Apple's 'Assistant' Seen as Key Feature for New iPhone Hardware

[MacRumors]

9to5Mac offers a more complete picture of what users can expect with Apple's forthcoming "Assistant" feature, revealing that the Nuance/Siri voice-powered personal assistant will require the iPhone 4S/5 that will be introduced at next week's media event.

The report details the natural speech recognition capabilities of Assistant and its ability to integrate across a number of iOS services to offer a powerful personal assistant allow users to handle scheduling, reminder, and messaging tasks solely by voice. Examples of real-world applications of the feature include setting a personal reminder to pick up milk once the user arrives at a market, asking for GPS directions to a location, and composing and sending text messages by voice.

Assistant will also reportedly integrate a conversational aspect in which the system can ask the user questions to clarify and refine its understanding of what is being requested.

The system will actually speak back and forth with the user to gain the most information in order to provide the best results. The user essentially can hold a conversation with their iPhone like it is another human being. For example, if a user is making a meeting with me, they will say "setup meeting with Mark" and the first "bubble" of the conversation thread will say that. After that, the system will speak back: "which e-mail address should Mark be notified at, work or personal?" This question will both be spoken out loud by the iPhone Assistant and shown as a new "bubble" in the conversation thread. The user will then respond with the email address they want to notify me at, and the appointment will be made. The iPhone will even show a quick glance at a calendar view to confirm the appointment. If the Assistant was sending an SMS, as another example, a mini SMS view would appear so the user has a quick glance at the SMS thread.

Assistant is also said to integrate with WolframAlpha, allowing users to obtain answers to factual questions using the service's computational capabilities. Other voice-powered features coming as part of the package include integration with Apple's "Find My Friends" service and speech-to-text transcription from Nuance.

The report notes that the sophisticated voice features will require the new iPhone hardware from Apple, relying on the company's A5 system-on-a-chip and a bump in RAM to 1 GB to support the heavy workload. Both the A4-based iPhone 4 and A5-based iPad 2 currently offer 512 MB of RAM. Sources also reiterate long-standing claims of an 8-megapixel rear camera in the new iPhone.

As for whether Apple's next iPhone will be an iPhone 4-like model known so far as the iPhone 4S or a redesigned iPhone 5, the report notes that the next-generation prototypes capable of offering the Assistant feature have so far been seen as iPhone 4-like in design. But sources are careful not to read too much into that fact, as Apple had been rumored to be putting iPhone 5 internals into iPhone 4 cases for testing and secrecy purposes, and the company's final plans remain unknown.

Article Link: Apple's 'Assistant' Seen as Key Feature for New iPhone Hardware

 

[theSeb]

Great. Yet another "article" that refers to a rumour from another site as though it's fact.

 

[tharoc]

Nuance is ok but not essential....Give me a faster processor, better battery life and a 4" screen and I'm happy...

 

[macguy360]

Great. Yet another "article" that refers to a rumour from another site as though it's fact.

Lol yeah. Macrumors and 9 to 5 mac keep quoting each other as if the news is true. Gotta keep the visit numbers up.

I'm hoping the new ipod touch will have an a5 personally. The ipod touch 4g is just too slow.

 

[vebs]

I'm not really that interested in having a conversation with my phone. Seems more of a novelty feature to me.

 

[roadbloc]

Get as many hits as ya can.

 

[rwilliams]

Very interesting feature. Not enough on its own to warrant upgrading my phone, so I'm curious to see what else they have in store.

 

[Jayse]

WEOWWW Sounds rather interesting a specs bump is in the works with the new phone

 

[velocityg4]

I wonder if the speech recognition will actually be any good or if it will be just the same garbage we have had on Macs. Which has not seemed to have improved any since it was introduced in System 7 with the AV Quadra models.

 

[igazza]

Dual-core with 1GB of ram is standard for a smartphone now days.

 

[theSeb]

Lol yeah. Macrumors and 9 to 5 mac keep quoting each other as if the news is true. Gotta keep the visit numbers up.

I'm hoping the new ipod touch will have an a5 personally. The ipod touch 4g is just too slow.

That's exactly my point so I am not sure why the down votes? We've seen this before around the time a lot of us were hoping for news of the 2011 Macbook Air or around any new expected product and most people on this site were complaining about the tendency of Apple Insider, 9to5 and MR quoting each others' rumours and then and posting them as though they were facts. The whole 9to5 article reads as if they've actually had time with the iPhone5, which we know isn't possible.

 

[Caliber26]

I wonder how well this iPhone Assistant voice will integrate with the already-existing voices inside my head.

 

[utwarreng]

Great. Yet another "article" that refers to a rumour from another site as though it's fact.

Yet if they didn't report on it, you would be one of the first to be asking "Why has MacRumors not posted on this yet!? OMG THEY ARE SLOW!!!"

Not everyone checks every one of these Apple/tech blogs like you or I. Better that they report on it so those who just follow MR can read it, rather than not report on it and nobody covers it.

Again, the website is called MacRUMORS.

 

[Michael Scrip]

as Apple had been rumored to be putting iPhone 5 internals into iPhone 4 cases for testing and secrecy purposes, and the company's final plans remain unknown.

That's one way to prevent hardware leaks.

Would it be possible to announce an iPhone with new hardware and a bigger screen on October 4th... and then have enough built for a launch 2 weeks later?

Could that be why we haven't seen any credible leaks of a newly designed body?

Or will the next iPhone simply be an updated iPhone 4 ?

 

[cere]

Why would this require an A5 and 1GB of memory? Nuance's speech services are almost completely driven through their servers. Yes there will be some code that has to run locally, but the heavy lifting is all done remotely. Demo Dragon Go or Siri to see how Nuance's technology works.

If Apple or anyone else can provide a legitimate reason for requiring this be limited to A5, I'll probably accepted it (being too much of a fanboy) but Apple will get a ton of bad press over it. Unless the really explain the limitations, there is going to be a lot of people howling that the limitation is artificial and meant only to force upgrades. Same as what happened when iOS 4 turned iPhone 3G's into steaming piles of sludge immediately after upgrading.

I guess I might have the excuse I needed to upgrade. Should probably start looking into how much unlocked iP4's are selling for soon.

 

[theSeb]

Yet if they didn't report on it, you would be one of the first to be asking "Why has MacRumors not posted on this yet!? OMG THEY ARE SLOW!!!"

Not everyone checks every one of these Apple/tech blogs like you or I. Better that they report on it so those who just follow MR can read it, rather than not report on it and nobody covers it.

Again, the website is called MacRUMORS.

My point is quite simple:

9to5Mac offers a more complete picture of what users can expect with Apple's forthcoming "Assistant" feature, revealing that the Nuance/Siri voice-powered personal assistant will require the iPhone 4S/5 that will be introduced at next week's media event.

The report details the natural speech recognition capabilities

This reads like an actual review/preview not a rumour. Does it not? I am asking for the MR equivalent to include the fact that this is just another rumour, not an actual report or hands-on preview. This isn't difficult to understand, I think.

 

[blorenz]

i've been using voice recognition to make calendar appts for years, 1st Jott, now dial2do........all the way back to my pre iPhone Treo......

 

[zim]

I only recently started using the voice command option for the iPod app. I tend to find that I am arguing with it more than getting what I want... Me: "Play Song X" iOS: "I'm sorry, you must have FaceTime enabled to make calls" Me: "No! Play Song X" iOS: "I'm sorry the genius isn't available" ugh!

I can only hope that this new system will work better... I do really love the idea of being able to voice control my device... especially when driving.

 

[tigres]

I do believe this will require an upgraded phone.

typical, as you know that iPhone4 is long in the tooth now- at least that's what Apple is saying with this (should it be true).

If it is true, it had better work worlds better than the current version as "Call Troy" can end up calling Joy or Roy, 5/10 times.

 

[claughery]

Great. Yet another "article" that refers to a rumour from another site as though it's fact.

you are reading macRUMORS. get over yourself.

 

[Pincl]

the Nuance/Siri voice-powered personal assistant will require the iPhone 4S/5 that will be introduced at next week's media event

The report notes that the sophisticated voice features will require the new iPhone hardware from Apple, relying on the company's A5 system-on-a-chip and a bump in RAM to 1 GB to support the heavy workload. Both the A4-based iPhone 4 and A5-based iPad 2 currently offer 512 MB of RAM.

Why issue new software that won't fully work on the current Iphone AND the current Ipad? This doesn't make any sense...

 

[Beatbeckham]

Apple, please release the iPhone 5 first...

 

[samcraig]

If this is Apple's key selling point/upgrade "must" - then for me, personally - it fails as I don't have much of a desire to use the feature. And I have a few apps that do dictation and have the ability to search/email/text which (on the RARE occasion I use them) work fine.

I'm hoping/would think that Apple has more up its sleeve to make the next upgrade more interesting...

 

[PhoneI]

give me a new processor, more ram, and better camera and I will be very happy. Anything extra is extra.

 

[deftdrummer]

Are you ****** kidding me!? I won't be able to use voice to text with my regular iPhone 4?

Man, I was just waiting for the killer feature that would only be able to work on iPhone 5 to crop up, but I didn't think it would be this. Dang it.