iPhone News Updated

Apple acquires Siri, a personal assistant application for the iPhone

Apple has acquired Siri, a voice-activated app for the iPhone that
acts like a personal assistant. The transaction was approved Tuesday by
the Federal Trade Commission.

Terms
of the deal were not disclosed. Neither Siri nor Apple immediately
responded to a request for comment.

To use Siri, users need only
to type or say something into the iPhone app, and it will carry out the
command or find answers to a question. If a user wants to find a
romantic restaurant around Los Angeles, they can say (or type) what
they’re looking for and Siri will deliver some potential solutions.

The
way Siri finds those solutions is quite innovative. Rather than simply
search the Web for content, the app uses Application Programming
Interfaces (API) from a slew of websites, including Twitter, Yelp and
others, to tap into the appropriate site. In the case of a romantic
restaurant, Siri accesses Yelp and other similar sites to find the best
options.

Apple’s decision to acquire Siri is likely a response to Google’s
recent acquisition of Aardvark, a service that answers user
questions by soliciting help from other people around the globe. That
said, Apple has yet to comment on the deal. Exactly what it has planned
for the company is unknown.

Regardless, the development
underscores Apple’s willingness as of late to invest in companies that
could bolster its mobile efforts and limit Google’s rise in the mobile
market.

Aside from its Siri acquisition, Apple bought Quattro
earlier this year for $275 million. The acquisition of the mobile-ad
firm was in direct response to Google’s
earlier acquisition of Quattro competitor Admob.

– Don
Reisinger

[Thanks: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com]

Apple iPhone 4G could go on sale by early June

Apple boss Steve Jobs is expected to unveil the iPhone 4G on June 7, ending weeks of controversy surrounding a missing prototype of the model.

He is due to make the key note address at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, where the company has traditionally launched their latest products.

The third-generation iPhone was unveiled at last year’s conference and went on sale less than two weeks later.

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