Apple should buy Nuance and not let it fall into the hands of a competitor.
Apple already hired-away the talent they wanted/needed from Nuance. See the AppleInsider article about that, posted a few months ago. And so at this point, all that Nuance has left is an apparently weak product (comments from above, in this topic) and the remaining IP they took away from the fiasco with the Bakers (who invented it all and, were swindled out of it with the help of Goldman Sachs). In my opinion, all that remains now at Nuance are middlemen, financiers, and shady investors. Let SAMSUNG pour its money into their rat-hole. Apple is way ahead of them all by now.
Nuance Communications, the voice recognition company whose technology helps to power Apple's Siri personal assistant, is said to be exploring a sale of the company, with Apple rival Samsung allegedly a potential suitor.
Some industry watchers and investors have suggested that Apple should make a play to buy Nuance and own the technology behind Siri while cutting out competitors like Samsung or the Google Now service found in Android.
Google doesn't use Nuance for any of their products including Google Now as far as I know.
I read this as Apple should buy them so Samsung/Google can't and use the technology, not that they are now using it and an Apple purchase would end any agreements between them.
Apple already bought Novauris so the Nuance licensing deal can be dropped sooner or later. Maybe Nuance is selling because they know the Apple's will drop its license with them.
In any case Nuance is not worth $6B+ to Apple because they have a ton of extra baggage that Apple does not need. Let Samsung buy them and then drop the licensing deal.
Samsung can have Nuance for $6B+
Microsoft and Google use their own technology, Apple will soon use its own as well.
People can question the Beats acquisition as long as they make coherent thoughts and good arguments. Stating Beats has been detrimental to Apple because of "hip hop" or "thug" culture is not one of them.
And had Samsung acquired Beats I'll bet you no one would be lamenting that Apple didn't purchase them. We'd be told how the music service is nothing special and something Apple could easily do on its own, and Apple would have no problem designing better headphones too.
Apple should buy Nuance and not let it fall into the hands of a competitor.
Perhaps you mean buy it and shut it down? Leave Samsung to develop lipreading input. That would alleviate the problem of noisy neighbors talking to Siri.
Apple should buy Nuance and not let it fall into the hands of a competitor.
Apple already hired-away the talent they wanted/needed from Nuance. See the AppleInsider article about that, posted a few months ago. And so at this point, all that Nuance has left is an apparently weak product (comments from above, in this topic) and the remaining IP they took away from the fiasco with the Bakers (who invented it all and, were swindled out of it with the help of Goldman Sachs). In my opinion, all that remains now at Nuance are middlemen, financiers, and shady investors. Let SAMSUNG pour its money into their rat-hole. Apple is way ahead of them all by now.
Interestingly (or not), one of those shady investors in Nuance is Carl Icahn.
Apple apparently has a research lab in Boston made up of former VoiceSignal staff that have been working for a few years on a secret project. Maybe Nuance knows that Apple is about to cut its cord with them and are looking for some company to buy them out before that happens?
Apple has definitely started their own speech recognition laboratory as evidenced by the purchase of Novaurius in 2013 which includes many of the scientists who originally conceived Dragon Systems; e.g. John Bridle and Melvyn Hunt. Furthermore, last year Apple hired Alex Acero away from Microsoft Conversational Systems Research Center.
Sometimes there are unavoidable evils we have to bear. Just like automobiles, no matter how much one strives to buy American, foreign parts (especially electronics) are impossibly unavoidable.
I hope you posted this to prove a pro-Apple point and not just to troll...
Just pointing out the silliness of an electronics user saying that everything that says "Samsung" on it is evil.
People can question the Beats acquisition as long as they make coherent thoughts and good arguments. Stating Beats has been detrimental to Apple because of "hip hop" or "thug" culture is not one of them.
And had Samsung acquired Beats I'll bet you no one would be lamenting that Apple didn't purchase them. We'd be told how the music service is nothing special and something Apple could easily do on its own, and Apple would have no problem designing better headphones too.
What I find interesting is that before the Beats acquisition, no-one was talking about Apple buying headphones or music-streaming. Indeed, they weren't even on the radar, which leads me to believe that Apple will introduce a new product that is more than these things.
I trust Apple Inc. that they have done their due diligence and decided Nuance wasn't worth all the noise. A lot of folks here assume to know information that we clearly do not.
What if the core of Nuance's patents are due in just a few years, say 5 or less? Would you think it is worth 5B$+? Apple got screwed so much in the past, that's it is in their DNA (Us against the world) not to be caught with their pants down by some competitor. History has shown Apple can play chess better than most of them out there.
Out of memory, when was the last time Apple got screwed over by a competitor beside good old Microsoft and the Microsoft Office fiasco?
I am a long time user of Nuance. More than 12 year. I still use it everyday and am even using it to dictate this. Even with a pretty good microphone (Airport 77), a Retina MBP and a quiet environment, it SUCKS!
Its lack of contextual awareness, for a company that wants to be worth 7 billion , is inexcusable and downright lazy. Statistics-based frequency models for determining which words should appear together are clunky and not fit for purpose in modern computing. Even a little bit of artificial intelligence and better use of grammar would go a long way in making the product better.
The stupid word combinations it sometimes comes up with boggle the mind even with someone that speaks clearly and knows how to use the product.
Apple's dictation in Mavericks cannot be used all day, every day for serious work. But DragonDictate earns enough money that some serious investment would make a product that..... .....makes sense out of the nonsense traces it throws in front of you.
I really wish someone else could emerge to provide enough competition to make them progress in a meaningful way. Apple Dictation just knocked the bottom out of the market and I worry that they will take that as an incentive to invest even less, especially on the Mac platform.
At the end of the day, the product is just too dumb for what we [reasonably] expect of it.
If you have never used the Windows version of Dragon, then you are missing out. The Mac version was developed by a 3rd party licensed company that just used the Nuance speech engine. The Windows version is much better contextually. I have also seen Indian Doctors speak with such a deep accent that I could not understand them, but the medical terms and recognition was 100%. Any current speech recognition technology that does not have a user training/enrollment prior to use of the system is going to suck (Apple Dictation).
IMHO they screwed other phone vendors more than they did Apple. I don't think Apple would have sold significantly more iPhones than they have seeing as they supposedly sell everything they can produce. As far as actual harm to Apple iPhone sales I don't know there was all that much. Motorola, HTC, LG. . . Yeah they were absolutely impacted on the sales front from Samsung "borrowing".
IMHO they screwed other phone vendors more than they did Apple. I don't think Apple would have sold significantly more iPhones than they have seeing as they supposedly sell everything they can produce. As far as actual harm to Apple iPhone sales I don't know there was all that much. Motorola, HTC, LG. . . Yeah they were absolutely impacted on the sales front from Samsung "borrowing".
If there was no competing smartphone product, clearly Apple would produce more phones, and sell them. There is competition in this market, and Apple's limited inventory is due to good planning and sales forecasts (compared to the Nexus 4 rollout that underestimated demand).
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This would have the added advantage that an iPhone could win on Jeopardy!
Apple should buy Nuance and not let it fall into the hands of a competitor.
Apple already hired-away the talent they wanted/needed from Nuance. See the AppleInsider article about that, posted a few months ago. And so at this point, all that Nuance has left is an apparently weak product (comments from above, in this topic) and the remaining IP they took away from the fiasco with the Bakers (who invented it all and, were swindled out of it with the help of Goldman Sachs). In my opinion, all that remains now at Nuance are middlemen, financiers, and shady investors. Let SAMSUNG pour its money into their rat-hole. Apple is way ahead of them all by now.
Nuance Communications, the voice recognition company whose technology helps to power Apple's Siri personal assistant, is said to be exploring a sale of the company, with Apple rival Samsung allegedly a potential suitor.
Some industry watchers and investors have suggested that Apple should make a play to buy Nuance and own the technology behind Siri while cutting out competitors like Samsung or the Google Now service found in Android.
Google doesn't use Nuance for any of their products including Google Now as far as I know.
I read this as Apple should buy them so Samsung/Google can't and use the technology, not that they are now using it and an Apple purchase would end any agreements between them.
Apple already bought Novauris so the Nuance licensing deal can be dropped sooner or later. Maybe Nuance is selling because they know the Apple's will drop its license with them.
In any case Nuance is not worth $6B+ to Apple because they have a ton of extra baggage that Apple does not need. Let Samsung buy them and then drop the licensing deal.
Samsung can have Nuance for $6B+
Microsoft and Google use their own technology, Apple will soon use its own as well.
Apple should buy Nuance and not let it fall into the hands of a competitor.
Perhaps you mean buy it and shut it down? Leave Samsung to develop lipreading input. That would alleviate the problem of noisy neighbors talking to Siri.
Interestingly (or not), one of those shady investors in Nuance is Carl Icahn.
Apple has definitely started their own speech recognition laboratory as evidenced by the purchase of Novaurius in 2013 which includes many of the scientists who originally conceived Dragon Systems; e.g. John Bridle and Melvyn Hunt. Furthermore, last year Apple hired Alex Acero away from Microsoft Conversational Systems Research Center.
Just pointing out the silliness of an electronics user saying that everything that says "Samsung" on it is evil.
This can't end well.
and what technology would that be? Is Apple working on some secret Siri project no one knows about?
Go to novauris.com and see where it takes you.
They had embedded and client/server automatic speech recognition (ASR).
As soon as they leave the Apple fold, reality will strike, though maybe they got mugged so leaving is a given.
What I find interesting is that before the Beats acquisition, no-one was talking about Apple buying headphones or music-streaming. Indeed, they weren't even on the radar, which leads me to believe that Apple will introduce a new product that is more than these things.
What if the core of Nuance's patents are due in just a few years, say 5 or less? Would you think it is worth 5B$+? Apple got screwed so much in the past, that's it is in their DNA (Us against the world) not to be caught with their pants down by some competitor. History has shown Apple can play chess better than most of them out there.
Out of memory, when was the last time Apple got screwed over by a competitor beside good old Microsoft and the Microsoft Office fiasco?
I am a long time user of Nuance. More than 12 year. I still use it everyday and am even using it to dictate this. Even with a pretty good microphone (Airport 77), a Retina MBP and a quiet environment, it SUCKS!
Its lack of contextual awareness, for a company that wants to be worth 7 billion , is inexcusable and downright lazy. Statistics-based frequency models for determining which words should appear together are clunky and not fit for purpose in modern computing. Even a little bit of artificial intelligence and better use of grammar would go a long way in making the product better.
The stupid word combinations it sometimes comes up with boggle the mind even with someone that speaks clearly and knows how to use the product.
Apple's dictation in Mavericks cannot be used all day, every day for serious work. But DragonDictate earns enough money that some serious investment would make a product that..... .....makes sense out of the nonsense traces it throws in front of you.
I really wish someone else could emerge to provide enough competition to make them progress in a meaningful way. Apple Dictation just knocked the bottom out of the market and I worry that they will take that as an incentive to invest even less, especially on the Mac platform.
At the end of the day, the product is just too dumb for what we [reasonably] expect of it.
If you have never used the Windows version of Dragon, then you are missing out. The Mac version was developed by a 3rd party licensed company that just used the Nuance speech engine. The Windows version is much better contextually. I have also seen Indian Doctors speak with such a deep accent that I could not understand them, but the medical terms and recognition was 100%. Any current speech recognition technology that does not have a user training/enrollment prior to use of the system is going to suck (Apple Dictation).
IMHO they screwed other phone vendors more than they did Apple. I don't think Apple would have sold significantly more iPhones than they have seeing as they supposedly sell everything they can produce. As far as actual harm to Apple iPhone sales I don't know there was all that much. Motorola, HTC, LG. . . Yeah they were absolutely impacted on the sales front from Samsung "borrowing".
IMHO they screwed other phone vendors more than they did Apple. I don't think Apple would have sold significantly more iPhones than they have seeing as they supposedly sell everything they can produce. As far as actual harm to Apple iPhone sales I don't know there was all that much. Motorola, HTC, LG. . . Yeah they were absolutely impacted on the sales front from Samsung "borrowing".
If there was no competing smartphone product, clearly Apple would produce more phones, and sell them. There is competition in this market, and Apple's limited inventory is due to good planning and sales forecasts (compared to the Nexus 4 rollout that underestimated demand).