TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Apple is building a speech technology team in Boston with ex-Nuance people:

Apple has assembled a small team of notable names in speech technology and is looking to expand those efforts in the Boston area, industry sources tell Xconomy.

Based on their online job profiles, we can say that members of the Apple speech team here are working on Siri, the company’s voice-activated virtual assistant. Details beyond that are hard to come by, however, even for others in the field.

Good news. Relying on Nuance for Siri was never going to work long-term, especially because if Siri is going to be a key component in Apple’s future, then depending on another company for the key technology is not only dangerous, but severely limits their ability to innovate on top of it as well.