Last year we heard that Apple was moving away from its licensed voice recognition technology from Nuance and building its own team to create a neural-net deep learning system as used by Google and Microsoft.  To date I have not heard any big announcement on how far they have progressed, but they may want to push down on the gas if they do not want to see users leaving Siri and moving to Cortana. Although Siri was a great feature when it was first released, the addition of voice actuated watches, TV, cares and more IoT voice enabled objects coming on the scene, intelligent voice assistant technology supported across multiple devices will become highly desired to expected functionality in the near future.  And right now Siri is not meeting the new coming standard, but they may not be too worried.   Mature Google Voice has been on iOS for more than a year and I have not heard anyone who had dropped Siri for Now, not because Siri is better, but because they are used to it and its a default voice system. However, given a significantly better system, that could change.

iPad with the back removed... Ah ha!

Line2 has the most professional options. (My Review of Line2) I like that you have a dedicated number with mailbox, redirect, quite times, and can support calling in as well.  HOWEVER, the app has to be running for you to get an incoming call. I think that will be sorted once jailbreak is in place and we can run that app in the background.

There are plenty of other options; Skype, TruPhone; Fring, Google Voice (requires jailbreak)  I have a list posts on VoIP here, so you can read and choose the best app for you.

You may also want to invest in a good wire or bluetooth headset. Holding that big iPad to your head is optimal and it makes you look plain silly.

• Native iPhone look and feel.
• Syncro of Google Voice data.
• Automatic updates.
• Voice data is available offline
• You can listen to voice mail as well as read transcriptions
• Erase voicemails, calls, or SMS messages.
• Import your contacts from google.
• Make a call using google voice

And its this last point I’m not sure on. How can you have a conversation from a web based app?  I did not know the browser could get access to the microphone and speakers in a sufficient manner to support VoIP. (it cannot access the ear piece).  I cant wait to hear reports on how this works.  Now the funny thing is Google voice was rejected for mimicking Apple’s functionality. So now what?  Does AT&T ignore it?  Most likely yes.  After the FCC investigation, I doubt they are going to put up much of a fight.  But still, this is through the browser, I have to imagine some functionality is going to be compromised.  This should be good.

See the promo video

Do not know what I’m talking about?  Well Google Voice was submitted to the Apple Store, which was personally approved last April by Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing mind you.

Still don’t know what I’m talking about?  Read my post from yesterday.

Seems Apple (read AT&T?) does not like that fact the amount of communication options GV Mobile and potentially Google Voice can offer. This is bad because many people in the professional world have 2 cell phone, typically the ‘office’ blackberry being the second. To be able to manage both phone numbers via a Google Voice application give the iPhone more corporate functional appeal.  Well nix to that.

So read this from PC World..

Clearly, this (GV Mobile) caused … no end of discomfiture, for Kovacs said on his blog that he received a call from the company informing him that the program was being removed for the ever-vague “duplication of features.” … Kovacs has since announced that he’ll be releasing GV Mobile for free via Cydia for those who have jailbroken their iPhones. (oh, you KNOW I will be all over that.  Watch for a review once I get it.)

Other Google Voice programs such as GVdialer and VoiceCentral were likewise pulled; VoiceCentral’s developers said on their blog that they were trying to reach a resolution with Apple.

This really puts cold water on iphone dev’s out there trying to make interesting application that have almost anything to do with communication. What I wonder is; how much of this is coming from Apple and how much from AT&T?  I’m not sure this ‘AT&T only’ relationship will last too much longer, esp. if there is potential of the iPhone becoming the ‘fun’ phone only; leaving corp to blackberry.  FAIL

So here comes vLingo, and there are a number of things I like about it. First, I can choose to seach Maps, the interwebs or my address book!  How great is that?  Also, I like the fact that I click a button to start and stop.  So now, when I want frys, I simply say ‘Frys” and it works!  Today, I spoke an address in and it worked perfectly.  Sweet!  In one swoop, this has replaced my Google voice search and will be logged as one of my must have apps.