reply to post by benrl
the point of this post was that this is the first that I know of commercial release to include in every single iPad that comes out every new
device every new iPad will have voice to text from here on on out.
This capability has been around since the mid 90s. I would also have to take a look back in the history books, but a lot of standard phones have come
with a basic voice-recognition system that can accept prompts (I recall several commercials about it as a younger teenager involving a
skier/snowboarder fumbling to use speed-dial).
I'm not saying that speech recognition as a baseline software is a bad thing - but it's certainly not some ground-breaking new feature.
Which in itself says something about Apple's product that they're willing to put out their most speech to text
Speech-to-text programs have been around for free and commercially for the past 15 years or more, for multiple operating systems.
This is part of the reason why so many things Apple makes are broken. They get so caught up in trying to innovate that they forget about development.
Siri could easily be recognizing the natural pauses in your speech and comparing that with the context of the words to insert punctuation as
appropriate. It could also be doing basic grammar checking that Word Perfect and MS Office, Open Office (and their mobile derivatives) have been
doing for 12 years to avoid a number of the issues that are glaringly obvious with the program.
Sure - for an out-of-box program that requires no training; it's damned good, and demonstrates how our knowledge of audio patterns and processing has
advanced.
But it could be so much more - and Apple will pretty much never improve on it. They will release another shiny thing to tote in an ad.
don't see windows releasing it with every single device they have from here on out
Microsoft doesn't need to develop it.
There are already open source projects that have very good speech recognition programs for Windows, Linux, and Android operating systems (both
'standard' and mobile versions). Available for free, developed by dedicated software engineers.
There are also commercially available programs.
every iPhone every iPad and I would assume soon every Mac would have this option
Every Android phone already does (which includes a wide range of phone manufacturers from Motorola to LG). So does every Windows PC, and I'm sure
there are comparable programs available on the Windows Seven Mobile platform (though it is a much smaller market segment).
I'm also a PC gamer and have always had a PC that's up to date custom-built by myself with all the latest hardware because I like games and
that's probably the biggest downfall of Mac.
The biggest downfall of Mac is their obsession with proprietary hardware and software. While the "One Big Apple" model works well in the beginning
- history has shown that the market favors flexible software atop interchangeable hardware. Since the IEEE standards have become more strictly
adhered to, and software standards have been established (DirectX/OpenGL/PhysX/OpenCL), the stability advantages once afforded to proprietary systems
is rapidly evaporating.
Building a computer, even just 10 years ago, was a much more complicated task when it came to hardware nuances and drivers. Now... you almost have to
try to screw a build up; and you can multi-boot the system into Windows, Linux... but not Mac.
Which is where Mac will soon have to decide whether they want to produce hardware, software, or an Operating System.
Google will succeed because they have decided to produce an operating system that couples with its servers and software in a creepily efficient manner
(kind of eerie to log into face book on your phone and have everyone on your friends list appear in your phone's contact list).
Microsoft will succeed because they have decided to produce an operating system with secondary focus on the console market (though I believe they are
the sleeping giant in download distribution... they've been doing that with software updates, servicing major corporations with huge bandwidths since
the dawn of the internet).
IBM will succeed because they have decided to stick to hardware and system manufacturing, having formed strong business partnerships and alliances
with virtually every computer/IT company in existence. They created 'the block' everyone else is walking around.
Motorola is kicking ass with their smart phone designs and sales. They build robust, powerful, reliable phones that currently couple well with the
Android OS and we will probably see a mobile version of Windows 7 or 8 on them in due time.
Apple will need to make the same choice. They are not GE, LG, or Samsung.