Holy crap. Big news from Cupertino today! Resident Speech Tech heartthrob Steve Jobs announced that the long-awaited iPhone SDK will be published. You know what this means: let the app games wars begin. Since the iPhone debuted without speech, Apple opening up the floodgates to developers could come as a means for big-name vendors like Nuance to pounce.
For anyone who attended Conversations ’07, you’ll remember [aside from the 90-degree Boca weather] the short video aired at one of the mobile session opening speeches. In the video, a guy using an iPhone performs various Web searches using his voice — he navigates pages, writes reviews, and gets directions. So while a lot of people in my generation [30-and-under] still aren’t entirely sold on the idea of TTS and STT (I know I’m going to get flack for saying that, but you’re hearing it from a REAL 23-year-old with tons of iPhone-using friends), I’d be interested in seeing how speech heavyweights might take part in the app-building process. And if anyone would use it.
Don’t think I’m too cynical, though — OK, I am. I also enjoy playing devil’s advocate. What do you think about speech + the iPhone? I’m still curious as to the possible implications of that little speech patent Apple released in December ’07, and how speech recognition could play a part in the next iPhone, or in its SDK.
Related Stories:
– Apple Prepares iPhone SDK [eFM]
[Image: SiliconValleySleuth]
