The iOS 5 announcements during the WWDC keynote yesterday made lots of rumors a reality, most notably deep iOS Twitter integration, but something big was missing.
Ever since Apple snapped up snazzy voice search firm Siri in April last year, talk of souped-up iOS voice smarts have been high on the agenda. But while Apple didn’t out anything yesterday, it looks like those features will arrive with iPhone 5…
As well as the Siri acquisition, Apple has been widely reported to be deep into negotiations with the speech recognition experts at Nuance. Technology from Nuance has even been found lurking in Mac OS X Lion.
Techcrunch, which has been shaking the iOS voice recognition story like a terrier with a tasty bone, says it has been told by multiple sources that Nuance software is running in the very same datacenter that powers the iCloud.
So why haven’t we seen these mooted new voice control features demoed yet? It could be that the Apple/Nuance negotiations are taking longer than expected but there is another potential answer.
We’ve heard talk, subsequently bolstered Robert Scoble touting his own sources in a TechCrunch comment, that Apple is holding back those voice control smarts for the iPhone 5 launch later in the year.
After all, Apple touted hundreds of new iOS 5 features onstage but only showed off a few of them. With Apple going all out to take down Android and even cannibalising from popular iPhone apps (poor old Instapaper), counteracting Google’s lead with voice features is surely high on the agenda.
Out TBC | £TBC | Apple (via Techcrunch)
