Nokia has introduced its Pulse application in November of last year, a software bit which allows users to keep in touch taking advantage of the GPS functionality inside phones. With Pulse you can check in to places and share that info with only a closed group of other users.
However, Nokia’s plans go beyond Nokia devices and those powered by Windows Phone 7. “These are social applications. To be social, you have to be on every platform”, said Basak Ozer, Nokia’s Lead for social and location applications. As such, Pulse will be coming soon to Android and iOS users too, though an exact launch date was not unveiled.
However, Nokia Pulse — which is complementary to services like Facebook and Twitter — is not the only app the Finnish company has in mind for its social and location offerings.
=====================================================================================================================================
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co., Sikorsky, Eurocopter and Bell, the top four helicopter makers, are focused on Asia as 1,000 orders from states spanning India to Korea are set to make it the fastest growing military-chopper market by 2015.
Tenders in half a dozen nations should produce sales worth $10 billion over the next three years, Norbert Ducrot, executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region at Eurocopter, the world’s No. 1 manufacturer of rotorcraft, said in an interview.
“Asia has the ingredients to grow into one of the largest markets worldwide,” said Christophe Nurit, regional vice president at Sikorsky, a United Technologies Corp. unit that’s the No. 1 maker of military helicopters. Key bids include naval tenders in Korea and India, for which the company is pitching its Seahawk antisubmarine model, a version of the Black Hawk.
Asian military spending rose 14 percent last year, funded by the world’s fastest growing regional economy. The helicopter market is surging as nations race to replace aging western, Soviet and home-grown models, led by emerging powers seeking the means to extend their military reach, according to Craig Caffrey, a defense analyst at IHS Jane’s DS Forecast in London.
“In China and India the market is being driven by attempts to improve the mobility of their ground forces, which requires the procurement of large quantities of tactical transport helicopters,” said Caffrey, adding that Asia represents “one of the most open and diverse” markets for the aircraft.
U.S. Slide
While the U.S. will remain the biggest military-helicopter market over the next decade, its share of sales will dip from 50 percent to 38 percent, with the exit from Iraq last year and a withdrawal from Afghanistan planned for 2014 likely to “signal a damping in demand,” according to London-based Visiongain.
At the same time, South Korea will jump from ninth in the world to second, displacing the U.K., India to third from fourth and China to seventh from 13th as its market doubles, led by attack helicopters, the forecaster said in a report on Feb. 6.
“There’s a bubble of activity,” said Douglas Barrie, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “Rotary-wing procurement doesn’t tend to be high on must-have lists, so there’s also an element of this having been deferred to the point where things really need updating.”
Showdown
Competition intensified last week in Singapore, with major manufacturers pushing their products at the last major air show before a series of contract announcements begins with an Indian order for 197 light helicopters valued at about $1.5 billion.
Eurocopter, based in Marignane, France, is offering its AS550 C3 Fennec in the competition to replace aging Aloutte models built by predecessor Sud Aviation, which sold its first helicopter in Asia in 1962. Russian Helicopters, formed to consolidate the country’s rotorcraft industry, is offering the Kamov Ka-226 -- which has the NATO reporting name ‘Hoodlum’ -- with a winner to be declared in March or April, Ducrot said.
India, whose existing chopper fleet is dominated by Soviet models, also has a contest underway for 55 naval helicopters, worth $2.2 billion, for which Eurocopter is pitching the NH90 against Sikorsky’s Seahawk and Textron Inc.’s Bell 429.
The south Asian nation is also seeking 22 attack choppers in a tender for which Chicago-based Boeing says its AH-64 Apache has been selected as preferred bidder over the Russian Mil Mi-28 Havoc, together with 15 heavy-lift models that have attracted proposals from the Boeing Ch-47 Chinook and the Mi-26 Halo.
Combat-Proven
Boeing is offering the Chinook model used in Afghanistan, defense spokesman Hal Klopper said. That may enhance its credentials for operation in the Himalayas, where Indian and Pakistani forces are ranged against each other at high altitude.
With India also due to issue proposals for coastguard helicopters this year, “there are potential tenders for all the armed forces,” said Ducrot at Eurocopter, a unit of European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. which lifted revenue 13 percent last year a record 5.4 billion euros ($7 billion).
The surge in Asian helicopter purchases mirrors a jump in combat-plane orders led by an $11 billion Indian contract for 126 fighters, the biggest in years, provisionally awarded to Paris-based Dassault Aviation SA’s Rafale last month.
Lockheed Martin Corp., the world’s biggest defense company, won a deal to supply 42 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Japan on Dec. 20 and is competing with Boeing, Eurofighter GmbH and Saab AB for a $7 billion, 60-plane contract from South Korea.
Tiltrotor Interest
Korea’s chopper requirements are led by the $1.5 billion AH-X tender for 36 attack helicopters, which pits the Apache against Eurocopter’s EC665 Tiger and the Bell AH-1Z, a twin- engine variant of the Cobra series known as the Viper.
Proposals are due to be submitted in May, Jeffrey Lowinger, Bell’s executive vice president for engineering, said at the Singapore show, adding that Asia’s “tremendous growth” is spurring interest in a range of products, including the Bell- Boeing V-22 Osprey “tiltrotor,” which can also fly like a plane.
Sikorsky’s Nurit said in Singapore that Korea is also poised to request tenders for an antisubmarine contract which the company is “actively pursuing” with the Seahawk.
Among other bids, Eurocopter’s Tiger is competing for a Malaysian contract, and the company is promoting the NH90 and EC725 Super Cougar to Singapore as replacements for 30 of its Super Puma transport choppers purchased in 1985. The EC725 is also competing for a six-aircraft Indonesian order, Ducrot said.
Successful Asian bids generally require local partnerships, he said, with Eurocopter manufacturing the NH90 in Australia, the Super Puma in Indonesia and teamed with Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd. to develop the KAI Surion utility helicopter, for which South Korea placed 250 orders last year and which could be qualified for export to Europe from July onwards.
--Editors: Christopher Jasper, Benedikt Kammel
To contact the reporters on this story: Sabine Pirone in London at spirone@bloomberg.net; Kyunghee Park in Singapore at kpark3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Benedikt Kammel at bkammel@bloomberg.net; Neil Denslow at ndenslow@bloomberg.net
====================================================================================================================================================
The Samsung Galaxy S III may still be a long way off, but you can satiate you gadget lust with a trio of new phones revealed by the Wi-Fi certification website. Ameblo (1, 2, 3) spotted all three and grabbed them off the web – good on ya, guys. The phones have model numbers SGH-T999, SGH-I535 and SPH-L710. There’s not much information on the phones as far as release goes, but there is a little info to be gleaned from the specifications in the certification listings.
The T999 has a 720p screen, which indicates that it might be the Galaxy S Blaze 4G that T-Mobile announced at CES. That phone will easily be Samsung’s flagship on the carrier with a Super AMOLED screen and 1.5Ghz dual-core processor. There’s still no concrete price or release date for this one, but expect it soon. The I535 is a mystery, though the presence of a CDMA/LTE radio indicates a Verizon release, and the listing mentions Ice Cream Sandwich. The L710 will probably headed for the Now Network.
All three phones could be shown off at Mobile World Congress in a couple of weeks – or not, since MWC attendees don’t usually cater to US carriers at the Barcelona show. The phones’ appearance on the WiFi certification site certainly indicate that they’re coming soon, though, and the I535 is particularly promising – we can hope that it’s the Galaxy Journal (AKA Verizon’s Galaxy Note) but don’t really have any solid evidence for it. Hey, a nerd can dream.
=====================================================================================================================================================================
The latest version of Research In Motion's PlayBook operating system could trickle out to users as soon as this week, according to various reports.
he new operating system is expected to launch 21 February, according to blogging site N4BB, relying on intel from its own sources. The confirmation followed previous "rumblings" pointing to that date for the launch.
Canadian blog site Mobile Syrup also added its take by revealing an upcoming Best Buy flyer listing the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 upgrade as arriving in February.
Mobile Syrup picked up one more clue. The latest version of the BlackBerry Desktop Software has been available since Tuesday. The new version 7 of the client software is likely needed for users who choose to upgrade their tablets to OS 2.0 by syncing with their computers.
Research In Motion did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment, but these latest rumours follow the company's earlier announcement that the PlayBook OS 2.0 would debut in February.
Previewed at last month's CES, the upgrade will bring a variety of much needed features to the tablet.
Chief among them will be native email, calendars and contacts.
All three features have been missing in action since the PlayBook debuted, requiring users to find unwieldy workarounds, such as connecting their BlackBerry phones to their tablets. And like many apps today, all three will play nicely with social networks, letting users access their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
PlayBook OS 2.0 will also finally let people run certain Android apps. One major app that won't appear is BlackBerry Messenger. However, an updated version of Bridge is expected this week. The new Bridge 2.0 will let users remotely control their tablets from their BlackBerry phones.
=================================================================================================================================================
(WIRED) -- Apple's latest OS X update, Mountain Lion, adds a slate of new features, nearly all derived from iOS 5. There's one big omission, however: Siri, Apple's voice-controlled virtual assistant, does not make the migration from mobile to desktop.
Now, technically, Siri isn't a part of iOS 5. It's marketed as the most game-changing feature of the iPhone 4S (which runs iOS 5), and Apple has remained mum on whether Siri will ever be ported to other devices — this to the pique of independent developers who've hacked the feature to run on everything from the iPod touch to thermostats.
Clearly, Siri is Apple's most celebrated user feature. And, clearly, there's interest to see it appear on other Apple devices. Indeed, companies throughout the consumer tech industry are exploring novel new user interface models, including voice-control and gesture-control.
But porting Siri to Mountain Lion desktops would pose several challenges. Apple was smart to leave it out of the latest desktop update, and here's why.
Microphone logistics
Siri: Apple's new voice recognition
Microphone positioning on MacBooks and iMacs would present technical challenges for any Siri desktop port.
The iPhone is designed to be held up to your face, and has a built-in mic that includes advanced noise reduction technology to ensure your voice is heard loud and clear, while street noise and the nearby guy shouting into his phone aren't picked up.
In part, this is accomplished by using two microphones: one near your mouth to pick up your voice, and another near the headphone jack to identify and cancel out background noise.
Yes, your MacBook Pro has an omnidirectional microphone built-in. It's very convenient for using FaceTime in conjunction with the notebook's camera, or for the speech recognition function built into Macs for OS control.
The omnidirectional mic, however, doesn't offer the same voice-processing sensitivity of the iPhone 4′s dual-mic arrangement. All told, Siri voice analysis would be far more challenging on a Mac computer, particularly when other voices or noises are in the room.
Granted, using an external mic, or even the mic on your throwaway iDevice earbuds, could provide a solution. But even though Siri is still considered a beta product, Apple wouldn't resort to such an inelegant hack just to put Siri on Macs.
"Apple has been reluctant to put in features that require something like that," Forrester analyst Frank Gillett told Wired. "It's too fussy for what they like to do. Current speech-recognition products work pretty well if you wear a special high-quality microphone. What's very clear is they need the mic on your face, right by your lips."
Location detection
Siri is all about location-awareness. She wants to give you directions, provide local weather reports, and locate the closest sources of exotic cuisine. But desktop computers don't include native GPS.
"I think the main challenge [in bringing Siri to Mountain Lion] would be the lack of an accurate location being available," said William Tunstall-Pedoe, CEO of True Knowledge, which has developed a Siri clone called Evi. What's more, as Tunstall-Pedoe points out, desktop computers are relatively stationary devices, so a Mac version of Siri may not even need location-awareness, as a large portion of Siri's talents would never be engaged.
All of which begs the question, If a good portion of Siri's functionality isn't even germane to the desktop experience, why even deliver a port?
While MacBooks don't currently include GPS services, various web services (like Google Maps) can figure out your location by using either IP geolocation, or by triangulating your position based on WiFi networks around you. These strategies, however, deliver location accuracy limited to about 150 feet, whereas GPS can peg you within 10 feet of your precise position on the Earth. Future MacBooks could easily include GPS chip built-in for more exact positioning, but for now, laptop and desktop geolocation capabilities aren't accurate — or even that necessary.
Hands-free voice control isn't needed
People tend to use Siri because their hands are tied, like when driving. Thus, "Siri, where's the nearest gas station?" With Siri, you can find the answer quickly, and relatively safely, while keeping your eyes on the road. But these basic use cases just don't transfer to the desktop.
"I think it is fair to say that the advantages that a voice-powered assistant give are stronger on a small mobile device," Tunstall-Pedoe said. "PCs typically have a much larger screen and a keyboard and mouse." Or, in Apple's case, a trackpad or Magic Trackpad instead of a mouse, depending if you're on a laptop or desktop.
Either way, hand-driven data entry is a familiar — and generally effective — method for using today's computers. What's more, as Tunstall-Pedoe points out, "PCs are also often used in environments where the use of voice would be awkward," such as inside an open floor plan office.
Granted, if you're disabled or injured, you could certainly make use of a hands-free feature. But in these cases, you would probably want a tool more robust than Siri. Which brings us to our next point:
Limited use cases
With Siri, you can do things like schedule reminders, look up restaurant and business information on Yelp, get information from Wolfram|Alpha, and ask general search engine-style queries. That's not a large number of functions, and they're not specifically suited to the desktop environment.
Indeed, why would you have Siri look up something when you can more quickly run your own Google search?
"On the iPhone, people want to do short things, like quick dictation and sending a quick text message," Gillette says. The use cases would be different on a Mac, and not necessarily centered around short phrases. Siri's capabilities would need to expand in order to handle these different functions.
Always-on data
Lastly, Siri needs a constant data connection in order to interface with Apple's servers. Until MacBooks include a built-in 3G, or more likely, 4G data connection, WiFi alone won't cut it for consistent, high-quality network availability, Gillett says.
Gillett also believes Siri ties into unique hardware features that make chatter between one's device and Apple's data center more streamlined. "There seems to be special silicon within a special chip that has capabilities for voice recognition that a Mac wouldn't have," he said.
Gillett notes that Siri is sometimes able to analyze a query and provide a response extremely quickly, while other times, it takes 10 to 15 seconds of processing. "I think the chip does some pre-analysis, shrinks stuff it has to send, Apple's data center gets a crunched answer, and Siri displays it on screen," Gillett said.
"Apple may be working on Siri-enabling features [for Macs] in the future, but there will be some hardware enhancements to go with it," Gillett said. "And they'll think long and hard about the use case before they implement a voice feature in the Mac."
Raj Rajput [ MBA ]
Mobile Reviews Expert
www.AeroSoftCorp.com
www.AeroSoft.in
www.AeroSoft.co.in
www.AeroSoftseo.com
http://best-gsm-mobile-review.blogspot.in
On Line Assistence :
Gtalk : aerosoft.Raj@gmail.com
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However, Nokia’s plans go beyond Nokia devices and those powered by Windows Phone 7. “These are social applications. To be social, you have to be on every platform”, said Basak Ozer, Nokia’s Lead for social and location applications. As such, Pulse will be coming soon to Android and iOS users too, though an exact launch date was not unveiled.
However, Nokia Pulse — which is complementary to services like Facebook and Twitter — is not the only app the Finnish company has in mind for its social and location offerings.
=====================================================================================================================================
Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Boeing Co., Sikorsky, Eurocopter and Bell, the top four helicopter makers, are focused on Asia as 1,000 orders from states spanning India to Korea are set to make it the fastest growing military-chopper market by 2015.
Tenders in half a dozen nations should produce sales worth $10 billion over the next three years, Norbert Ducrot, executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region at Eurocopter, the world’s No. 1 manufacturer of rotorcraft, said in an interview.
“Asia has the ingredients to grow into one of the largest markets worldwide,” said Christophe Nurit, regional vice president at Sikorsky, a United Technologies Corp. unit that’s the No. 1 maker of military helicopters. Key bids include naval tenders in Korea and India, for which the company is pitching its Seahawk antisubmarine model, a version of the Black Hawk.
Asian military spending rose 14 percent last year, funded by the world’s fastest growing regional economy. The helicopter market is surging as nations race to replace aging western, Soviet and home-grown models, led by emerging powers seeking the means to extend their military reach, according to Craig Caffrey, a defense analyst at IHS Jane’s DS Forecast in London.
“In China and India the market is being driven by attempts to improve the mobility of their ground forces, which requires the procurement of large quantities of tactical transport helicopters,” said Caffrey, adding that Asia represents “one of the most open and diverse” markets for the aircraft.
U.S. Slide
While the U.S. will remain the biggest military-helicopter market over the next decade, its share of sales will dip from 50 percent to 38 percent, with the exit from Iraq last year and a withdrawal from Afghanistan planned for 2014 likely to “signal a damping in demand,” according to London-based Visiongain.
At the same time, South Korea will jump from ninth in the world to second, displacing the U.K., India to third from fourth and China to seventh from 13th as its market doubles, led by attack helicopters, the forecaster said in a report on Feb. 6.
“There’s a bubble of activity,” said Douglas Barrie, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. “Rotary-wing procurement doesn’t tend to be high on must-have lists, so there’s also an element of this having been deferred to the point where things really need updating.”
Showdown
Competition intensified last week in Singapore, with major manufacturers pushing their products at the last major air show before a series of contract announcements begins with an Indian order for 197 light helicopters valued at about $1.5 billion.
Eurocopter, based in Marignane, France, is offering its AS550 C3 Fennec in the competition to replace aging Aloutte models built by predecessor Sud Aviation, which sold its first helicopter in Asia in 1962. Russian Helicopters, formed to consolidate the country’s rotorcraft industry, is offering the Kamov Ka-226 -- which has the NATO reporting name ‘Hoodlum’ -- with a winner to be declared in March or April, Ducrot said.
India, whose existing chopper fleet is dominated by Soviet models, also has a contest underway for 55 naval helicopters, worth $2.2 billion, for which Eurocopter is pitching the NH90 against Sikorsky’s Seahawk and Textron Inc.’s Bell 429.
The south Asian nation is also seeking 22 attack choppers in a tender for which Chicago-based Boeing says its AH-64 Apache has been selected as preferred bidder over the Russian Mil Mi-28 Havoc, together with 15 heavy-lift models that have attracted proposals from the Boeing Ch-47 Chinook and the Mi-26 Halo.
Combat-Proven
Boeing is offering the Chinook model used in Afghanistan, defense spokesman Hal Klopper said. That may enhance its credentials for operation in the Himalayas, where Indian and Pakistani forces are ranged against each other at high altitude.
With India also due to issue proposals for coastguard helicopters this year, “there are potential tenders for all the armed forces,” said Ducrot at Eurocopter, a unit of European Aeronautic, Defence & Space Co. which lifted revenue 13 percent last year a record 5.4 billion euros ($7 billion).
The surge in Asian helicopter purchases mirrors a jump in combat-plane orders led by an $11 billion Indian contract for 126 fighters, the biggest in years, provisionally awarded to Paris-based Dassault Aviation SA’s Rafale last month.
Lockheed Martin Corp., the world’s biggest defense company, won a deal to supply 42 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters to Japan on Dec. 20 and is competing with Boeing, Eurofighter GmbH and Saab AB for a $7 billion, 60-plane contract from South Korea.
Tiltrotor Interest
Korea’s chopper requirements are led by the $1.5 billion AH-X tender for 36 attack helicopters, which pits the Apache against Eurocopter’s EC665 Tiger and the Bell AH-1Z, a twin- engine variant of the Cobra series known as the Viper.
Proposals are due to be submitted in May, Jeffrey Lowinger, Bell’s executive vice president for engineering, said at the Singapore show, adding that Asia’s “tremendous growth” is spurring interest in a range of products, including the Bell- Boeing V-22 Osprey “tiltrotor,” which can also fly like a plane.
Sikorsky’s Nurit said in Singapore that Korea is also poised to request tenders for an antisubmarine contract which the company is “actively pursuing” with the Seahawk.
Among other bids, Eurocopter’s Tiger is competing for a Malaysian contract, and the company is promoting the NH90 and EC725 Super Cougar to Singapore as replacements for 30 of its Super Puma transport choppers purchased in 1985. The EC725 is also competing for a six-aircraft Indonesian order, Ducrot said.
Successful Asian bids generally require local partnerships, he said, with Eurocopter manufacturing the NH90 in Australia, the Super Puma in Indonesia and teamed with Korea Aerospace Industries Ltd. to develop the KAI Surion utility helicopter, for which South Korea placed 250 orders last year and which could be qualified for export to Europe from July onwards.
--Editors: Christopher Jasper, Benedikt Kammel
To contact the reporters on this story: Sabine Pirone in London at spirone@bloomberg.net; Kyunghee Park in Singapore at kpark3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Benedikt Kammel at bkammel@bloomberg.net; Neil Denslow at ndenslow@bloomberg.net
====================================================================================================================================================
The Samsung Galaxy S III may still be a long way off, but you can satiate you gadget lust with a trio of new phones revealed by the Wi-Fi certification website. Ameblo (1, 2, 3) spotted all three and grabbed them off the web – good on ya, guys. The phones have model numbers SGH-T999, SGH-I535 and SPH-L710. There’s not much information on the phones as far as release goes, but there is a little info to be gleaned from the specifications in the certification listings.
The T999 has a 720p screen, which indicates that it might be the Galaxy S Blaze 4G that T-Mobile announced at CES. That phone will easily be Samsung’s flagship on the carrier with a Super AMOLED screen and 1.5Ghz dual-core processor. There’s still no concrete price or release date for this one, but expect it soon. The I535 is a mystery, though the presence of a CDMA/LTE radio indicates a Verizon release, and the listing mentions Ice Cream Sandwich. The L710 will probably headed for the Now Network.
All three phones could be shown off at Mobile World Congress in a couple of weeks – or not, since MWC attendees don’t usually cater to US carriers at the Barcelona show. The phones’ appearance on the WiFi certification site certainly indicate that they’re coming soon, though, and the I535 is particularly promising – we can hope that it’s the Galaxy Journal (AKA Verizon’s Galaxy Note) but don’t really have any solid evidence for it. Hey, a nerd can dream.
=====================================================================================================================================================================
The latest version of Research In Motion's PlayBook operating system could trickle out to users as soon as this week, according to various reports.
he new operating system is expected to launch 21 February, according to blogging site N4BB, relying on intel from its own sources. The confirmation followed previous "rumblings" pointing to that date for the launch.
Canadian blog site Mobile Syrup also added its take by revealing an upcoming Best Buy flyer listing the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 upgrade as arriving in February.
Mobile Syrup picked up one more clue. The latest version of the BlackBerry Desktop Software has been available since Tuesday. The new version 7 of the client software is likely needed for users who choose to upgrade their tablets to OS 2.0 by syncing with their computers.
Research In Motion did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment, but these latest rumours follow the company's earlier announcement that the PlayBook OS 2.0 would debut in February.
Previewed at last month's CES, the upgrade will bring a variety of much needed features to the tablet.
Chief among them will be native email, calendars and contacts.
All three features have been missing in action since the PlayBook debuted, requiring users to find unwieldy workarounds, such as connecting their BlackBerry phones to their tablets. And like many apps today, all three will play nicely with social networks, letting users access their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts.
PlayBook OS 2.0 will also finally let people run certain Android apps. One major app that won't appear is BlackBerry Messenger. However, an updated version of Bridge is expected this week. The new Bridge 2.0 will let users remotely control their tablets from their BlackBerry phones.
=================================================================================================================================================
(WIRED) -- Apple's latest OS X update, Mountain Lion, adds a slate of new features, nearly all derived from iOS 5. There's one big omission, however: Siri, Apple's voice-controlled virtual assistant, does not make the migration from mobile to desktop.
Now, technically, Siri isn't a part of iOS 5. It's marketed as the most game-changing feature of the iPhone 4S (which runs iOS 5), and Apple has remained mum on whether Siri will ever be ported to other devices — this to the pique of independent developers who've hacked the feature to run on everything from the iPod touch to thermostats.
Clearly, Siri is Apple's most celebrated user feature. And, clearly, there's interest to see it appear on other Apple devices. Indeed, companies throughout the consumer tech industry are exploring novel new user interface models, including voice-control and gesture-control.
But porting Siri to Mountain Lion desktops would pose several challenges. Apple was smart to leave it out of the latest desktop update, and here's why.
Microphone logistics
Siri: Apple's new voice recognition
Microphone positioning on MacBooks and iMacs would present technical challenges for any Siri desktop port.
The iPhone is designed to be held up to your face, and has a built-in mic that includes advanced noise reduction technology to ensure your voice is heard loud and clear, while street noise and the nearby guy shouting into his phone aren't picked up.
In part, this is accomplished by using two microphones: one near your mouth to pick up your voice, and another near the headphone jack to identify and cancel out background noise.
Yes, your MacBook Pro has an omnidirectional microphone built-in. It's very convenient for using FaceTime in conjunction with the notebook's camera, or for the speech recognition function built into Macs for OS control.
The omnidirectional mic, however, doesn't offer the same voice-processing sensitivity of the iPhone 4′s dual-mic arrangement. All told, Siri voice analysis would be far more challenging on a Mac computer, particularly when other voices or noises are in the room.
Granted, using an external mic, or even the mic on your throwaway iDevice earbuds, could provide a solution. But even though Siri is still considered a beta product, Apple wouldn't resort to such an inelegant hack just to put Siri on Macs.
"Apple has been reluctant to put in features that require something like that," Forrester analyst Frank Gillett told Wired. "It's too fussy for what they like to do. Current speech-recognition products work pretty well if you wear a special high-quality microphone. What's very clear is they need the mic on your face, right by your lips."
Location detection
Siri is all about location-awareness. She wants to give you directions, provide local weather reports, and locate the closest sources of exotic cuisine. But desktop computers don't include native GPS.
"I think the main challenge [in bringing Siri to Mountain Lion] would be the lack of an accurate location being available," said William Tunstall-Pedoe, CEO of True Knowledge, which has developed a Siri clone called Evi. What's more, as Tunstall-Pedoe points out, desktop computers are relatively stationary devices, so a Mac version of Siri may not even need location-awareness, as a large portion of Siri's talents would never be engaged.
All of which begs the question, If a good portion of Siri's functionality isn't even germane to the desktop experience, why even deliver a port?
While MacBooks don't currently include GPS services, various web services (like Google Maps) can figure out your location by using either IP geolocation, or by triangulating your position based on WiFi networks around you. These strategies, however, deliver location accuracy limited to about 150 feet, whereas GPS can peg you within 10 feet of your precise position on the Earth. Future MacBooks could easily include GPS chip built-in for more exact positioning, but for now, laptop and desktop geolocation capabilities aren't accurate — or even that necessary.
Hands-free voice control isn't needed
People tend to use Siri because their hands are tied, like when driving. Thus, "Siri, where's the nearest gas station?" With Siri, you can find the answer quickly, and relatively safely, while keeping your eyes on the road. But these basic use cases just don't transfer to the desktop.
"I think it is fair to say that the advantages that a voice-powered assistant give are stronger on a small mobile device," Tunstall-Pedoe said. "PCs typically have a much larger screen and a keyboard and mouse." Or, in Apple's case, a trackpad or Magic Trackpad instead of a mouse, depending if you're on a laptop or desktop.
Either way, hand-driven data entry is a familiar — and generally effective — method for using today's computers. What's more, as Tunstall-Pedoe points out, "PCs are also often used in environments where the use of voice would be awkward," such as inside an open floor plan office.
Granted, if you're disabled or injured, you could certainly make use of a hands-free feature. But in these cases, you would probably want a tool more robust than Siri. Which brings us to our next point:
Limited use cases
With Siri, you can do things like schedule reminders, look up restaurant and business information on Yelp, get information from Wolfram|Alpha, and ask general search engine-style queries. That's not a large number of functions, and they're not specifically suited to the desktop environment.
Indeed, why would you have Siri look up something when you can more quickly run your own Google search?
"On the iPhone, people want to do short things, like quick dictation and sending a quick text message," Gillette says. The use cases would be different on a Mac, and not necessarily centered around short phrases. Siri's capabilities would need to expand in order to handle these different functions.
Always-on data
Lastly, Siri needs a constant data connection in order to interface with Apple's servers. Until MacBooks include a built-in 3G, or more likely, 4G data connection, WiFi alone won't cut it for consistent, high-quality network availability, Gillett says.
Gillett also believes Siri ties into unique hardware features that make chatter between one's device and Apple's data center more streamlined. "There seems to be special silicon within a special chip that has capabilities for voice recognition that a Mac wouldn't have," he said.
Gillett notes that Siri is sometimes able to analyze a query and provide a response extremely quickly, while other times, it takes 10 to 15 seconds of processing. "I think the chip does some pre-analysis, shrinks stuff it has to send, Apple's data center gets a crunched answer, and Siri displays it on screen," Gillett said.
"Apple may be working on Siri-enabling features [for Macs] in the future, but there will be some hardware enhancements to go with it," Gillett said. "And they'll think long and hard about the use case before they implement a voice feature in the Mac."
Raj Rajput [ MBA ]
Mobile Reviews Expert
www.AeroSoftCorp.com
www.AeroSoft.in
www.AeroSoft.co.in
www.AeroSoftseo.com
http://best-gsm-mobile-review.blogspot.in
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