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

Well, VoiceOver (the text-to-speech / screen reading accessibility system; not to be confused with Voice Control, the voice recognition system) *was* mentioned among the new features, in their slide showing all the things they didn't have time to discuss:

http://cdnmo.coveritlive.com/media/image/201106/phpwlbhu1IMG_0566.jpg


Notice the lower left: "VoiceOver action support". No clue what that means, but note that this is listed separately but on the same slide as the "Option to speak text selection" -- so it's not the same, though they are probably related to one another.

I'd love it if I could have my phone read an email to me on occasion (eg when walking with headphones on) without having to turn on the full VoiceOver accessibility stuff... here's hoping this might enable that.
 
Maybe it's just not done yet and they wanted to avoid a "Dear Aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all."
 
Munnichs said:
I hope the weather widget can be chosen not to be the standard wether app. Coz its horrible in my country...
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What's that old joke about the Netherlands... "If you don't like the weather, wait an hour"? ;)

I seriously doubt you'll be able to add a different widget. The screenshots showed the little Yahoo! logo in the corner, so the data is almost certainly still coming from The Weather Channel / weather.com.

That said, there was mention of other long-overdue improvements to the weather app -- namely, hourly forecasts, and showing weather for your current location (instead of forcing you to lookup and add it manually, finally!) -- so who knows, there might be other possibilities in store.
 
They could be holding it for iPhone 4S/5 launching in September as one of the incentives to upgrade from an iPhone 4. If past practice holds there will always be a few new iOS features that are announced and dedicated solely to the new hardware when they reveal it.
 
SteveSabol said:
I suspect it will require either an A5 chip or an iPhone 4S/5.
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That's what they will say, but let's be real here, the droid has had it on it's phone for 2 years, and that was a 600mhz single core chip. It can be done with the current hardware, but they need something to sell the iPhone 4GS
 
All of Android's voice recognition depends on Google servers for the heavy lifting; the phones are not able to do it themselves. The phone does a bunch of compression / feature-extraction on the audio, uploads the result of that, and Google sends back what it thinks was actually said.
 
Westacular said:
All of Android's voice recognition depends on Google servers for the heavy lifting; the phones are not able to do it themselves. The phone does a bunch of compression / feature-extraction on the audio, uploads the result of that, and Google sends back what it thinks was actually said.
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Isn't that what Apple is looking to do? Let their servers handle the bulk of the processing?
 
They were very clear that the presentation was only discussing a subset of what the new OS offers. I suspect that the features discussed at WWDC are simply a selection of highlights that will be be supported by the existing line of devices. Keep in mind that the iPhone5 is likely going to be released in sync with iOS5 and they need to save some meaty demonstrations of iOS for that announcement.
 
registerednerd said:
Erm.... VoiceOver is Apple's Text-to-speech engine, not Speech-to-text....
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That is correct and it has been in the OS for a long time, I don't know why more applications don't take advantage of it; especially the Messages application. Seriously, it would be simple to implement a "Speak Messages" button.
 
BornAgainMac said:
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.
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It also takes a lot of time and money to develop things like this. They may just be saying "no" to this for now so they can perfect what they're giving us now.
 
iPad music app

The update photo of apple's side, with the new iPad Music App, and the photos on their site with them, I have to say, it doesn't look improved.
 
CylonGlitch said:
That is correct and it has been in the OS for a long time, I don't know why more applications don't take advantage of it; especially the Messages application. Seriously, it would be simple to implement a "Speak Messages" button.
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Actually, VoiceOver is Apple's screen reader technology for vision impaired persons. http://www.apple.com/accessibility/voiceover/

The text-to-speech engine is of course accessed by VoiceOver, but it's really so much more.
 
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Cappy said:
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.
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I suspect it was a combination of unreadiness and what you said. The iOS presentation was neat, but didn't give me the feeling that they were pushing the industry ahead - more like patching up its areas of weakness (a valid thing to do) and adding neat polish. Voice control would've been that "wow" moment.

But you're right. Perhaps if the 5th-generation iPhone doesn't have a huge hardware feature or physical redesign, it will rely on new software features to stand out. Maybe a combined September event will release new iPods/Macs, release iOS 5, "iPhone 4.5", and new Voice Control features in iOS 5. Kinda like how the App Store was ready to go way before Lion.
 
I'd just like to be able to Voice Activate the Voice Memo function. I can't understand why it wasn't included from the start.
 
"Option to speak text selection"

I'm really looking forward to this one. Something like where you Select some text, you are given the option to 'Cut'/'Copy', and you also have the option of 'Speak' to have the text read aloud. This would let you listen to news articles, blog entries, magazine pieces, etc., while doing something else (e.g. commuting to/from work). Currently I achieve this by selecting a story/passage/article, copying the whole thing and pasting it to Speak It! It's a serviceable option, but not a good idea while driving.

Peace be with you.
 
pmz said:
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.
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I also predicted "enhancements to the OS" and am pleased to see some accuracy in my words!
 
They are probably still working out all the kinks. I'd rather them not include this in iOS5 instead of including it and not having it work properly.
 
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