“Apple’s back in a tricky position heading into this year’s developer conference: playing catchup,” Shara Tibken writes for CNET.
“It’s a familiar situation. Apple’s usually not the first to leap into new markets — think smartphones or tablets. But when the company finally commits, it adds a level of polish that gets consumers salivating for its products,” Tibken writes. “The iPhone changed the way we live, while the iPad spawned scores of copycats. Even the Apple Watch managed to shake up fitness bands and the traditional wristwatch market.”
“This time around, some of the areas where Apple’s behind are ones that may be, in the words of CEO Tim Cook, as big as the iPhone. That’s augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Apple’s done essentially nothing in the first two, and it’s largely seen as lagging in the third with the quasi-useful Siri digital assistant,” Tibken writes. “‘Because Siri was the first one, the expectation is she should be way better than she is,’ Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi said. At this year’s WWDC, Apple is expected to improve Siri, as well as introduce a Siri-based smart speaker.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Let’s face it, in some ways Apple’s Siri got lapped. We’ll know if they’ve been stepping on the gas or not on Monday.
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What’s coming from Apple next week – June 2, 2017
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Come on MDN. Not another Goggle “bobble head” tech reply. Siri is just fine.
Siri doesn’t have the conversational ability of google’s assistant, but I doubt that is really that hard to incorporate. On the other hand, Siri has always had by far the best-designed infographic results for things like weather/sports/movie queries. I would be supper impressed with Apple if they opened up the home button short cut to other assistants and competed on a level playing field…
I still don’t like the idea of the Apple device costing $600 if that rumor is true. That gives those other companies’ virtual assistant devices so much of an advantage. An Echo Dot’s price almost makes it a disposable item. Get one for every room in the house if you wanted to. I just can’t imagine why Apple’s device should cost that much if Siri doesn’t stack up to Cortana or Alexa. In this case, I’d be willing to pay more for AI smarts and not just quality hardware.
Perhaps the expectation is that if you are buying one it will be more like a hub device for all other Apple products that you own that have Siri (e.g. iPhone, iPad). Just as long as they keep the ‘intelligence’ of Siri consistent among the products you own, Apple shouldn’t lose too much ground.
I love it when people talk about these things as though they exist / or are widely in use. There isn’t exactly an Everest to surmount in either of those areas. Silicon Valley at large really needs to get out more.