Apple didn't even touch on the HomePod line during its iPhone 13 event, but that doesn't mean the smart speakers will go untouched this fall. To start, you can set two or more HomePod minis as your default speakers for an Apple TV 4K. You won't have to specify them when it's time to sit down for a movie. They won't exactly produce thunderous audio, but they could save you from buying separate smart speakers or a pricier soundbar. The update enables Siri voice control through supporting HomeKit accessories.

Your speech-recognizing friends at Nuance are back with a major update to their flagship app, Dragon. The popular productivity software is now in its 15th version, an update that promises some substantial improvements in accuracy courtesy of the company's own deep learning tech, which forms the basis of its speech engine. According to Nuance, this latest upgrade brings better accuracy "upwards of 24 percent," with improved ability to recognize and learn accents and voice patterns, while adapting to the acoustics of the speaker's environment. Here's a quote from the company's CTO, "Training such Deep Neural Net models typically requires large amounts of training data and a high-performance computing environment. However, our new Dragon portfolio includes our latest breakthrough that allows Dragon's Deep Neural Nets to continuously learn from the user's speech during use on a standard personal computer, and drive accuracy rates in some instances up to 24 percent higher." Version 15 also brings a simplified UI, formatting improvements, more support for audio transcription and optimization for a number of touchscreen Windows PCs.