Jul

08

Voice Command For iPhone 3G

posted in gadgets, by Codrut Nistor


When was the last time you tried to talk to your computer? I am not talking about cursing it, since curses don't count as "talking." Did it answer? If it didn't, then you should stop talking to objects, or go see a doctor! Why? Well, in the last years, speech recognition is getting better and better, and giving voice commands to various devices is no longer something out of Sci-Fi movies. If you are crazy about the iPhone, but not that crazy about touch control, then you will soon be able to issue it voice commands. Is this awesome, or what?



OK, so what's so special about the new voice services for the Apple iPhone? Well, according to the official press release from Fonix, now "users can launch a playlist or search contacts and dial by voice." If launching a certain item or dialing a name is not something out of this world, I wonder how does this work when you want to search your contact list for one of those 8 Johns you have in there, and all you can remember is the...icon you have associated with his number! ;)

Don't go away yet - I was just joking, more or less - I am sure things are much better than I can figure out for now. Here's what Fonix says:"Fonix iSpeakâ„¢ connects the user by just saying the phone number or by saying the name of a person in the contacts database. Additionally, users will be able to navigate their music libraries and launch a song or playlist simply by saying the name of the artist, song, or playlist."


According to D. Lynn Shepherd, Sr. VP of product engineering at Fonix, "The powerful and dynamic tools provided by Apple have allowed the Fonix team to quickly and efficiently develop Fonix iSpeakâ„¢ for the Apple iPhone 3G. The feature rich iPhoneâ„¢ is easy to use and our robust embedded speech interface will further create a positive and natural user-friendly environment which will further illustrate the dynamic features of this phone."

Great! There's only one problem - still 3 long days remaining until the lucky ones of us will have the iPhone 3G at hand...

12 Comments on “Voice Command For iPhone 3G”


1

Jarmur, on July 09, 2008

This voice recognition app by fonix is cool, but how much extra will it cost?

2

jackass, on June 23, 2009

this phone sucks ass and feet fuck this shit

3

Setphen Joabs, on July 02, 2009

As for talking to my computer and having it understand me, I've been doing that for about 12 years now. But then, I have a PC, so I guess that means that voice recognition wasn't really "invented" until Steve Jobs scooped it up.

As for voice command on a phone, my Motorola "Shark" phone did this ... over 10 years ago. But again, this wasn't officially "invented" until Steve swooped in and proclaimed it to be his own "novel idea".

My Palm Treo (from 7 years ago) had a touch screen. Again, Steve must've time-traveled to 3Com about a decade ago and pioneered that stuff.

Several years before the iPod, I had a few different .mp3 players. Then Steve "invented" the portable .mp3 player and I now own an iPod nano (because I like the small size and want to have a screen)

Take OS-X: Apple took Unix (an ancient operating system available for over 30 years) and developed a new front-end for it. There were already scores of front-ends available for Unix, some of them better than Apple's (some are still better than Apple's and available for free, and run on any hardware platform).

In the past Apple folks mocked the Unix crowd (which I was a part of), until Steve declared a 30 year old O.S. to be "cutting edge". Fact of the matter is that Apple had just laid off 3/4ths of its O.S. development team as a budgetary measure, so Steve went shopping for a free (open source) O.S. to re-brand. It was cheaper than innovating.

So if you read this far, you probably think I'm a "hater".

People who openly talk about how Apple really works, and how its history developed are usually dubbed "heretics" and sent to live at the edge of the village. You can't be a good cult member unless you drink the Cool Aid and believe that they founder is a God and no one came before him.

... ... ... But you see ... ... ... now I personally *OWN* an iPhone 3G[S].

And why is that?

Because Apple is very good at waiting on a perch while everyone else innovates. Apple may be between 3-10 years behind the curve (soon they'll release their first tablet computer (I had one 15 years ago, a Fujitsu Stylistic running Windows)) ... but Apple makes simple devices work well.

My whole point is that Apple is by no means a pioneer. Apple simply makes other peoples' already existent ideas and concepts work more smoothly. So I like their phone. This is because I like a smartphone that works smoothly and also incorporates a number of tricks that my prior phones had (touch screen, voice command, etc). So I got an iPhone 3G[S] on day one.

But let's all stop pretending that Apple has something new. The overpriced things they sell are well polished, but by no means new. Apple hasn't had anything new since the mid 1990s.

4

adimoga, on July 02, 2009

I agree with you Setphen Joabs

5

Chase, on July 05, 2009

When you get to the core of it, the average person/consumer just wants to be able to turn on a computer and have it work - repeatedly and reliably. Windows offered a sort of muddied down version of that - then Apple did what they did.

They may have based their principles and 'innovations' off pre-existing concepts - but who (besides you obviously) knew about that? I sure didn't, and no one I know does either - nor do we care about UNIX or other 'alternative' operating systems. We just want products that work, and Apple delivers that. There is far more to life than technology my friend - so your fanatical comparisons to brand loyalty being 'cultish' seem pout of place. The majority of the world does not care like you do, but we also have MUCH more going on in our lives than what sort of magic gets us to the internet.

If anything, learn from Apple - if you UNIX guys were so smart you would have found a way to get millions of people to buy and support your version of the OS. Steve is a pioneer, of marketing - hate it if you like but it is the backbone of the society you live in.

6

David, on July 08, 2009

The thing is is that Apple DOES inovate and they do this with software rather than hardware, and lets face it, you can have all the features in the world but be totally useless because the interface is useless (think nokia).
So to say that Apple don't inovate is a big mistake, they inovate better than all the other mobile companies.
It's been show many times and the iphone will continnue to frustrate nokia and the other companies who for yaers have not inovated and refuse to change for the market.
 

7

Jordan, on July 19, 2009

 
The challenge with speak to text is translating from proper grammar to textese and doing it only when the user wants to.  For instance "give me a call when you're going to the show" is the proper grammar where "you are" is contracted into "you're".  Not all people who text want to communicate like 3rd graders and want to differentiate between “there” “their” and “they’re”. Then sometimes we can’t when we are forced to fit our message into 160 characters or less. This software won’t be the easiest thing to develop, but Apple ‘s products are priced high enough where they can afford to pay for the development.
 
 

8

Ricky, on August 30, 2009

MACs have been doing voice command since the "LISA" model... long before there were PCs.

9

Bob, on October 20, 2009

There is a new law introduced in New Zealand which basically outlaws the use of mobile phone while driving unless it is fixed.
I own a 6 years old Nokia, sweet, it supports voice command! I just need to fix it in my car ... those with older (which is like 3-6 months?) iPhone will have to buy either bluetooth device (oh wait those iphones don't support bluetooth!) ... or shell out more money to buy new iPhone 3GS ...
Apparently older iphones have voice command capability but Apple disabled it on purpose (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2031361&tstart=0) ...
 

10

Anon, on October 20, 2009

Ricky,
Apple started voice integration in 1984, and voice recognition in 1993.
http://lowendmac.com/hodges/06/1220.html
IBM has done speech recognition (not just voice integration) in 1971 and release a commercial software package called ViaVoice in 1997 (I actually tried ViaVoice in 1999, it was pretty darn good).
http://www.research.ibm.com/about/past_history.shtml

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