voice control

Read Cult of Mac’s latest posts on voice control:

Ask AI-powered Rabbit R1 for anything (without touching an app) [Updated]

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Rabbit R1 AI device
It won't replace your iPhone anytime soon, but it could make operating all your apps easier.
Photo: Rabbit

You can ask the new AI-powered Rabbit R1 gadget to do pretty much anything you’d normally do with some combination of apps on your smartphone, according to Rabbit’s fascinating keynote at CES 2024.

You can ask it to explain something, call an Uber, order a meal delivery or even book a fairly complex vacation itinerary, to name a few examples.

And unlike a would-be iPhone replacement like the Humane Ai Pin, Rabbit R1 comes with a screen and costs just $199 with no subscription necessary.

Update: Rabbit noted it sold out its R1 units on day one of sales, moving 10,000 units. See the company’s tweet below.

Watch all of Apple’s wonderful WWDC 2019 videos right here

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WWDC 2019
Apple's love letter to developers this year was great.
Photo: Apple

WWDC 2019 bug Apple’s WWDC 2019 keynote was so action-packed that we’re still trying to process all the amazing new software and hardware that was shown off on stage.

Luckily, Apple already published the fantastic videos it made for the keynote so we can relive the greatness.

Check out all five videos and the new TV show trailer right here:

Siri may soon recognize different voices

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Spanish Siri labels Bolivian president a ‘dictator’
Siri's voice is changing.
Photo: Apple

Apple engineers are preparing for the day Siri can reliably recognize voices. They’re working on how this digital assistant will respond to requests from multiple users.

This issue became important with the release of Apple’s HomePod earlier this year, as smartspeaker are used in shared spaces.

Here’s What’s New In Apple’s Latest iOS 6.1 Beta

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Apple released iOS 6.1 beta 3 to registered developers yesterday, but unless your iOS device’s unique identification number (UDID) is registered with Apple’s developer program, you can’t install it. But don’t worry, we can tell you everything that’s new in this version, including some changes to iCloud setup and Passbook sample cards, new mobile-cellular data options, and more.

Voice Dictation Works Well On Older iPhones [Review]

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Record, transcribe, send text on your older iPhone
Record, transcribe, send text on your older iPhone

Voice Dication, or Voice Dictation – Voice To SMS, Email, Facebook, Twitter And Other Apps to give it its full name, is a voice control app from Europe, designed to offer something vaguely Siri-like to those of us still stuck in the Dark Ages on our pre-4S iPhones.

Does it work? Well yes, actually it does. Better than expected.

Supercharge Siri On Your iPhone 4S With MyAssistant [Jailbreak]

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MyAssistant

We’ve seen plenty of jailbreak tweaks for enhancing Siri, but a new one called MyAssistant offers more features than any of its predecessors. Developed by Andrea Oliva and Saltb0x, MyAssistant is available for $0.99 in Cydia. You will need a jailbroken iPhone 4S or Siri-hacked iOS device to run MyAssistant.

With this new tweak you can tell your iPhone to reboot, lock, take a picture, get lyrics for a song, give you its battery percentage, and more. You can also customize the look of the Siri UI and create custom conversations with Apple’s digital assistant.

Vokul: A Siri-Like App For Handsfree Voice Control On Any iOS Device

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vokul

Last week we told you about Evi, an iPhone app that challenges Apple’s own Siri voice control technology. Powered by the same Nuance backend, Evi and Siri offer similar voice control/assistant features. The main difference between the two is that Evi is available on the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS, while Siri is only available natively for iPhone 4S owners.

Another App Store app has come to our attention, and its name is vokul. As the first and only 100% handsfree voice control app for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, vokul allows users to dictate text messages, make calls, and play music without ever having to lift a finger.

Nuance Beats Apple To Voice-Controlled Television With New Dragon TV Platform

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Nuance, a speech recognition company that powers Apple’s Siri service, has launched a new voice-controlled platform for television sets called Dragon TV. The service allows you to navigate your way around different content by “speaking channel numbers, station names, show and movie names” using natural language.

It’s everything you’d expect a Siri-powered Apple TV to be.

Google Has Its Own Siri Alternative For Android Coming In 2012 [Report]

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Image courtesy of Gizmodo

Apple’s new Siri assistant has really revolutionized the way in which we interact with mobile devices using our voice. It’s no wonder, then, that rivals are scrambling to introduce their own alternatives. Google already has one for Android, according to some reports, called Majel, and it’ll debut during the first quarter of 2012.

iOS 5 Voice Control Is Still Coming, But Might Only Work With First-Party Apps

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Amongst other rumors about iOS 5 that somehow just disappeared into the ether come yesterday’s WWDC 2011 keynote was the advanced Nuance-powered voice control features that has been reported extensively over the past few months. The only mention of voice recognition was a throwaway line on a slide: “Option to speak text selection.”

Is that it? What happened to the voice control that we were all promised? Don’t worry just yet: according to a couple of prominent sources, Nuance-powered voice control is still coming to iOS 5.

Don’t Forget Jeopardy! Tonight: See Future iPhone Tech In Action

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At the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported an intriguiging detail about the upcoming iPhone nano: the new iPhone would feature “voice-based navigation.” (It will also be streaming-only, according to our report).

Could this be true system-wide voice control, as programming legend Bill Atkinson predicted at Macworld?

As we previously reported, Atkinson said it’s clear that iPhones would one day be controlled by voice, but he predicted the development to be several years away — two to ten years, he said.

But Atkinson reminded us we can get a sneak peek at the technology if we tune into Jeopardy! tonight. The history-making show features IBM’s DeepQA Project Watson supercomputer versus previous champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

It’s likely to be a first public demonstration of the kind of natural-language and real-world knowledge technology to make it work.

“When we see computers interacting with a natural language interface, people are going to want it,” Atkinson said.

“I’d ask you all to watch Jeopardy on February 14,” he said. “It may be a momentous occasion.”