Rumor: Apple Maps and Siri coming to the Mac with OS X 10.9 next year

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 19, 2012

OS X 10.9, the next major revision to Apple’s desktop operating system, will contain Siri and Apple Maps, the two headline capabilities currently exclusively available on newer iPhones, iPads and iPod touches. According to a new report this morning, early builds of OS X 10.9 that were previously spotted in web logs include Siri and Maps integration. Both features are purportedly in the early testing stages so it has yet to be determined if they will be ready for prime time when OS X 10.9 ships some time next year… Read More

 

Taiwan university sues Apple over Siri speech recognition

By Christian Zibreg on Jul 30, 2012

A university in Taiwan has sued Apple over its use of dictation feature in Siri and the underlying speech recognition engine, claiming Apple’s implementation violates its patents. National Cheng Kung University has on Monday launched a lawsuit against the iPhone maker and is seeking undisclosed damages, though its lawyers noted that any calculation would be based on Apple’s U.S. sales of devices that use Siri, quite possibly amounting to millions of dollars in damages… Read More

 

5 things iOS can learn from Android

By Jeff Benjamin on Jul 27, 2012

It’s no secret that both Sebastien and I purchased Nexus 7 devices from Google. We may have differing reasons for our purchases, but one reason we share in common is the desire to see how Google is performing in the tablet space. This is especially so with the Nexus, since it’s the flagship that’s guaranteed to run stock Android with no additives or preservatives.

The Nexus 7 is the first Nexus device I’ve owned, and I’ve come away quite impressed; read my thoughts on the Nexus 7 for more details on that. I’ve even been able to identify a few things that Google is doing well, and that Apple could stand to learn from. Items like widgets, and offline dictation, to name just a few… Read More

 

NoDictation removes dictation while keeping Siri enabled

By Jeff Benjamin on Jun 1, 2012

Do you rarely use dictation on your iPhone? Would you prefer if there was a way to completely get rid of the dictation button without totally getting rid of Siri? Well, if you’re jailbroken, now you can.

Introducing: NoDictation — a simple jailbreak tweak that removes the dictation button on the iPhone keyboard once installed. The nice thing about NoDictation is that you can disable dictation on your iPhone, without having to totally disable Siri.

Take a look at our video walkthrough of NoDictation for more information on how it operates… Read More

 

Apple’s Siri and Samsung’s S-Voice go head to head (video)

By Christian Zibreg on May 25, 2012

The Verge was first out of the gate today with its exhaustive review of Samsung’s Galaxy S III handset. A section of the piece provides an interesting side-by-side comparison of two intelligent personal assistants, Siri on the iPhone 4S and Samsung’s darling dubbed S-Voice.

Both features work as advertised (well, most of the time), amuse with canned responses, delight with factual answers – all the while letting you converse with your handset using natural language rather than remember a bunch of hard-coded commands.

Siri and S-Voice also score similarly in handling common tasks such as pulling local weather, creating appointments and reminders and what not. And of course S-Voice is a blatant rip off of Siri’s user interface. Apple’s digital secretary appears to be snappier at running queries and S-Voice at times has a hard time understanding what you want.

And here’s a nice side-by-side comparison video laying it all out for you… Read More

 

Nuance launches ‘Siri for cars’

By Christian Zibreg on May 22, 2012

Nuance, which provides world-class voice recognition technology behind Apple’s Siri personal assistant, today announced its entrance into the fast-growing connected cars market.

Their new automotive platform combines Nuance’s Dragon software and natural language understanding technologies to allow drivers to dictate messages, search for content, control music playback, navigation and more.

Was this an iCar solution Steve Jobs was dreaming about in his final days? Read More

 

Nuance exec: Siri set “a new bar”, could get “more personalized”

By Christian Zibreg on May 16, 2012

Digital secretary Siri was, and still is, the headline feature of the iPhone 4S. It owes some of its allure to the vast processing power of Apple’s servers that run a remarkably sophisticated voice recognition software licensed from Nuance, a Burlington, Massachusetts-based provider of arguably the best voice technology money can buy.

According to Nuance’s marketing honcho, you can bet on Siri to improve over time. Upcoming developments in personal assistants will enable new stuff, such as more accurate voice recognition and personalization. So yeah, eventually you’ll be able to ask Siri “Is my favourite movie on tonight?” Read More

 

The new iPad Siri Dictation demonstration

By Jeff Benjamin on Mar 16, 2012

In the months leading up to Apple’s iPad event, there was a lot of speculation on whether or not the new tablet would include Siri. The feature has become quite popular since it debuted last October, so iPad integration made perfect sense.

Well, as you may know, Apple has foregone the digital assistant in its latest slate. But its Dictation component some how made the cut. Wondering how well the voice-to-text service works on the latest iDevice? Keep reading to find out… Read More

 

New iPad gets dictation

By Sebastien Page on Mar 7, 2012

Still no word about Siri as I am typing this, but the new iPad sure is coming with dication support. Just like the iPhone 4S, it supports English, French, German, and of course now, Japanese.

It’s not been confirmed that this will come to previous iPad models as well, but I doubt it. Just like Siri for the iPhone 4S, dictation on the iPad will be one of those features that could technically be ported to older devices, but won’t for marketing reasons.

 

You can bypass Clear’s 30 character limit using Siri Dictation

By Jeff Benjamin on Feb 18, 2012

Clear, the minimalistic, yet insanely stylish todo app is all the rage right now. Perhaps you’ve been enjoying it?

To maintain its simplistic look and feel, the developers imposed a 30 character limit for tasks, which is completely understandable — especially after you see what more than 30 characters looks like.

You can use Siri Dictation to outright bypass the 30 character limitation for a seemingly infinitely long task entry. Obviously this trick isn’t amongst the most practical tricks in the book, but it’s cool because, well, it can be done. Read More

 

Sara Dictation: Siri-like dictation with multiple language support

By Jeff Benjamin on Feb 14, 2012

Sara Dictation is a jailbreak tweak that allows you to have Siri-like dictation on a non-iPhone 4S device. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a tweak that allows this — siri0us immediately comes to mind — but it is certainly worth trying.

If “Sara” sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It’s from the same developer that brought you the Siri alternative named Sara, which we covered last week. Read More

 

Use Siri to Dictate Text to your Mac with Air Dictate

By Oliver Haslam on Dec 27, 2011

Everyone loves Siri, or at least everyone that can actually make it work with their less-than-perfect accent does. It may be great to be able to ask your iPhone to do things and dictate messages to it, but you know what would be insanely great?

Yep. Using Siri to dictate content on your Mac.

That’s where Air Dictate comes into play, giving iPhone 4S owners a way to harness the power of Siri’s dictation feature and have it send the resultant text over to a designated Mac. Read More

 

‘Automatic Dictation’ Brings a Siri-Like Experience to Your iPhone

By Jeff Benjamin on Dec 18, 2011

It’s not Siri. In fact, it’s not even close. Yet, you still may find it interesting enough to give it a shot, especially if you’re already a user of Voice Activator.

Automatic Dictation is essentially a meshing together of Voice Activator and Dragon Dictation. It basically allows you to (almost) use Dragon Dictation completely handsfree. It even allows you to send tweets directly from your dictation screen.

In the end, it’s a very clunky semi-hand-free solution that works, but it’s definitely no Siri… Read More

 

How to Get Siri Dictation on Your Mac or PC [Video]

By Jeff Benjamin on Nov 29, 2011

Earlier we told you about the update to TouchPad, a VNC remote control app for iOS devices. It’s a well known app in itself, but this latest update is sure to make a few people ecstatic.

Indeed, Edovia — the highly esteemed developers behind this and other great apps, like Screens — has updated TouchPad to allow Siri dictation between an iPhone 4S and a Mac, Windows, or even Linux machine if that suits your fancy.

Check out our video demonstration inside… Read More

 

Siri Dictation Now Available For Free On the iPhone 4, iPod touch 4G, iPhone 3GS [Video]

By iDB Staff on Nov 27, 2011

Hackers have been trying to port Siri to older iDevices since the virtual assistant was announced alongside the iPhone 4S. Siri doesn’t technically require the new handset’s A5 processor and increased memory, so limiting the technology to the 4S is clearly a marketing maneuver.

We’ve already seen Siri running on an iPhone 4, so we know it’s possible. But those instances required special circumstances, and we didn’t know if we’ll ever see a public release. Siri’s dictation feature has now been made publicly available in Cydia for the iPhone 4, and it actually works. Read More

 

Use Siri to Dictate Text on Your Desktop With this Workaround

By Cody Lee on Nov 20, 2011

Even though Siri has received mixed reviews, a majority of the public seems to like the digital assistant. Folks are chomping at the bit for the feature to be ported to the iPhone 4 and other non-approved devices. And some are even hoping it finds its way to the Mac.

While we wait for Siri to arrive on the desktop by way of either Apple or hackers, this workaround might help fill the void. It allows users to dictate text on their desktop computers (Mac or PC) using Siri. It doesn’t cost any money, and it’s actually really easy to do… Read More

 

Siri Dictation Key Actually Doubles as a Space Bar

By Cody Lee on Oct 29, 2011

Apple has built its brand on attention to detail. The company has been known to spend months going over the tiniest components of a product to ensure perfection. Why do you think its devices come so terrifically packaged?

Apple’s obsession with the tiny details even spills over into iOS, and the folks over at iPhoneinCanada have found a perfect example. Have you ever noticed how the dictation button changes color when you add another keyboard? Read More

 

More Info on iOS 5 Voice Recognition – Nuance Dictation

By Oliver Haslam on Jul 24, 2011

Fresh from the release of iOS 5′s fourth beta came news that there are references to unannounced voice recognition technology. When we wrote about this new development yesterday, speculation was that a Siri Assistant-like feature would be coming to iOS.

Now it seems there may be more to this ‘talking to your iPhone’ thing than we first thought, with 9to5Mac finding yet more code, this time pointing to integrated Nuance Dictation.

The code, discovered in the latest iOS 5 SDK, would bring Android-like text dictation to the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. That is, if it makes its way into a final release of the OS… Read More