I find it interesting that they are not waiting to talk about this at WWDC since I assume these features are tied to iOS 17. I wonder if that means that the simplified apps won't be available to developers (I don't see an App Store so I guess that makes sense).
All of these features do seem really awesome for those that need it. Particularly the voice synthesis. I honestly just want to play with that myself and see how good it is and I am curious if they would use that tech for other things as well.
The whole new simple UI I can really see being a major point. Especially if it includes an Apple Watch component and can still be synced with one for the safety features a watch has. Particularly fall detection.
Edit:
Maybe I missed it but this brings up an interesting problem. Is the Voice Synthesis only stored on the device and never backed up or synced to a new device. Can you imagine your phone breaking or you needing to upgrade after you lost your voice (but you had previously set that up) and you can no longer use it?!?
I fully understand the privacy concerns of something like this being lost. But this isn't like FaceID that could just be easily re-created in some situations. So I really hope they thought about that.
Apple has a way to encrypt sensitive data locally and store to iCloud, then de-encrypt it locally later. They are kind of hit-and-miss with when they do this. But they certainly can do it, so it should be possible to securely back up a voice profile.
FaceID is not backed up to iCloud. That is in part because it is a local-only feature. And it is in part because people’s faces change over time, so requiring them to re-enroll their face with each new phone ensures accuracy over time.
It may also be sensor-dependent; the model produced and stored by an iPhone 14 might not “make sense” to an iPhone 16, if the hardware is different.
True, but they have made choices of where they will and will not do this in the past.
I can see the privacy reasons not to have this data sync, but given the reasons you would be doing it in the first place the risk of loosing those recordings or the data for the voice would be a huge risk.
I don't doubt that Apple could sync this data, I just hope that they are. I don't see anything about that happening on this document so I worry that they won't for privacy concerns.
If they didn't save Personal Voice for WWDC, just think what they may have ready to announce there. On its own Personal Voice would have been a headline grabbing announcement, but they dropped it now. That suggests to me exciting things.
I have been starting to wonder if this really is going to be a very packed WWDC. Between this announcement and the Final Cut Pro (and the other tool I don't remember now) announcement.
This is a pattern they have gotten into in the last few years. Announce accessibility features a few weeks before WWDC. I think it’s so they don’t have to spend time on important features for the target demographic knowing that they will get swamped out by all the major OS features in the news cycle.
All of these features do seem really awesome for those that need it. Particularly the voice synthesis. I honestly just want to play with that myself and see how good it is and I am curious if they would use that tech for other things as well.
The whole new simple UI I can really see being a major point. Especially if it includes an Apple Watch component and can still be synced with one for the safety features a watch has. Particularly fall detection.
Edit:
Maybe I missed it but this brings up an interesting problem. Is the Voice Synthesis only stored on the device and never backed up or synced to a new device. Can you imagine your phone breaking or you needing to upgrade after you lost your voice (but you had previously set that up) and you can no longer use it?!?
I fully understand the privacy concerns of something like this being lost. But this isn't like FaceID that could just be easily re-created in some situations. So I really hope they thought about that.