9to5 Mac have just put together a major newspost about what they know about the next iPhone, and while the hardware details are pretty standard (A5 processor, 1GB of RAM, 8MP camera), but the real change comes in a piece of software, dubbed “Assistant”.
9to5 is claiming that this is a voice control system for your iPhone that can understand plain English commands, and react accordingly, prompting you for more information as required.
One of the key elements of Assistant is the conversation view. The system will actually speak back and forth with the user to gain the most information in order to provide the best results. The user essentially can hold a conversation with their iPhone like it is another human being. For example, if a user is making a meeting with me, they will say “setup meeting with Mark” and the first “bubble” of the conversation thread will say that. After that, the system will speak back: “which e-mail address should Mark be notified at, work or personal?” This question will both be spoken out loud by the iPhone Assistant and shown as a new “bubble” in the conversation thread.
Another killer feature will be “find my friends”, where if your friend has the service turned on, you can ask your iPhone to find them, and it’ll send you their location. Which in all honesty sounds really creepy, but I get antsy about privacy stuff.
Allegedly, Assistant plugs into Wolfram Alpha, allowing you ask it maths and data problems and have it solve it on the fly.
I’m curious to see if Assistant ends up as big of a deal as 9to5 Mac thinks, and also if it’ll be hardware linked. Hopefully my iPhone 4 will have enough power under the hood to use it too.
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