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Apple Testing Service That Allows Siri to Answer Calls and Transcribe Voicemail

Yes, Apple drastically needs transcription. That's why most all techies use Google Voice for voicemail transcriptions. However it's taken Google many many years to even get as good transcriptions as they are now which still is far from perfect. So I don't expect Apple to start off very well unless they buy up some companies. On the bright side they could get better fast if it's enabled by default for all their millions of customers.

The siri part doesn't sound too exciting. Ultimately rather than a voicemail saying, leave your name and number, etc. Sounds like Siri would say it and allow it to be a little more interactive such as, "What is your name?" What is your number? (even though both of those are typically captured in caller id), and what is your message etc. Think it may be more annoying to end users than not for a long time.
 
JCrz said:
They should just call it "iGoogleVoice".
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You mean apart from the fact that it is implemented completely differently, and so iin principle at least could operate in any country, not just the US?

Google Voice is not an especially disruptive technology --- it feels like a phone services, it is built on phone service ideas, it's basically what the phone system would do if it had a clue.
Apple's offerings in this space (from Messages through ringing on all devices, now to this) are all trying to move past the constraints and limitations of the phone system. They use the voice/signaling/billing part of the phone system the bare minimum possible, and move everything else to the internet.

Google's methodology allowed them to get up and running faster BUT, just like the never-ending Android updates issue, means they have to cede a lot of control to the telcos, and the telcos basically are a bunch of incompetent greedy fscks with no interest in ever improving communication.
Apple's methodology requires them to move a lot slower, and to provide much more infrastructure, but also moves a lot more control into the hands of Apple. (If you're so paranoid and delusional that you think it's better to leave control in the hands of the telcos than to give it to Apple, I assume you'll consider this a bad idea. Good luck with that philosophy.)
 
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TechRemarker said:
Yes, Apple drastically needs transcription. That's why most all techies use Google Voice for voicemail transcriptions. However it's taken Google many many years to even get as good transcriptions as they are now which still is far from perfect. So I don't expect Apple to start off very well unless they buy up some companies. On the bright side they could get better fast if it's enabled by default for all their millions of customers.

The siri part doesn't sound too exciting. Ultimately rather than a voicemail saying, leave your name and number, etc. Sounds like Siri would say it and allow it to be a little more interactive such as, "What is your name?" What is your number? (even though both of those are typically captured in caller id), and what is your message etc. Think it may be more annoying to end users than not for a long time.
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Why do you imagine Apple would create a Siri front end that was so stupid as to ask for information (callerID) that's already available electronically?
The real point of Apple controlling the voice mail front end is that they can say "Maynard has just switched on DoNotDisturb and so is probably sleeping. If this is so important that you need to wake him, press 1; otherwise leave a message." and similar.
Apple's vision here is J.A.R.V.I.S, not yet another version of an annoying voice menu system.
 
AlphaTeam said:
Apple is so innovative. Always first to the market with new ideas. How to they think of such things?

*cough* Google Voice *cough*
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This is a childish view of how the world changes. Adults (and anyone who has actually accomplished anything) have moved past this stupid idea that everything important is the result of the brilliant idea of a single lone genius. In fact pretty much everything important is the result of massive teams where each individual makes a small (but ultimately useful) contribution to something pre-existing.

In this particular case, as I said in a comments slightly higher up, the important change Apple adds, is that they get control of the call from the very start, rather than allowing the telco to get control. This results in all manner of NEW capabilities. These include, as I said above, intelligent context-aware cues to the caller rather than a canned voicemail reply; and then Apple control over what the caller chooses to do next. For a different example, Apple could step in to say "Maynard is currently outside the US and has no cellular service" and send the voice message (transcribed or as sound) via WiFi to me; or perhaps even set up a live (and free) bridge call via VoIP to me in another country.
Once again the point is that, since Apple can take control of the call, they can and will offer a whole suite of things that the telcos have no interest in offering, and that Google can't really do because their solution to this problem is too tightly built into the telco infrastructure.
 
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nouveau-apple said:
Siri can't handle that.
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Nor can any Cloud that Apple creates.

I wish I could say that the words Apple & Cloud belong together, that Apple's really excellent at Cloud services...

But alas, in my ongoing experience from July 2008 until now, MobileMe up to and including iCloud... SEVEN years later, it's still a dodgy unreliable service. From Steve Jobs himself...

“Jobs reportedly asked the MobileMe team what the new product was supposed to do. When an employee told Jobs what the purpose of MobileMe was, the CEO reportedly responded: "So why the f--- doesn't it do that?"

"You've tarnished Apple's reputation..." Jobs reportedly said. "You should hate each other for having let each other down..”


Siri lives in the cloud space that Apple still struggles with and that alone is why I choose to only use iCloud on a limited basis. Hopefully at some point Apple will become knowledgable about the cloud and I will be ready to fully embrace their service, but until then I'm very relieved to have the excellent services of Google.

Google Drive, Docs and other Google Apps not only work extremely well for my needs but for the other corporations and partners my company deals with in the Global Space. Sharing and editing of shared docs is fast, smooth and very easy. It just works.





http://appleinsider.com/articles/11...es_a_furious_steve_jobs_after_mobileme_launch
 
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I still don't see why Apple won't allow apps (or have it built in to iOS) that can auto-respond to texts?

e.g. when you're driving, turn on auto-reply that says "Driving in the car now, will text back in 20 minutes"...
Might even cut down on accidents.
 
iGeek2014 said:
This service might be useful if your carrier had Visual Voicemail. Here in the UK only EE, Orange and O2 offer the service. My airtime provider (Vodafone) does not.
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In 2009 I bought my 1st iPhone 3G at Vodafone store here in NL, they serviced the visual voimail back then! Now no provider has this feature, it WAS GREAT! Sad it's gone now.

Cheers
 
Benjamin Frost said:
Anything Siri I avoid with a barge pole, so this rumour couldn't get me less excited.

For me, Siri is the opposite of a selling point. It makes the Apple Watch's reliance on it particularly unattractive.

Voicemail is great. I leave a message knowing that the other person will receive it 100% correct all the time. Siri will never do that, because it is mega-dumb.
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Thank you for your balanced view, but to be honest I would never listen to a voicemail. I would read Siri's message though. I suppose we are from different generations though. I quite like new technology, but you obviously prefer the old days when news were printed on paper. It was interesting to see though, that the rumour excited you enough to express your indifference.
 
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Chupa Chupa said:
Have you tried Google Voice. Let that transcribe a few voicemails for you and then come back and tell me how productive it is for you. Like I said in my original post, Google has had years fiddling with it and still can't get it right. Maybe if I understood Babble I'd have an easier time of it.
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...and that's if GV transcribes it at all. I haven't received a transcribed voicemail in a LONG time. I usually get an 'unable to transcribe' email telling me to check my voicemail. Well duh.
 
Glad they agree voicemail needs fixing. Someone leaves me a message and expect me to call voicemail, go through a crap robotic menu that constantly asks me to change my security code, PAY FOR THIS, and then listen to the message which is probably something like "Call me back please" and then you want to hit the person in the face, but you can't even do that can you!

The first thing I do when I get a new SIM is to entirely disable voicemail. If it can't be disabled, I record a personal greeting that goes like this: "Leave a message if you want, but I will not listen to it just so you know.". If you can't reach me and can't be arsed to send an SMS, it's probably not important. If it's important you'll call me again sometime later. If I think it's important I'll call you back. If not important, it's best to leave it at that.
 
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Haynzee said:
Just wish Apple would make some Siri features available offline. The old voice control allowed you to call people, skip music etc, but Siri just throws the offline error, very annoying when you are driving in an area with no data.
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Siri uses server side speech recognition since it is much more powerful and accurate.

There are on board speech recognition engines but their accuracy is much lower than Siri and grammars much more limited. Saying that, theoretically it's possible to merge both technologies together (after all it's available from Apple's technology provider), but nevertheless I guess they didn't due to the degraded customer experience.
 
Tech198 said:
Siri has trouble even with non-english languages... I can't see anything being 100% effective with voice to text... There is always going to be a gap (for now)

However, by the time 100% Accuracy comes, i'll be an old man, but still listening to twit.
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Automatic transcription accuracy is around the 90 - 95% range. I doubt Apple will be using human assisted transcription for better accuracy since that would be too costly to implement for a "free" consumer service.

In anycase, VoiceMail2Text has been around for close to a decade ... the technology isn't new, and is widely available with several mobile carriers. The packaging and integration with Siri is the only thing different.
 
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