According to Spotify Global Head of Hardware Partnerships Pascal de Mul, the updated iPhone (No word on Android support yet) will soon be able to pair with the dashboard AppLink system, streaming music through the car’s entertainment systems. Users will be able to play their songs, playlists and radio stations and even be able to create new radio stations on the fly with simple voice commands, he said.

Ford has been loading up on music streaming apps in AppLink, making it a key initial focus of its connected car strategy. Its library of supported services includes Pandora, Amazon Cloud Player, MOG Music, Slacker, and Rhapsody as well as multiple radio station’s digital apps.

Ford CTO Paul Mascarenas said digital music streaming figures right into Sync’s sweet spot. Ford doesn’t have to explain the utility of the services to the driving public since music is already the most popular form of entertainment in the car. The integration of a streaming service into Sync is relatively simple. And since the content is audio only and can be manipulated through Sync commands, the apps all easily meet Ford’s requirements that no connected car app distract a driver from the road, he said.

At the show Ford also revealed it is adding AppLink connectivity to its EcoSport crossover SUV (pictured at top) just in time for its European debut. For also brought several apps Europe that were previously available in U.S. cars: Kaliki, Glympse and Aha Radio.

We got a chance to sit down with Mascarenas for a few minutes at MWC to get a quick update on Ford’s new open development platform, originally unveiled at CES. Though the program is barely more than a month old, 2500 developers have already signed up and downloaded the SDK. Many of those devs have already completed apps and have submitted them to Ford, and a few those apps actually received final approval, Mascarenas said. Mascarenas said Ford plans to announced those apps in the coming weeks.

Spotfiy doesn’t count since it began working with Ford before the development program was launched, Mascarenas said, but the program has opened up Sync to a lot of smaller developers who wouldn’t usually get Ford’s direct attention. Ford is now faced with a distribution and discovery issue. “If you go into an app store, there’s no easy way to find the apps that AppLink-enabled, Mascarenas said.

When the number of Sync apps was small, Ford could promote them individually. But there are now 63 AppLink-optimized apps, and that number will grow significantly as the apps start emerging from the developer program. Ford is working on ways to catalog them. Whether that means creating its own app store or portal Android or working with Apple and Google to spotlight connected car software, Mascarenas didn’t say. Ford could also go with the approach, GM appears to be adopting and create a catalog in the dashboard itself.

Correction: An early version of this post stated that Spotify’s Sync integration capabilities would be available on both Android and iOS devices. However the initial launch will support only the iPhone. 

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Books have always been Amazon’s bread and butter, and much of Amazon’s ebook strategy has focused on finding more ways and identifying new devices for people to enjoy the pastime of reading. The car is the logical next step, considering how much time people spend their automobiles on their daily commutes and simply running errands. In fact, a lot of drivers already do plenty of reading in their cars with audiobooks, using both physical and digital media. Some people have even managed to cram Amazon’s Audible books into their car stereos using USB drives or auxiliary ports.

Amazon stands to gain plenty by embracing that trend, and I don’t just mean by selling audiobooks in the car. (In case you’re wondering, it’s not possible today to stream an Audible book through Cloud Player). While there is a healthy segment of readers who just want audiobooks, I bet there’s a far bigger market of people who normally read their books in ink — in either the printed or digital variety — but would like the option of switching to audio when they get behind the wheel.

No large-scale development required

For Amazon to make that work it would have to supply its books in dual-media formats. You would then read from your Kindle or Kindle smartphone app when otherwise unoccupied, but once you stepped into your vehicle the device would automatically pair with the Kindle app in the car, which would immediately start reading your book aloud at the exact point you left off.

Amazon already has much of this technology in place. Last year, Amazon introduced Whispersync for Voice, which allows you to pair an Audible book with an ebook for a few extra bucks. Amazon isn’t just selling the same media in two formats, it’s integrating them. A narration feature allows you to listen along as you read from the Kindle — after each word is spoken the text is highlighted on the screen. Customers can switch between audio to visual-only formats with just a touch of the button.

It would be cinch for Amazon to integrate that technology into the car. It would merely have to develop software for the Kindle and Kindle apps that would integrate with the various automakers’ connected car interfaces, just as it’s done for Cloud Player on Sync AppLink.

It could also tap into the automakers’ speech recognition systems, allowing readers to pause the audio stream or navigate their books with simple voice commands. Amazon has invested plenty in voice and speech interface technologies over the last two years, buying both Ivona and Yap. Those acquisitions could come in handy when developing any new connected car technology.

Amazon stays mum

I should say now that we have no specific knowledge that Amazon is working on Kindle for the car, but just to be sure we put the question to the company itself. While an Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the company today has the technology to seamlessly switch between book formats, Amazon wouldn’t comment on any future connected car plans. The spokesperson said as a matter of policy Amazon doesn’t comment on future product plans.

That’s pretty much what we expected to hear, but if Amazon does wind up pursuing this technology, I for one would buy it. Today I have an uneasy relationship with ebooks. I download the occasional tome on iBooks or Kindle, but for the most part, I still have an irrational attachment to paper books. I can get away with that attachment because today I can read a physical book in the same places I can read an ebook — on a train or in plane, while camping or lying around on the couch — but one place I cannot read a physical book is in the driver’s seat of a car. By creating a connected car app, the Kindle and ebooks in general would become immensely more valuable to me.

It’s not just consumers who would get excited about Kindle for the car. The automakers would fall all over themselves lining up to support it. One of the reasons the automakers have proceeded so cautiously with app development is a concern over safety — distracting apps could cause accidents. But the auto industry has been quick to sign off on any audio-only multimedia service, as evidenced by all of streaming music and radio apps that populate connected car dashboards.

In fact, audiobook apps have already made their way into many cars. Harman’s Aha content platform has already made into Honda’s connected car platform HondaLink, offering audio book libraries among its many channel choices. I’m actually surprised Audiobooks.com, a cloud-based streaming service, hasn’t launched a connected car app already.

Featured photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Rob Byron

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The service’s vocabulary and contextual understanding is pretty limited. For instance, if you ask Genius to “find a restaurant” it will pull up the nearest eatery on Google Maps. But if you ask it to find “nearby restaurants” it searches Maps for a joint named “Nearby.” If you’re like me, you’ve probably fiddled with the button a few times and never touched it again, despite its relative convenience on the phone’s faceplate.

But T-Mobile has given Genius a much-needed overhaul, at least on the latest versions of the MyTouch manufactured by Huawei. Nuance Communications, which powers the voice-recognition features on T-Mobile devices, is upgrading Genius’ capabilities and the features of the Genius service, providing a deeper level of natural-language understanding and integrating the service with a much broader array of content sources beyond Maps and Google Search.

For instance, if I were to ask the new Genius for nearby restaurants, it would not only understand my intent but also do its searching on Yelp, pulling up dining options nearby and displaying their rankings and reviews. If I were to change that command to “make a reservation at nearby restaurants,” it would bring me to OpenTable’s website and display eateries in the vicinity that accept online bookings.

If this sounds familiar then you’ve probably used Nuance’s consumer semantic-search app, Dragon Go, available for Android and iOS smartphones. In fact, if you look at the long list of 200 content partners the Genius can access, they’re the same used by Dragon Go. Nuance wouldn’t acknowledge specifically that T-Mobile is white-labeling the semantic-search app, but it’s pretty obvious that’s exactly what it’s doing — and it’s by no means a bad thing. I’m a big fan of Nuance’s intuitive little search app, and being able to access it in fewer steps is a bonus.

The official line, though, is that T-Mobile has basically upgraded its relationship with Nuance to a kind of platinum status. The old Genius tapped into Nuance’s basic speech-recognition APIs, but it had none of the rules-based language-parsing abilities of Nuance’s more-sophisticated offerings. By adding greater contextual understanding and a host of content providers, T-Mobile may be able to turn a pretty lame voice-command feature into something quite useful. So far, though, it’s only available on the MyTouch and MyTouch Q.

Both T-Mobile and Nuance will be represented at GigaOM’s Mobilize conference next month. Nuance CTO Vlad Sejnoha will be speaking on a panel about the future smartphone interface on Sept. 20, while T-Mobile SVP of marketing Brad Duea will discuss the evolution of voice services on Sept. 21.

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Called Nina, the new virtual assistant software is targeted at the growing number of customer service apps companies are stockpiling in the iTunes and Google Play stores with a particular focus on mobile banking apps. According to Nuance VP and GM Robert Gary, customer-facing mobile apps have become increasingly complex which makes navigating the multiple layers of options available all the more difficult.

Nina aims to cut through that clutter, allowing a user to perform thousands of different tasks within a customer care app by simply stating what he wants to do, Gary said. For instance a simple credit card payment could require a dozen different actions on a mobile app: navigating to the payments section, selecting the card receiving payment and the account the transfer comes from, entering the date of the transaction and finally amount being paid.

Nina can reduce all of those steps down to a single simple command: “Pay $300 to my gold card from my checking account.” Nuance’s speech servers not only understand the words, but also mines them for as much information and context as possible. Whatever additional information Nina needs, it prompts the user with spoken follow-up questions. So in the example above, Nina would immediately navigate to the appropriate payment screen and populate the fields for a $300 transfer from the customer’s checking account to his gold card. Nina would only need to ask the customer whether he wanted to make the payment immediately or schedule it for a future date.

Nuance is offering Nina to customers as a white-label service they can customize and embed into their applications. In the demo I saw, Nina’s voice was that of Siri – Apple licenses the Siri’s audio library from Nuance – but Nuance has library of 40 different voices it plans to offer to developers so everyone doesn’t wind up with the same Siri clone. Enterprise customers can hire their own voice “talent” to further differentiate their virtual assistants from the field.

Nina’s first customer will be USAA, the financial services provider of the U.S. military. It plans to launch the voice assistant as part of pilot within its mobile banking app this month and then offer it to all of its members by early next year.

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The patents owned by National Cheng Kung University were issued in 2007 and 2010. Siri began life as a U.S. government-funded artificial intelligence project at SRI International, but was spun out as its own company, Siri, in 2007 and commercialized. Apple bought Siri in 2010.

The calculation of the damages the university is seeking “would be based on Apple’s U.S. sales of devices that use Siri,” according to its lawyer. That basically means sales of all iPhone 4S and new iPads with iOS 6 software, which is coming this fall. So the school is looking for a very large chunk of change as compensation.

Apple is involved in dozens of lawsuits regarding its mobile technology, including the very high-profile Samsung trial that kicks off Monday in California. Is the overall climate surrounding handset makers and the mobile industry encouraging more of these kind of lawsuits from international companies? Or, as my colleague Jeff Roberts has argued, has Apple’s decision to settle with the near-bankrupt Proview over the iPad trademark in China last month for $60 million emboldened more potential plaintiffs?

Apple is the only target of the school’s suit for now, but Siri competitors are in the crosshairs as well: the school’s lawyer told Reuters it is also looking at both Microsoft and Google’s speech-to-text products for possible violations of the same two patents.

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While voice command and dictation is now becoming common in new high-end and mid-tier vehicles, Dragon Drive attempts to set itself apart by reaching beyond the limited vocabulary of a car’s dashboard computer and into the cloud where it can access Nuance’s natural language servers. BMW is implementing Dragon Drive’s initial service, Messaging, which allows drivers to listen to speech-transcribed e-mail and SMS, as well as dictate, edit, format and send messages via voice command.

Dragon Drive links to Nuance servers either through embedded connectivity in the car or through the driver’s smartphone connection, though it’s unclear how BMW is implementing Dragon Drive in its current models. All of its newer cars come with EDGE radios to perform basic Internet tasks, but at some point BMW plans to amp up its in-vehicle connectivity. It has joined Verizon’s 4G Venture Forum for Connected Cars so BMWs equipped with LTE radios on U.S. 4G bands will likely emerge soon.

In a recent interview, Nuance Mobile GM Mike Thompson said that Nuance plans to take Dragon Drive far beyond messaging, turning it into a full virtual assistant for drivers — akin to a Siri for automobiles. Nuance faces plenty of competition, most notably from Siri itself. The next version of Apple’s iPhone OS will support direct integration of Siri into the car dashboard. Apple licenses natural language understanding technology from Nuance, so even if Apple proves to be as dominant in the car as it is in the smartphone, Nuance stands to gain.

Research in Motion’s QNX, which already powers many vehicle infotainment systems, is evolving its operating system into a voice-powered personal assistant as well. While QNX licenses Nuance technology today for its basic voice command features, it’s begun experimenting with AT&T’s Watson natural language technology for its future connected car platform.

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Automakers are lining up to support Eyes Free. Apple showed a slide at WWDC highlighting nine car companies that would be integrating the feature: Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Honda, General Motors, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes and Toyota. Not on that slide was Ford, which just happens to be the most aggressive automaker when it comes to integrating connected-car technologies such as voice command and control.

It’s not that Ford doesn’t love Apple. In fact, the iPhone is a core device in its Microsoft-powered connected-car platform, Sync, which requires a smartphone to connect to the Internet, and hosts the infotainment apps Sync ultimately runs. In that sense Ford wants to integrate with the world’s most popular smartphone as closely as possible.

The problem is Apple may have just laid claim to a huge chunk of turf that some automakers view as rightfully theirs. And since Ford has been among the most aggressive in pushing the boundaries of connected-car services, it may very well feel Apple is asking it to give up too much territory

She who controls the interface controls the apps

Here’s Apple’s rather sparse description of Siri’s Eyes Free capabilities:

You’ll be able to ask Siri questions without taking your eyes off the road. To minimize distractions even more, your iOS device’s screen won’t light up. With the Eyes Free feature, ask Siri to call people, select and play music, hear and compose text messages, use Maps and get directions, read your notifications, find calendar information, add reminders, and more. It’s just another way Siri helps you get things done, even when you’re behind the wheel.

The big red flag is navigation. When you ask Siri for directions, it isn’t accessing Ford’s own vehicle nav system and services; rather it’s tapping into Apple’s new Maps service (also unveiled at WWDC). The other features, such as dictating text messages, playing stored music, and reading back notifications seem innocuous enough, since they tap into the iPhone’s core functions, not competing services’. But Sync replicates all of these features through its own voice commands, and Ford has every interest in keeping those features in its dashboard rather than ceding them to the iPhone.

Ford won’t make revenue off a dictated email, but it will off its own core in-vehicle navigation, information and entertainment services. Ford is also turning Sync into a platform, inviting third-party developers like Pandora, Stitcher and most recently MOG to develop apps that take advantage not only of Sync’s voice-command capabilities but the console display and dashboard controls.

If Ford, however, gives up even basic functions like message notifications to Siri, it basically starts ceding its platform, becoming a peripheral set of speakers and display to the iPhone. Voice is going to be the key user interface in the car, and it’s highly unlikely a driver is going to switch back and forth between two interfaces. So whichever company establishes itself as the de facto in-car voice assistant will have a huge advantage.

A walled garden moving at 60 mph

No matter how revolutionary and useful Siri is, it’s important to note that Apple’s virtual assistant is a gatekeeper to a walled garden. Integration with Siri isn’t an option for developers except those Apple chooses to work with, and so far it really isn’t working with any. Instead of working with developers to Siri-enable their apps, it is sourcing content from partners like Rotten Tomatoes and Yelp.

You can make the same walled garden claims against Ford as well. It’s actually allowing developers to build on the Sync AppLink platform, but today its dev program is invite-only. Ford, however, has said it may open the platform up in the future.

The vehicle represents a huge opportunity to become the new connected device every American family owns, and both Apple and the automakers realize that potential. Today we could be witnessing the beginning of a new platform war, fought not only over the car but over the voice interface that controls it.

Walled Garden image courtesy of Flickr user sportsilliterate

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In health care we face numerous challenges. One that is being tackled by the FCC, Department of Justice and the Department of Transportation is the limited nature of our emergency 911 system. Currently, if one is dialing from a cellphone, chances are that 911 cannot automatically find their location. And the only way to contact 911 is the traditional way — by telephone.

All of that is about to change. Next Generation 911 will allow for communications to be made by voice, video or text. Location will automatically be appended to voice calls, saving time and confusion when the caller doesn’t know where they’re location is — or isn’t able to verbally communicate it.

As someone who analyzes health policy (with a focus on long-term services and supports), I believe that Siri, Apple’s recently introduced natural language voice technology, has the potential to change not just our 911 system, but also to be one of the biggest consumer-facing technologies in health care that we’ve seen in decades.

Emergency health care today

Imagine this scenario: an elderly person is having a cardiac event. She is having trouble breathing and is unable to complete a sentence. Dialing 911 is possible, but if the caller is unable to narrate the condition, first responders would still be in the dark until they arrive.

Even after they do arrive, information still eludes them: some critical — including prior medical history, current medications and allergic reactions to medicines — and some logistical, such as health insurance and next of kin.

The future: A Siri-enabled 911

Siri’s main features – its ability to understand natural language and its quick and contextual deep search, information retrieval and task completion – could drastically change all this.

Once the word “emergency” is spoken to Siri, a range of beneficial activity could commence. First, the phone could video call 911 utilizing Skype or a similar VoIP video service. This would allow first responders to have a much better context of the emergency at hand. Armed with a live video and audio feed of the event, visual cues could assist the first responders as they deconstruct the problem. Second, Siri could send the GPS location of the caller.

Third, an app could automatically transmit critical information to the nearest hospital. First Choice Healthcare already has an app that gathers this information – primary care physician, current medications and any drug allergies – for a patient heading to the ER. Depending on the patient’s physician, it’s possible that the patient’s entire electronic health record (EHR) loaded into the app (or otherwise shared with authorized medical personnel) as well.

Lastly, Siri could send a text or email to the chosen next of kin, letting them know that an emergency has transpired and their family member is being transported to the closest hospital (with the address included).

That may sound a bit out of place considering Siri can’t even dial 911 right now. But the reason for that is simple: Apple hasn’t instituted a way of authenticating that a call is real and not a prank. However with video and the additional information appended to the call (again, including location), the chances of a prank dial are miniscule.

Now compare the two pictures. Which patient has a better chance of surviving the cardiac event? More than 300,000 people die from sudden cardiac events each year in the U.S. A large portion of these are preventable, not only due to lifestyle changes but also, in part, because of the nature of the emergency response and the preparation on the part of the individual. These are both areas where Siri, along with Next Generation 911, could play a fascinating role.

Siri beyond 911

But it’s not just emergency care that could be transformed with Siri. a few other uses also come to mind. Such challenges include home health monitoring and assistance.

Millions of elderly adults are living at home and are unable to fully complete needed daily tasks. They may receive some assistance for a portion of the day from a licensed health care professional, but many still only have a family member or friend stop by and assist. Regardless of what kind of help they get, after the help leaves, they may struggle to remember when to take prescribed medication and treatments, they could forget doctors’ appointments, and they may not be able to keep their family fully in the loop (until the next visit or major event happens). Worst of all, they are more susceptible to injury or worse when a medical emergency transpires.

Siri and the convergence of disparate tools

There are numerous gadgets geared toward this population. But not only are they pricey, they are also far less personal and much harder to use than Siri. Siri requires holding down the home button (the only button available on the face of an iPhone) and speaking. Who couldn’t remember to do that?

At the tap of a button, Siri will be able to set and vocalize reminders for when to take pills, can initiate video check-ups with family and care providers, and can begin a smooth chain reaction of events that would otherwise require far more time and energy to do — two things our elderly, chronically ill population have the least of.

This transition to home health care will only become more common as states look to pivot from providing the bulk of the care in institutions to care being provided in homes and communities. People not only are happier when they live at home but they also live longer, feel better, and react better to treatments. If that were not enough, institutional care is far too costly. Long-term services currently account for, on average, “one-third of state Medicaid budgets,” and 58 percent of it is spent on institutional care, according to Lewin Consulting, a preeminent health consulting firm (PDF download).

Clearly it won’t just be Siri alone in this revolution of health care. Many more services will be created, and many more similar innovations are on the horizon. But every revolution needs its leader, and Siri is undoubtedly it.

John S. Wilson is a health policy analyst and editor of PolicyDiary, a weekly health policy blog. He can be reached at john@policydiary.com or on Twitter: @johnswilson1. 

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Google had voice commands a year ago

“But wait,” the Android users are crying out. “Google has voice services too!” Indeed, Android devices do have similar voice services. Voice search is native to the platform and blew me away when I first used it on a Google Nexus One in Jan. 2010. Even in a crowded room, I could search the web with ease just by speaking to my phone. And in August of last year, Google introduced Voice Actions, a downloadable Android app that extended voice services to speech commands. Here’s a video demo to illustrate the functionality.

At a quick glance, Apple’s Siri and Google’s Voice Actions appear similar. In many ways, they are. Here’s a quick breakdown of the similar functions that both services provide through speech:

• Creation of text messages and emails.
• Get navigation directions.
• Call a contact.
• View a map of a particular area.
• Write a note.
• Play music.
• Perform a web search.

Google’s Voice Actions also includes the ability to search for and call a business in one step, plus it can be used to open a web page. Siri comes close to opening web pages; when I say “go to yahoo.com” Siri does a Google search for the site, making it one tap away.

So what’s different about Siri?

That’s pretty much the end for Google Voice Actions, which requires users to memorize the exact commands much like Microsoft’s Voice Command for Windows Mobile did back in its 2003 debut. It’s not difficult to do so, and the functionality is certainly useful. However, Siri can do even more and provides intelligence that Android doesn’t yet match. Compare the above video demo of Google’s solution with this introduction to Siri that Apple created; you’ll immediately notice that Siri isn’t simply a voice command system. Instead, it’s a semi-intelligent interactive assistant:

The biggest difference is the one that will likely have the most impact going forward; Siri’s use of natural language. Instead of memorizing set commands, Siri can understand questions, even if they’re asked in different ways. The speech engine works with conversational language, much like when speaking to a person.

For example, Siri will pull up my calendar items if I say, “What’s my schedule for today?” “Do I have any appointments?” or simply, “What’s next for me?” By allowing for this variance, I can get the specific information I want, though; the first case shows today’s calendar events, the second brings up a full week’s worth of calendar events, while the last phrase returned only my next appointment.

Note to pre-empt the inevitable comments the screen shot will generate: I use an Exchange setup for iOS Mail and have shared calendars; my wife and step-daughter have yoga and dance class, not me.

Rise of the machines and artificial intelligence

Siri’s real value is illustrated when scheduling a new event, although that’s just one example. Instead of blindly creating an appointment, Siri first checks the calendar for any conflicts and warns if it finds any. Plus, it will ask if you want to move the conflicting event. Because Siri uses high-level artificial intelligence (AI), it offers far more value, but does so in a way that’s natural, so even first-time smartphone owners can use it. Siri can also learn who’s important in your life. I can tell Siri to text my son and it will automatically create the message with his phone number; no need to speak his name.

Just like Google has done with Voice Actions for Android, Apple has integrated Siri with several native apps such as the phone, email, messaging, notes and web searches. Siri can search Google, but it also adds support for Wolfram Alpha, which provides answers to very specific questions. Asking Siri about the square root of a number, for example, will quickly return the answer from Wolfram Alpha.

Siri also works in iOS 5 with the Clock, Reminders and Apple’s new Find My Friends app. Instead of setting a recurring alarm, I’m now telling Siri when to wake me up in the morning, depending on how late I stay awake. You can ask for the local time or the time in a given location. Setting task reminders is simple but effective: You can tell Siri to remind you at a given time or simply say, “Remind me to take out the trash in 17 minutes.” And if your family members or friends are sharing their location, you can ask Siri where they are.

Siri is quite the comedian

On the less productive side — but no less entertaining — is Siri’s personality. By contrast, Google’s Voice Actions has none because there’s no AI involved. Here are some of the fun questions and answers I’ve had in conversations with Siri:

Me: What’s the best mobile phone?
Siri: The one you’re holding.

Me: What’s your favorite color?
Siri: My favorite color is… well, I don’t know how to say it in your language. It’s sort of greenish, but with more dimensions.

Me: What do you want to be when you grow up?
Siri:  I try to be satisfied with what I have, Kevin.

Me: What do you look like?
Siri: Does my appearance matter to you, Kevin?

OK, so these little chats don’t help my productivity levels, but it’s fun to see how Siri will respond in conversation. And it illustrates the level of contextual understanding and AI that’s built in to the product. The product reminds me of the vision I had last year when writing a GigaOM Pro article about smartphones powering robots (subscription required): With sensors and connectivity, our smartphones have “senses” plus access to near limitless information. Thanks to Siri, they now have intelligence to understand our questions in everyday language and are even fun to interact with.

Google: It’s your move

Remember that Siri is only a beta product. Apple is sure to improve and expand Siri’s capabilities going forward. Google can rely on third-party apps to do the same — think Vlingo, which is experiencing a sudden surge is use thanks to Siri — but a better approach would be for Google to mature Android’s native voice functionality. Yes, third-party software may help sell phones to a degree, but native functionality, especially when it looks magical to the mass market, will have a greater impact.

As a side note, I had decided before the iPhone 4S launch that I might pass on it if Apple didn’t boost the screen size as I had hoped it would. My tired old eyes prefer a larger display and I can also type faster on a bigger software keyboard. Siri, however, mitigates this to a point. The more I use Siri, the less I look at the iPhone’s screen, because Siri provides spoken feedback. Additionally, iOS 5 adds a voice input button on the keyboard, similar to Android. Using the speech-to-text engine has me typing less than ever, because it’s extremely accurate and appears faster than Google’s own speech recognition engine.

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