Apple’s giant datacenter in North Carolina may bring advanced voice controls to the iPhone and iPad, reports Techcrunch.
The function of Apple’s massive datacenter — one of the biggest in the world — has been kept firmly under wraps. The North Carolina facility is like Area 51: everyone knows it exists, but few know its true purpose. Observers believe it is primarily for iTunes in the cloud, but Techcrunch suggests it is already set up to bring voice recognition to iOS 5.
According to Techcrunch reporter MG Siegler, Apple is already running advanced voice-recognition software from Nuance Communications – the company behind the Dragon Dictation applications for the iPhone and iPad — at the massive datacenter. The two companies will announce a deal at WWDC in early June.
And that likely means that iOS 5 will feature a plethora of advanced voice controls when it also is unveiled at the programmers’ conference.
iOS 5 is rumored to be based heavily on Siri, a voice-activated “personal assistant” iPhone app that Apple bought in 2010. Siri could answer all kinds of advanced queries, from directions to particular locations to what movies are playing at the local movie house.
The technology is believed to be deeply embedded in iOS 5, but to make it work well, Apple needs advanced voice-recognition technology. This is where Nuance comes in. Nuance holds most of the key patents to voice control software.
That means Apple is unable to build its voice-recognition software, and must strike a licensing or partnership deal with Nuance.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
22 responses to “Is Apple’s Giant Datacenter For Voice Control in iOS 5?”
OMG, if that entire Data Centre is JUST for voice control. That’s the largest waste of human resources since the Zune. You know, that MP3 player Sony kept producing even though everyone already owned 5-6 iPods already. Ya…waste.
Voice Control? I don’t think Apple is dumb enough to hype up voice control since it isn’t that great of a technology.
Let’s be realistic. It’s obvious that the sole purpose of the datacenter is to house a digital copy of Steve Jobs’ consciousness to lead Apple for all time and allowing “corporeal Steve” the freedom to retire. End of story.
I fell lame when I walk around campus with my headphones on and use my headphone’s voice control to “Call Mom” or “Play Circa Survive”. I can’t wait until voice recognition and commands are normal. Hopefully there are tons of new features for this in iOS 5.
Feel*
you have good taste in music.
The size of this data center is impressive. Apple has to be thinking that the in return it will receive billions of dollars in new sales.
that means that they’ll collect your voice profile in the data center just like google?!
I’m near certain that this is for Castle/iCloud.
You’ve not yet seen it done in a good way. There is ‘vocal tags’ and then there is ‘voice control’.
“iOS 5 is rumored to be
based heavily on Siri
, a voice-activated “personal assistant” iPhone app that Apple bought in 2010. Siri could answer
all kinds of advanced queries
, from directions to particular locations to what movies are playing at the local movie house.”
If that is the case I hope Apple remembers that the iPhone is sold internationally and in large quantities… Make it work well even outside of the US.
Would be sad if the service quality of something like this ended up like with Google Places which only listed Gas station close to me has been shut down for years, longer than I’ve lived here, I am honestly skeptical to the fact that it was running when they first launched Google Places.