Voice Control

USA Today, based on sources who have previously worked at Apple, is contributing some more information to the increasingly large Apple Television rumor pile.

Apple is said to be looking at a 42-inch or larger LCD TV with built-in Wi-Fi. Inside the locked-down studio of Jonathan Ive, senior vice president of industrial design at Apple, there's a slick 50-inch TV, according to the source who worked at Apple.

Randomly accurate rumor site, Digitimes has word from "industry sources" that suppliers are starting to build materials for 32- and 37-inch Apple Televisions for release in the second or third quarter of 2012.

Instead of a form of set-top box (STB) like the Apple TV launched in 2006, Apple's new products will be full TV sets, the sources added [...] The displays of the new iTV sets will focus on 32 and 37-inch sizes initially, noted sources in the supply chain.

I'm really looking forward to the new, system-wide "Assistant" voice control system Apple's rumored to be including in iOS 5. From the leaks, it looks like it might be implemented similar to Android -- a microphone button on the keyboard that you press to tell your iPhone or iPad you want to talk to it, then it takes your voice command or text entry, sends it to Apple's servers, and either does what you told it to do or types the text you told it to type.

TechCrunch has been told that Apple will be integrating system-wide voice control technology into iOS 5 derived from their purchase of Siri last year. Apple is reportedly putting the finishing touches on the feature which will be demoed at WWDC in June.

A year ago, Apple bought Siri, a virtual personal assistant startup that had released a very cool iPhone app. The Siri team and technology are now said to be a big part of iOS 5.