Apple Still Planning to Include Nuance/Siri Voice Features in iOS 5?

[MacRumors]

One of the major rumors for iOS 5 that failed to materialize at Apple's WWDC keynote yesterday was new voice features from Nuance and Siri. The rumors had pegged iOS 5 as receiving significant integration of voice recognition capabilities, potentially handing off much of the processing for that functionality to its new North Carolina data center.

Apple's keynote was of course devoid of any talk of voice recognition features in iOS 5 or any other Nuance-related announcements, leading to questions about where things stand with the rumor. TechCrunch now revisits its earlier claims, noting that such a deal may still be in the works for iOS 5 but that it simply wasn't ready to go in time for WWDC.

We're still looking into this, but here's the latest we're hearing. At least three of our original sources on this were "very surprised" not to hear anything during the keynote today. One noted that leading up to the last minute, they were sure new, elaborate voice features in iOS 5 were going to be announced on stage. It didn't happen. Apple has been known to pull things at the last second. But this may go deeper.

The report goes on to speculate about whether public disclosure of the Nuance-Apple negotiations may have derailed things somewhat, given the reputations of Apple and Nuance both as hard negotiators.

In suggesting that the Nuance integration may still be in the works, the report also points to a few circumstantial pieces of evidence, including the presence of Nuance's chief mobile platform architect at the WWDC keynote and a brief on-stage demo from Apple's Roger Rosner, who is believed to be heading up the Nuance/Siri work at Apple and who may have had a last-minute change in topic after the Nuance integration was deemed not ready for public consumption.

Update: As noted by several readers, Apple's slide showing a host of iOS 5 features that were not prominently discussed during the keynote does make mention of several features related to VoiceOver and text-to-speech: "Option to speak text selection", "VoiceOver item chooser", and "VoiceOver action support". It is unclear if these are the rumored Nuance features or if the integration is truly a more substantial effort, which should include speech recognition beyond that already utilized in Voice Control on iOS.

Article Link: Apple Still Planning to Include Nuance/Siri Voice Features in iOS 5?

 

[Mr. Gates]

That was to be the "one more thing"

 

[RafaelT]

I hope this is correct and that they get things back on track, this would really be something that would make iOS 5 a lot more special then it seems to be.


Don't get me wrong, it seems like a good update but it does not have that wow factor.

 

[GorgonPhone]

right yeh so in short its crappy and does not work well just like the voice crap that is in IOS now.

 

[SteveSabol]

Will require iPhone 4S

I suspect it will require either an A5 chip or an iPhone 4S/5.

 

[Blackforge]

I bet it is a "feature" of the next iPhone and won't be passed down to previous gen devices. Just like Voice Control wasn't added to the 3G and 2G.

 

[lanspawlo]

I noticed in one of the slides yesterday with the other features of iOS 5 was "Option to speak text selection". Maybe this is proof Apple is improving its speech-to-text capabilities?

 

[swarmster]

I suspect it will require either an A5 chip or an iPhone 4S/5.

Yeah, that seemed like the easy read to me. If they do the processing on-phone (delay caused by remote processing would be huge?), they maybe decided they needed the dual cores.

...and with the OS not actually out until when the iPhone 5 is expected, you know there are more features in there targeted for the new hardware.

 

[ivladster]

obviously

I am sure the next iPhone will have features that will be only available on the next new iPhone.

 

[Bilbo63]

I was really hoping for this as well. Bummer.

 

[acslater017]

I hope this is correct and that they get things back on track, this would really be something that would make iOS 5 a lot more special then it seems to be.


Don't get me wrong, it seems like a good update but it does not have that wow factor.

As someone who uses their iPhone a lot while on the road, I'd really appreciate an improved voice function. If they pulled it off in a unique way yesterday, I think that would've been the home run/"one more thing"/special something that everyone was looking for.

Hopefully it will be completed by Fall! Siri had a looot of potential. It would be a shame for it to only be added as part of a developer preview, without any fanfare, but as longs as it ends up in the final product

 

[BLACKFRIDAY]

I bet it is a "feature" of the next iPhone and won't be passed down to previous gen devices. Just like Voice Control wasn't added to the 3G and 2G.

If there's new hardware involved, true. But I really doubt this would happen.

iOS 5 will be added to 3GS without an asterisk this time. i.e. whatever's in store for iPhone 5, software-based will be added to iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4.

 

[Cappy]

I think the best we can guess is simply that we know Apple will have a new iphone out later this year and they will want some special features to hype it up. My guess is it will be this voice integration as the better cpu processing will help tremendously with this.

I have my doubts that this was some last minute breakdown in negotiations.

 

[sigamy]

Wouldn't you think that you would need the business end (the deal) set up before you can code the technical elements of this?

As I've said before, I'm more interested in the "intelligence" part of the Siri engine than the voice stuff. I really thought iOS 5 was going to bring some Newton Assist type features to the iPhone.

 

[pmz]

I'm sure every rumor source is "shocked" when the rumors they invented don't turn out to be true.


The rumor I started about iOS 5 bringing "enhancements to notifications" turned out to be true.

 

[kiljoy616]

Yeah, that seemed like the easy read to me. If they do the processing on-phone (delay caused by remote processing would be huge?), they maybe decided they needed the dual cores.

...and with the OS not actually out until when the iPhone 5 is expected, you know there are more features in there targeted for the new hardware.

Seen the different between ipad 2 and iphone 4. We all need dualcore So it would make some sense that Apple does not want to do the whole upgrade that happen to iPhone 3G and made it slow as syrup.

Except for calling someone I have never used the voice controls for anything else and that works most of the time but some names it just can't figure out.

 

[tripjammer]

We will get it in September...

 

[-LikesMac-]

If it IS coming in iOS 5

Then it is probably an iPhone 5 exclusive feature (They might also show iPad 2 support, unless it needs more RAM or something).

Notice, "over 200 new features", with only some shown? Voice features was probably one of the things NOT shown, and only for iP5.

Of course when the new phone comes out it activates some previously unshown features in the OS.

Did anyone notice there was no widgets?

 

[Pumpkin King]

Did anyone notice there was no widgets?

There are weather and stocks widgets in the notifications center. I like that implementation... Hoping that gets opened up to developers too.

 

[NebulaClash]

Notice, "over 200 new features", with only some shown? Voice features was probably one of the things NOT shown, and only for iP5.

Of course when the new phone comes out it activates some previously unshown features in the OS.

Yeah, this seems like the obvious explanation to me too. People love to panic over nothing.

 

[lsvtecjohn3]

Then it is probably an iPhone 5 exclusive feature (They might also show iPad 2 support, unless it needs more RAM or something).

Notice, "over 200 new features", with only some shown? Voice features was probably one of the things NOT shown, and only for iP5.

I agree that it's only going to be on the iPhone 5. Apple always puts an extra feature on the newer phone.

 

[Munnichs]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; nl-nl) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I hope the weather widget can be chosen not to be the standard wether app. Coz its horrible in my country...

 

[iSee]

Or...

Maybe TechCrunch just blew it... Guy's when you're wrong you're wrong... just let it go. You sound like that Doomsday guy...

 

[BornAgainMac]

Probably a iOS 6 feature along with new maps and navigation system. It makes sense to spread out the features like they do with phones and OS upgrades. It is classic Apple.

 

[pmz]

Probably a iOS 6 feature along with new maps and navigation system. It makes sense to spread out the features like they do with phones and OS upgrades. It is classic Apple.

It's classic successful business.