to help make it easier for iPhone users to communicate in loud or quiet environments.
Nuance-like Apple speech recognition patent emerges
Rumors have been flying that Apple has entered into some kind of agreement with speech recognition company Nuance. Now Patently Apple has published an Apple patent that shows a possible use for Nuance's technology in the iPhone. The patent covers text-to-speech and speech-to-text conversion. In the patent, Apple lists two ways it might be hard for someone to answer their phone in the usual way: communicating in noisy environments and being unable to communicate during a meeting. In the first situation Apple says the user might try shouting to overcome the noise, but shouting frequently renders the voice signal unintelligible. Likewise in a quiet environment, such as a meeting where the user doesn't want to disrupt what's going on around him, he might try whispering into his phone, but again whispering frequently renders the voice signal unintelligible. Apple proposes to get around these limitations by running text-to-speech and speech-to-text conversion on the fly. Instead of shouting or whispering into the phone in a noise or quiet environment, respectively, the user could type a text message while live on the call and it would be read aloud to the person on the other end of the line.
Apple-Nuance deal may take root in NC datacenter
The stars appear to have aligned for the rumored Apple-Nuance deal, according to TechCrunch. The suggested strategic partnership between the Cupertino tech giant and the Burlington, MA speech-savvy software firm may find its first expression in Apple's new North Carolina data center, per the latest report. TechCrunch's sources say that Apple may already be running Nuance code (and possibly some Nuance-supplied hardware) in the Malden datacenter, either to support the existing Siri product (acquired by Apple, powered by Nuance) or to begin building out speech functions for the rumored reboot of MobileMe as iCloud. While Apple could afford to buy Nuance outright (the publicly-traded company was worth about $6 billion before the latest news shoved the stock price up), TC points out that it would be an expensive buy that would effectively kill the golden goose: Nuance's partnership deals, which make up a lot of the company's value, would get knocked out by the acquisition and would have to be renegotiated. The partnership approach gives Apple the core technology it needs without the overhead. Apparently, there were other players in the speech bake-off; Microsoft is rumored to have pushed Apple to include its speech recognition tech in iOS, but Apple didn't bite.
Is a Nuance and Apple deal in the works?
TechCrunch is reporting that Apple is in the process of some sort of deal with Nuance Communications, one of the leading companies in the field of speech recognition. Many readers may be familiar with Nuance's Dragon NaturallySpeaking software, however the Dragon speech engine is also licensed and used in a number of apps for Windows, OS X, iOS, and Android. What could the deal be? The most obvious choice is an acquisition, but as TC points out, it would cost Apple at least US$6 billion to buy the company. Apple's got the cash, but even for them that would be quite a purchase. TechCrunch thinks it's most likely the two companies are entering into some sort of partnership "that will be vital to both companies and could shape the future of iOS." Speech recognition has been rumored to be a big part of the future of iOS. Last year, Apple bought another speech recognition company, Siri, which itself is powered by Nuance technology. Perhaps with the release of iOS 5 we'll be talking to our phones more than using them to talk to people.
Buick, GMC getting IntelliLink smartphone connectivity
Back in February, General Motors debuted its MyLink smartphone integration for the Chevy Volt and Equinox on the Engadget Show, letting drivers control their iOS, Android, and BlackBerry smartphone apps via voice or touchscreen. The company announced today that it will be offering the same technology -- albeit rebranded as the tongue-twisting IntelliLink -- on several 2012 Buick and GMC models, including the Buick LaCrosse, Regal, Verano, and the GMC Terrain. IntelliLink offers up a fairly similar feature set as its Chevy counterpart -- connecting to iPhones and Android handsets via Bluetooth or USB, and leveraging Nuance voice recognition and Gracenote databases to control the likes of Pandora and Stitcher Radio. Autoblog reports that IntelliLink will hit the Buick Verano first, followed by the LaCrosse and Regal, though you might be more interested in the Terrain -- owners will also be able to control their vehicle's rear-view camera with IntelliLink, and who doesn't like manipulating megapixels in the name of pedestrian safety?
Will iOS 5 get integrated voice tech?
TechCrunch is reporting the rumor today, and some sources I have close to the Siri product think it is likely happening. Siri is that very cool personal assistant app. It allows you to ask questions that the app sends (as your voice data) to a server where it is recognized. The query is then sent off to a series of search engines to find an answer, which is finally returned to the user. You can ask for things like the best area pizza shop, the status of an arriving flight or the weather in Omaha. The speech recognition in the app comes from Nuance, the company that developed Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search. Last year, Apple bought Siri, and it seems likely that the tech will find its way into Apple products, especially iDevices. Siri is a very clever app, and it has always made a great demo on my iPhone. To have it built into iOS would be great. It appears Apple is trying to wean itself off Google services, like Search and Maps, and Siri would be a step in that direction. If you don't have it already and want to play with Siri, you can get it free at the App Store. Prepare to be impressed.
Ford SYNC goes global, 2012 Focus will accept commands in 19 languages
For a long time Ford kept its best cars in Europe and Australia, leaving Americans to make do with the Tempo or teasing us with a Focus that wasn't nearly as good as those elsewhere in the world. That's all changed now, and we're dutifully returning the favor. SYNC, which has been present on many an American Blue Oval since 2007, is now going international, Ford and Nuance managing to add an additional 16 languages to the voice recognition processing, bringing the total to 19. Emergency assistance has also been expanded to cover other languages as well, so you can now hollar for help, schreien for hilfe, or even schreeuwen om help.
Nuance opens Dragon Mobile SDK to app developers, we see end to embarrassing dictation
There are some messages that are just too embarrassing to dictate to a human being. Lucky for us and the retired circus contortionist we hired to type up our missives, Nuance is expanding the reach of its transcription software by making its Dragon Mobile SDK available to developers for use in iOS and Android applications. The SDK, which is free to members of the Nuance Mobile Developer Program, sports speech-to-text capabilities in eight languages and text-to-speech in 35. There are already apps out there that can do the job, including Nuance's own Dragon Dictation, but we welcome new advances in automated transcription. You know, it's not exactly a walk in the park dictating an entire Clay Aiken Fan Club newsletter to a guy named Sid the Human Pretzel.
Dragon Gaming Speech Pack set to bypass complex keystrokes
Ready to use your voice for something other than barking raid orders or bantering pop culture references over your guild's Vent server? Nuance Communications has announced what it hopes is the next wave in PC gaming: voice command sets. The new Dragon Gaming Speech Pack enables gamers to bypass complex keystrokes in favor of spoken commands, theoretically making gameplay more intuitive. Currently, the software supports World of Warcraft and Second Life in the MMO space, with a number of lobby and single-player games included as well (Call of Duty Black Ops, Mass Effect 2, and Microsoft Flight Simulator X, to name a few). The software retails for USD $129.99, but Nuance is running a special introductory offer that you can read about at its website.
T9 Trace ships as QuickType on Samsung's Wave II
So Samsung's Bada 1.2-based Wave II is now shipping in a variety of European and Asian markets, and it turns out that so phone's so-called "QuickType" input method is actually T9 Trace, Nuance's Swype competitor that was announced earlier this year. Just like Swype, T9 Trace works by letting the user glide a finger around the virtual keyboard to identify what letters they're trying to type -- and if it works as well as Swype does, it's a surprisingly natural, accurate, and fast way to enter text. Samsung, of course, has been one of Swype's longest-running partners, notably having its Omnia II featured in a Verizon commercial where the Guinness record for fastest text is broken -- so it'll be interesting to see whether Sammy keeps a healthy mix of T9 Trace and Swype in its products, or if Nuance has locked up a more lucrative deal. At any rate, follow the break for the full press release.
