Apple is reportedly testing a service that will have its voice driven personal assistant, Siri, answer phone calls when a user is unavailable and then transcribe voicemails to text so that they can be quickly read. 
 
 
 
 Apple's so-called "iCloud Voicemail" feature is said to be in the works for a 2016 launch, according to Business Insider. When an iPhone owner is unavailable, Siri will answer the call and can share information, such as where the recipient is and why they can't take the call.Employees at Apple are said to be testing the feature currently, though it isn't expected to launch until next year, presumably with an iOS 10 upgrade.With an iCloud Voicemail service, Apple would bypass carrier voicemail altogether, offering its own alternative. When the first iPhone debuted in 2007, Apple's proprietary Visual Voicemail feature was one of the main selling points of the product.AppleInsider first detailed Apple's concept for a smart call waiting system in 2012 through a patent filing. The invention described a system that would tell an incoming caller what the user is doing, and then translate their voicemail into text. ||||| The seed for Wide00014 was: 
 
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 - Top ranked pages (up to a max of 100) from every linked-to domain using the Wide00012 inter-domain navigational link graph ||||| Apple is testing a new service that uses Siri to transcribe voicemails, according to a report from Business Insider. The feature is supposedly part of a new service named iCloud Voicemail that allows users to set custom voicemail responses, letting certain callers know where they are and why they can't take their call. We already know that Apple is beefing up Siri's capabilities in iOS 9 to better compete with Cortana and Google Now, but it seems that this particular feature is far from ready, with Business Insider claiming that iCloud Voicemail isn't scheduled to launch until 2016. 
 
 Google Voice has offered a voicemail transcription service for years 
 
 Apple wouldn't be the first company to introduce such a service though, as Google has been offering voicemail transcriptions via Google Voice for years. However, despite the obvious benefits (leaving a voicemail is easy but listening to one is tedious), automatic transcriptions have yet to catch on, most likely because of accuracy problems. Google is working to improve this, and recently announced that its use of neural networks had cut transcription errors by 49 percent. Still, this presumably leaves a sizable amount of mistakes — a challenge that Apple will be grappling with to avoid a repeat of the infamous "Eat Up Martha" handwriting transcription problems that plagued its Newton PDAs.
– Leaving a voicemail is a convenient way to convey a lot of information quickly. Listening to voicemails is, well, a pain—but Apple is hoping to change that. For several weeks, Apple employees have been testing an iPhone feature that uses Siri to transcribe voicemail messages, Business Insider reports. It reportedly works like this: When someone calls, you can choose to have the call picked up by Siri, rather than a digital audio recorder (the answering machine of today). Siri can tell the caller what you’re up to and why you can’t answer the phone and also record a voicemail, which is then converted to text using voice recognition. AppleInsider notes the concept of a system that translates voicemail into text was first mentioned in a 2012 patent filing. Google offers a similar service, Google Voice, that's been around for years, but it's been plagued by accuracy issues, reports the Verge. It isn’t clear if Apple has a strategy to cut down on errors. Though iOS 9 offers Siri upgrades—including providing limited access to third-party apps and an automatic switch to driving mode when you get into your car, per 9 to 5 Mac—the iCloud Voicemail feature will reportedly be included with iOS 10, if it proves reliable. That system is due out next year.