Jul 25, 2011 08:24 GMT  ·  By

People privy to Apple’s latest iOS 5 beta have confirmed the presence of an ‘Assistant’ function inside the mobile operating system, indicating that Apple is taking its first steps towards fully integrating Siri technology.

A freely downloadable application for iOS devices, Siri is developed by a company with the same name that Apple is known to have acquired.

Siri Assistant is, in all senses, a voice-powered assistant that helps you find stuff, make reservations etc., by gathering answers and actions from your favorite brands.

[admark=1]It’s location-aware too, so when you say ‘get me a taxi’ it will instantly provide options for the nearest one possible.

Or you can ask "Who's playing at Madison Square Garden?", have Siri provide the correct answer and offer the option to book tickets.

iOS 5 now has one such function built-right inside its Settings panel.

Screenshots from a ‘reliable’ source of 9to5mac show that Apple is also coupling the ‘Assistant’ with voice recognition technology, whether it’s Siri’s, or Nuance’s.

Given that Nuance has what is arguably the best voice-recognition tools out there, and knowing that Apple is paying for full rights to use them, we’re inclined to believe the Assistant in iOS 5 is a combination of both companies’ assets.

So what does all this mean for end users? Well, it pretty much eliminates the need of bringing up a tiny keyboard, typing what you want to find (likely misspelling one or two words), and endlessly clicking through the results to maybe get to your target.

A voice-powered, location-aware, preference-based ‘assistive’ function in iOS 5 likely means “no more endless clicking on links and pages to get things done on the Internet,” just like Siri puts it on its website.

If indeed based on Siri technology, the Assistant may also learn the user’s preferences over time, thus serving more relevant results.

Finally, the speech data will be crowd-sourced, according to the tipster. Users will have the option to send their data to Apple, securely, so that Cupertino can improve the service over time.