Apple And Nuance's Partnership All But Confirmed
May 15, 2011
The partnership between Apple and Nuance has all but been confirmed, according to Netputing. The reason: Apple’s upcoming OS X Lion appears to be using Nuance’s speech technology.
Using Lion’s system preferences application reveals new voice options with accents ranging from French to Romanian to Thai.
Apparently the voice technology was included in Lion’s Version 1 preview, which has remained in future preview versions.
What Netputing found out is that the voices included in Lion’s Version 3 preview are the same voices Nuance used to sell in their RealSpeak product.
However, it remains to be seen if these voice preferences will come free with Lion, or made available with add-on charges. Currently Nuance charges $45 per voice.
Most likely, representatives from Nuance will share the stage with someone from Apple at next month’s WWDC event. Until then, we're still guessing.
Still, if Nuance's technology is made available on Lion, it will probably also be included in iOS 5 too.
What do you think? Leave your comments below.
