Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Adjustable vocals: Users now have control over a song’s vocal levels. They can sing with the original artist vocals, take the lead, or mix it up on millions of songs in the Apple Music catalog. Everyone I know would call that karaoke. And I assume will when telling their friends about this new feature. If I search for Apple Sing on google news, the first 5 articles all call it "karaoke-like" or just "a karaoke feat…
When I think karaoke, I think microphone. It appears this makes no use of a microphone or captures the singer's vocals in any way, it just isolates the instrumental tracks and eliminates or reduces the vocal track. A microphone (and ideally having your own vocals mixed with the audio output) is the core feature of karaoke, not playing an instrumental version of the song.
But this has become a pretty silly "debate".
Me, I'm still curious why Apple did not use the word karaoke, and do not myself think it's becuase they don't think people will consider it karaoke, but I understand you do, cool.