One of the major rumors for iOS 5 that failed to materialize at Apple's WWDC keynote yesterday was new voice features from Nuance and Siri. The rumors had pegged iOS 5 as receiving significant integration of voice recognition capabilities, potentially handing off much of the processing for that functionality to its new North Carolina data center.
Apple's keynote was of course devoid of any talk of voice recognition features in iOS 5 or any other Nuance-related announcements, leading to questions about where things stand with the rumor. TechCrunch now revisits its earlier claims, noting that such a deal may still be in the works for iOS 5 but that it simply wasn't ready to go in time for WWDC.
We're still looking into this, but here's the latest we're hearing. At least three of our original sources on this were "very surprised" not to hear anything during the keynote today. One noted that leading up to the last minute, they were sure new, elaborate voice features in iOS 5 were going to be announced on stage. It didn't happen. Apple has been known to pull things at the last second. But this may go deeper.
The report goes on to speculate about whether public disclosure of the Nuance-Apple negotiations may have derailed things somewhat, given the reputations of Apple and Nuance both as hard negotiators.
In suggesting that the Nuance integration may still be in the works, the report also points to a few circumstantial pieces of evidence, including the presence of Nuance's chief mobile platform architect at the WWDC keynote and a brief on-stage demo from Apple's Roger Rosner, who is believed to be heading up the Nuance/Siri work at Apple and who may have had a last-minute change in topic after the Nuance integration was deemed not ready for public consumption.
Update: As noted by several readers, Apple's slide showing a host of iOS 5 features that were not prominently discussed during the keynote does make mention of several features related to VoiceOver and text-to-speech: "Option to speak text selection", "VoiceOver item chooser", and "VoiceOver action support". It is unclear if these are the rumored Nuance features or if the integration is truly a more substantial effort, which should include speech recognition beyond that already utilized in Voice Control on iOS.
Apple is not expected to release a standard iPhone 18 model this year, according to a growing number of reports that suggest the company is planning a significant change to its long-standing annual iPhone launch cycle.
Despite the immense success of the iPhone 17 in 2025, the iPhone 18 is not expected to arrive until the spring of 2027, leaving the iPhone 17 in the lineup as the latest...
Language learning app Duolingo has apparently been using the iPhone's Live Activity feature to display ads on the Lock Screen and the Dynamic Island, which violates Apple's design guidelines.
According to multiple reports on Reddit, the Duolingo app has been displaying an ad for a "Super offer," which is Duolingo's paid subscription option.
Apple's guidelines for Live Activity state that...
The company behind the BlackBerry-like Clicks Keyboard accessory for the iPhone today unveiled a new Android 16 smartphone called the Clicks Communicator.
The purpose-built device is designed to be used as a second phone alongside your iPhone, with the intended focus being communication over content consumption. It runs a custom Android launcher that offers a curated selection of messaging...
Apple plans to introduce a 12.9-inch MacBook in spring 2026, according to TrendForce.
In a press release this week, the Taiwanese research firm said this MacBook will be aimed at the entry-level to mid-range market, with "competitive pricing."
TrendForce did not share any further details about this MacBook, but the information that it shared lines up with several rumors about a more...
Apple is planning to release a low-cost MacBook in 2026, which will apparently compete with more affordable Chromebooks and Windows PCs. Apple's most affordable Mac right now is the $999 MacBook Air, and the upcoming low-cost MacBook is expected to be cheaper. Here's what we know about the low-cost MacBook so far.
Size
Rumors suggest the low-cost MacBook will have a display that's around 13 ...
Apple today announced a number of updates to Apple Fitness+ and activity with the Apple Watch.
The key announcements include:
New Year limited-edition award: Users can win the award by closing all three Activity Rings for seven days in a row in January.
"Quit Quitting" Strava challenge: Available in Strava throughout January, users who log 12 workouts anytime in the month will win an ...
Wednesday December 31, 2025 9:59 am PST by Juli Clover
Apple hasn't updated the Mac Pro since 2023, and according to recent rumors, there's no update coming in the near future. In fact, Apple might be finished with the Mac Pro.
Bloomberg recently said that the Mac Pro is "on the back burner" and has been "largely written off" by Apple. Apple apparently views the more compact Mac Studio as the ideal high-end pro-level desktop, and it has almost...
I think the best we can guess is simply that we know Apple will have a new iphone out later this year and they will want some special features to hype it up. My guess is it will be this voice integration as the better cpu processing will help tremendously with this.
I have my doubts that this was some last minute breakdown in negotiations.
All of Android's voice recognition depends on Google servers for the heavy lifting; the phones are not able to do it themselves. The phone does a bunch of compression / feature-extraction on the audio, uploads the result of that, and Google sends back what it thinks was actually said.
I hope the weather widget can be chosen not to be the standard wether app. Coz its horrible in my country...
What's that old joke about the Netherlands... "If you don't like the weather, wait an hour"? ;)
I seriously doubt you'll be able to add a different widget. The screenshots showed the little Yahoo! logo in the corner, so the data is almost certainly still coming from The Weather Channel / weather.com.
That said, there was mention of other long-overdue improvements to the weather app -- namely, hourly forecasts, and showing weather for your current location (instead of forcing you to lookup and add it manually, finally!) -- so who knows, there might be other possibilities in store.
I noticed in one of the slides yesterday with the other features of iOS 5 was "Option to speak text selection". Maybe this is proof Apple is improving its speech-to-text capabilities?
One of the major rumors for iOS 5 that failed to materialize at Apple's WWDC keynote yesterday was new voice features from Nuance and Siri. The rumors had pegged iOS 5 as receiving significant integration of voice recognition capabilities, potentially handing off much of the processing for that functionality to its new North Carolina data center.
