Apple continues to strengthen the technology behind its products by acquiring talent and ideas from small businesses that innovate in the fields that matter most to Cupertino.
Today it emerged that Apple pulled out its wallet to take over two companies that will increase the versatility of Siri and its future virtual reality “Apple glasses”.
For virtual reality, it is said that Apple bought an American company called NextVR, which offers experiences to see live shows using the reversing glasses we know, from manufacturers such as Lenovo, HTC, Oculus, PlayStation and Microsoft. In addition, it has agreements with NBA, Fox Sports, Wimbledon and other live entertainment: sports, dance and musical concerts.
Additionally, NextVr has more than 40 patents on the technology capable of increasing the resolution of video broadcasts, which it uses to support high-quality video broadcasts on VR devices.
Although the purchase is not official, it seems that all workers have received notice that they will have to move from San José to Cupertino.
In these times of confinement, it would be a real bomb to be able to attend concerts, sporting events or even documentaries using an immersive experience such as that offered by virtual reality viewers.
The other company that Apple bought is the Irish Voysis, a startup dedicated to increasing the understanding of natural language by voice assistants, in the case of Apple, Siri.
The Voysis system is based on Wavenets, an artificial intelligence-based method to create a computerized voice that speaks in a more "human" way developed by Google's Deepmind in 2016.
Voysis co-founder Peter Cahill assured in 2018 that his company had managed to shrink the system to the point that, once AI trained, the software used only 25MB of memory, which would allow him to be used on cell phones without the need for an internet connection.
The usefulness of a system like Voysis is evident to improve Apple's Siri, not only in its usual functions, recognition of song titles or artists, request for calls to contacts or directions in Maps, but for all developers who want If Siri can interact with your apps, a system for learning commands and functions could greatly facilitate the transition to a fully spoken interface.
Apple bought Dark Sky
