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Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

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Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#91

Post by srmarm »

samstave wrote: post #76
16bytes wrote: post #63

For those confused, this acquisition is due in large part by Nuance's dominance in healthcare related products. From Nuance's last earnings release[1]: “We are very pleased with the strong start to the fiscal year, as we delivered revenue and EPS above our guidance range expectations,” said Mark Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer at Nuance. “We continued to advance our strategic initiatives, accelerating our cloud tra…

And now you know why there will never ever ever be “free healthcare for all” in the US because this is how profitable sickness is. Plandemic.

Yes / No

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#92

Post by BoorishBears »

c0wb0yc0d3r wrote: post #55
skrowl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri is especially bad when compared to Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, both of which are light years ahead. Usual Apple reliance on their fans buying their devices no matter how bad the software is.

Is it really reliance? To me it seems like they know their customers will just lay down and take it.

I write apps for Android and design devices that run on Android for a living. A friend once asked why I have an iPhone, and my response was pretty simple:

"I'll switch to Android when I can rotate my screen animate the rotation instead of blanking out"

They got it immediately.

-

For those not familiar with Android, your app's UI is completely destroyed on every single configuration change. Rotation. Plugging in a keyboard. Dark mode.

Then the app has to redraw it's entire state from memory in the new orientation.

To do that tiny little thing I described above you'd have to design your app to disable all built in configuration handling (so now it's on you to handle swapping out every resource when a language change happens, or dark mode is turned on) then hand animate every element to its new position on every screen. Needless to say, that's not done.

It was probably very convenient when they were designing the G1 with it's 192MB of RAM, but to me it's a thing that encapsulates everything wrong with Android as a platform for me to use daily.

I wonder what percentage of daily Android crashes in the world are a direct result of this tiny decision. Or god forbid, the amount of gnashing of teeth in how to write Android apps in a "clean" way that manages with this...

(And yes, iOS has state restoration too, but it's strictly for returning from the background, so it's not nearly as intrusive)

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#93

Post by defaultname »

geodel wrote: post #74
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri is brain-damaged. I am constantly disappointed with how stupid she is compared to Alexa and the gap is widening. I try to keep things as simple as possible with her because she always disappoints me. I wish Apple would open up a tiny bit of those 200 billion in cash reserves on improving Siri.

I mean I can understand how stupid siri is. I find it so irritating that I always keep it disabled. But the point that anything Apple doing bad is for the lack of spending is hilarious. In fact I'd say Apple is just keeping spending money instead of shutting it down. When IBM Watson AI sank like turd in market it cut funding and let most of team go. I think Apple doing same might be more sensible.

I think Siri is intended to be more goal oriented. I use it extensively, with very little complaint, daily-

-set alarm -next song -set timer -set reminder (e.g. "Siri set reminder 6pm close garage door") -send message to

These comprise 99% of what I would want it to do, and it does it marvelously.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#94

Post by astrea »

3v1n0 wrote: post #41
varispeed wrote: post #26

So Microsoft can see your private repositories, your documents if you use Office, your personal files (one drive), your company communication (teams), now they will be able to listen what you talk about. Where is this going? Should we trust this company so much? I think companies like this should be split up.

I agree, not that different from Google either.

But Microsoft won't see as much scrutiny as any other tech giant because they are so deeply ingrained in the government's world.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#95

Post by glutamate »

pc86 wrote: post #72
glutamate wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully they will fix a couple of bugs in Dragon as well. I really would like them to have a release focused on bug fixes rather than greater accuracy

Are the bugs ML-related or with the app more generally? I've never used Dragon but I'm pretty interested in the TTS space.

Feels like the app, you often have to restart it, highly variable (by orders of magnitude) latency, sometimes won't start at all

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#96

Post by CivBase »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #73
rvz wrote: post #10

Now Nuance. It seems Microsoft is still actively continuing to buy more companies and it seems Discord is still on the menu.

And Ubuntu! Totally expecting that in the news at this point.

I was about to say RHEL would be more in their wheelhouse, but then I remembered that ship has already sailed.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#97

Post by ejb999 »

samstave wrote: post #76
16bytes wrote: post #63

For those confused, this acquisition is due in large part by Nuance's dominance in healthcare related products. From Nuance's last earnings release[1]: “We are very pleased with the strong start to the fiscal year, as we delivered revenue and EPS above our guidance range expectations,” said Mark Benjamin, Chief Executive Officer at Nuance. “We continued to advance our strategic initiatives, accelerating our cloud tra…

And now you know why there will never ever ever be “free healthcare for all” in the US because this is how profitable sickness is. Plandemic.

>>“free healthcare for all”

There never has been and will never be 'free healthcare for all' - its not free, it's only free for some people if some other people pay for it.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#98

Post by fastball »

skrowl wrote: post #40
Spooky23 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri is a train wreck. I have a $1200 phone where it takes more time to do “hey Siri FaceTime so-and-so” than to navigate. It just sits and spins.

Siri is especially bad when compared to Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, both of which are light years ahead. Usual Apple reliance on their fans buying their devices no matter how bad the software is.

I was actually under the impression that this is because Apple actually cares about privacy (unlike the other two) and so is not hoovering up everything you say to it and sending it to the cloud, but rather trying to do as much inference as possible on your device.

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#99

Post by Lewton »

geodel wrote: post #74
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri is brain-damaged. I am constantly disappointed with how stupid she is compared to Alexa and the gap is widening. I try to keep things as simple as possible with her because she always disappoints me. I wish Apple would open up a tiny bit of those 200 billion in cash reserves on improving Siri.

I mean I can understand how stupid siri is. I find it so irritating that I always keep it disabled. But the point that anything Apple doing bad is for the lack of spending is hilarious. In fact I'd say Apple is just keeping spending money instead of shutting it down. When IBM Watson AI sank like turd in market it cut funding and let most of team go. I think Apple doing same might be more sensible.

> I find it so irritating that I always keep it disabled.

Ah, if there only was a way to disable it fully. Even when I disable Siri, it still randomly decides to call people when I boil a pot of rice

Re: Microsoft buys Nuance for nearly $20B

#100

Post by stadium »

agotterer wrote: post #50
DrBazza wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly haven't had the pleasure of trying to use voice control in a Mercedes-Benz. It makes Siri and Cortana seem telepathic by comparison.

Same with the Audi. I don’t understand why all the car companies aren’t licensing the assistant technology from the big tech companies and using it as the default. I get Siri via car play, but even car play is sandboxed because it can’t control things like the radio or temperature.

The procurement decisions for the infotainment system are made around 5 years in advance of the vehicle release. The tech is obsolete before the car leaves the dealership.
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