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Is this the first app-related acquisition by Apple?

It will be interesting to see whether this is about the app (i.e. implementing similar functionality somewhere in the iPhone OS or even offering it as a extra download) or about the technology (i.e. improving voice control). I bet it’s rather more the last thing.

It's definitely one of the following three and/or all of them:

1. The app itself 2. Technology 3. Talent

Astute! :)

I don't think it is about the technology (improving voice control) because as you can see in the video the speech recognition is from Nuance.

My guess is that it is about the integration of all these webservices and APIs and the agent behind it. There is some research going on at Stanford about this, here is a presentation http://logic.stanford.edu/talks/Wizard/

iTunes itself came from an app acquisition. True, not an iPhone app, but they do purchase small companies to take the technology/people

SoundJam MP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoundJam_MP

Here's a fun story about it: http://panic.com/extras/audionstory/

The sad part of this story is that I used both Audion and SoundJam back in the day, and Audion was a far superior media player at the time. It's a shame the Panic guys didn't return Apple's call and thus lost the opportunity for Audion to become Apple's new media player centerpiece (iTunes).

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