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Business Insider

How Apple Plans to Kill Voicemail

Aug 3, 2015  •  Post A Comment

Apple is developing a service that may put an end to the need to listen to voicemails. Business Insider reports that the company is testing a voicemail service that lets Siri listen to voicemail for you and transcribes it into text.

“Apple’s iCloud service will then send you the text of the transcribed voicemail — meaning you will never need to listen to your voicemails again, sources tell Business Insider,” the publication reports, noting that the new service is targeted for a 2016 launch.

The report adds: “Apple’s proposed solution is both incredibly simple and incredibly clever: People like to leave voicemails (it’s often quicker to orally deliver your information than it is to type it in a text message). But they don’t like to receive voicemails (it’s a lot quicker to read a text than it is to listen to the person talking to you). The new product will also bridge a generation gap: Older users like voicemails. Young people do not.”

With the new system, Siri answers calls to the user of iCloud Voicemail instead of sending the calls to an audio recorder. “iCloud Voicemail can relay information about where you are and why you can’t pick up the phone to certain people,” the story reports. “But the coolest feature of the service is that Siri will transcribe any incoming voicemails, just as it does with anything else you say to it.”

The text transcriptions would then become available on the user’s iPhone.

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4 Comments

  1. Let me see if I understand this. You can listen to your voice mail. Or, you can can get it sent to “the cloud” where Siri transcribes it to a text for you to read. Looks like another “new & shiny” thing that will be more hassle than the old way, of simply listening.

  2. Vonage has been transcribing voice mail for years.

  3. This will get more people using iCloud in more ways and they will need to buy more than the basic 5G. This is another example of the Apple genius. Getting people to buy things that they don’t need, at a higher price than necessary.

  4. My Samsung Note 4 has been doing this for a year already. It is a cool feature, great when you are in meetings and can’t listen to the voicemail you just received.

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