“The introduction of Apple’s iPhone 4S earlier this week also saw the first unveiling of the company’s new Siri assistant,” Killian Bell reports for TechnoBuffalo. “The new feature, which is exclusive to the fifth-generation iPhone, has blown us away in Apple’s promotional video, and we can’t wait to get our hands on it.”
Bell reports, “”Siri isn’t just a feature Apple’s been knocking together in the past couple of years. In the video above, the company predicts the Siri assistant — then named the Knowledge Navigator — back in 1987.”
“What’s most amazing about this video is that, if you listen carefully, you’ll hear that the gentleman requests information from an academic paper written around five years ago, in 2006. That makes the year 2011,” Bell reports. “The date on the device is September 16. In reality, Siri was announced on October 4, 2011 — just 25 days after Apple’s prediction in 1987.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Hotinplaya” for the heads up.]
WOW!! I watched this the other day. I TOTALLY missed the “2006 5 years ago” reference. I guess Apple is right on schedule. That’s almost creepy! 1984 was not like 1984, but 2011 is almost just like 2011!
Actually, if this video is predicting how “real life” would be like in 2011, with typical users completely comfortable with having and using a “digital personal assistant,” then the technology would have been introduced in its “1.0” form years earlier… maybe HAL in 2001 was Siri 1.0 in this alternate universe. 🙂
Maybe Steve Jobs had prophetic abilities. I don’t think that would be too far of a stretch to believe based on their product line.
If this was made in 1987, Steve Jobs was gone from Apple by then. His “exile” began in 1985, I believe. Granted, he may have had this idea while still at Apple, but the specific details in this video are the work of someone else.
Agreed. Steve was gone but I still can’t help but wonder how much of his idea was in this.
Hah, was just watching this a couple of days ago (for the umpteenth time) and noticed its in 2011. Nicely predicted, Apple!
So at this time… They had FaceTime, Siri, touch screens, cloud services for doc sharing all in mind. Brilliant. Cannot wait for what’s in store in 15 more years.
I actually have that Apple-produced videotape somewhere in my clutter. I’ve been looking for it for days. Talk about prophetic, though!
It’s not really a prediction when you develop a product time line and then follow it. I’m sure the next 25 years are already laid out at this point just waiting for technology to catch up.
Wow, amazing.
I also just noticed the camera, this is wild. Hey, where is Samsung’s prior art?
I don’t think Steve was at Apple in 1987.
True, Steve was not physically there at Apple.
But most of the team he had hired were still there working for Apple. They knew the path Steve had in mind !
Jobs was not at Apple when this video came out, but his afterimage was still burned in. Early-post-Jobs Apple in the 80’s was still flying on the momentum of what had been an enormously creative period.
This video was passed around the 1980s Apple development community not as a sci-fi fantasy, but with a shared feeling: We are in the early stages of building this.
In 1989, a software project I worked on (a Mac email client) was code named “Bow Tie” in reference to this video.
Obviously, neither was Jonathan Ive 🙂
Funny!
Concepts of all of that were at Apple years before 1987, while Jobs was still there. By the way, the first tablet mockups were done while Jobs was still at Apple.
Yes, but the “amazement” here is not about the tablet or the AI, it is about the coincidental dates and other very specific details. Steve Jobs may have had the conceptual idea while still at Apple, but he was not responsible for the specific details shown in this video made in 1987.
About ten or fifteen years ago, I spent time with a guy who was one of the first 50 employees at Apple. He was in brainstorming meetings with Jobs and Woz and when we were visiting, he commented on how they’ve released many of the products they envisioned at those meetings as technology progressed. He said, “Because of non-disclosure agreements I signed and my love for the company today, I won’t tell you anything we dreamed up back then because a lot of it has yet to be discussed elsewhere to my knowledge. But you can rest assured that Apple will ‘wow’ you for decades to come.
Truer words have never been uttered.
Now, imagine adding siri to MacOS X. Imagine the possibilities if siri were to become part of Apple’s future OS X releases. That would be awesome!
It should be noted that this video was produced after Steve had left Apple. The vision presented however shows the quality of the company that Steve had founded.
Siri seems to be a large step towards what is demonstrated in this video. However it is not the first step Apple made in this direction.
Newton included an “Intelligent Assistant”. It wasn’t anywhere near as convenient to use as Siri, since you had to handwrite in your requests, but it covered much of the same ground that Siri does and in a similar manner.
Siri is what the Newton’s assistant technology would have become, if you added conversational speech recognition and a permanent internet connection. Had Newton not been canned then we could have had Siri-like assistants several years ago… Still, we’re back on track now.
One smart thing to note about the Newton’s Intelligent Assistant is that it could be extended by third party applications. Right now there’s no published APIs for Siri. Let’s hope that comes in iOS 6.
Let’s also hope that Siri doesn’t stay restricted to iOS. I’d love to have Siri on my MacBook Pro too.
Are you Xan McCurdy from Cake?
Very interesting. And further wow – Wikipedia says…
“Siri was founded in December 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (VP Engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/VP Design), together with Norman Winarsky from SRI’s venture group”
1 – the virtual assistant locates an old research paper back 5 years ago, dated 2006. Suggesting in that video the time to be 2011.
2 – SIri was founded actually in 2007 – almost the date which the research paper was to imagined – 2006 the video marks for the paper the assistant finds.
3 – iPhone was also introduced in 2007 – but the project started in 2005 – wow the missing NUMBER.
3 –
yeah…so 2006, 2007 and 2011
2005 is in between 2006 and 2007
then just remove the two ZEROS in 2005, you get 25 — OMG!
Sept 16th is marked in the video – and that is month 9.
There are 12 months in a year – and iOS5 comes out on the 12th of Oct… holy crap
But wait – iPhone4s is available on the Oct 14th.
Then take the 16th and the 14th – subtract and you get 2.
Take the months, 9 and 12, and add together – you get 21.
Next bring in 2011 and remove the two front digits and leave 11.
Add 1 + 1 you get 2.
PUT IT ALL TOGETHER now and (2+21+1+1=25)
Astonishing 25 years again!!!!
ofc I am just being silly here.
I see it folded like a book? Hmmm, wonder if that was where MS got their idea of the “Courier” tablet form/shape/functionality?
On a side note, any more Apple videos of what ‘s in store for the future say in the next 25 years?
http://www.youtube.com/user/AatmaStudio#p/a/u/0/lzsBwnv_dAg
I remember a Mac user interface designer back in the pre-web 80s who was always saying stuff like “In a couple of decades we’ll be downloading movies on demand” or “We’ll hang flat TVs on our walls like pictures” or “We’ll have computers in our pockets.” Whenever challenged about the technical limitations (e.g. 9600 baud) he would just shrug and say “Eh, they’ll figure something out.”
I need to look that guy up.
When I heard the Siri rumors, I thought of this video – – and I really expected to see this video get played by Tim Cook this past Tuesday.
If Tim wanted to have done a humorous “One More Thing”, he could have run the video at the end, pointed out the date insights from above, and then apologize that Apple’s 25 year program plan had ended up being 25 days behind schedule.
-hh
I was in a briefing of an Apple executive in 1991. During these years, Apple was on a roll with new developments and fresh ideas.
This executive mentioned voice activated computers without keyboards or screens, where voice and speech were it’s only IO. Computers you could wear behind the ears, at first with a belt base component and later just an ear piece.
(Today Apple doesn’t do that. They are very quiet about innovative thinking, to keep it inside)
Was Steve a part of this innovation trend or was he the type of guy to see what possible?
Keep in mind the iMac was already on Jonny Ive’s work bench when Steve walked by and picked it out.
Sure Steve knew such things a aesthetics, symmetry, and balance. He had a special feeing for what will make it and what will bomb.
However Apple has always had the geniuses with or without Steve. The only problem, executives at the top most likely weren’t listening, or were out of touch.
I say Steve had nothing to do with the Knowledge Navigator, as the concept name is unlike him. This is another team, selling ideas to a less than stellar executive leadership.
well…if this is from 1987……this woman knows the future. the formation of yahoo was in 1995 and the web we all know exists till 1991
well apparently the video above differs from that showing up in my newsreader. actually i was talking about this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9bjve67p33E