“Apple has posted two job listings on its site for Siri UI Engineers, looking for developers with skill to work on the Siri conversation view,” Matthew Panzarino reports for TNW. “This isn’t huge news by itself, as its obvious that Siri is still being worked on, it does have a beta tag after all, something that Apple rarely does.”
“What is interesting is that — in the requirements for one of the positions — it specifically mentions the Siri API,” Panzarino reports. “The indication here is that the API will have several clients accessing it. This appears to indicate that outside clients will have access to the API and that it needs to be friendly for them to use. Currently, Apple has deals with Wikipedia, Yelp and Wolfram Alpha in place that allow it to use their data, but it’s just a matter of time before a more widespread API becomes available.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
I suspect Siri was released as a beta for two reasons. First, it helped the identical iPhone 4S (to iPhone 4) to stand out from the last generation iPhone to encourage sales, and secondly, they wanted to give Steve the opportunity to demo it, while he could.
I think you are right on both accounts!
LAST two cents…
SIRI was available for iPhone in about one year after the iPhone appeared on the market. Freely I believe. That was the beta introduction…
Calling SIRI now still in beta is sort of misleading – however – it sure is ONE DAMN AMAZING BETA – right!!!!
Exactly what I thought. Additionally, Apple may have decided to blindside the competition by releasing Siri into the wild, becoming more robust by the hour and outdistancing everybody else.
Siri is the way to go.
Siri on any iDevice – iMac or iPad will generate further sales.
iPhone 4s has other differentiating points. Dual Antenna, Faster Processor, HIgher quality camera – BUT YES SIRI was the KILLER reason…
Siri was Steve’s last gift to the world… not Apple giving Steve a opportunity to demo it.
BETA because it was a project that Apple had been working on yet other companies had better research and technologies – merging these ideas as a APPLE FIRST to the NEW iPhone was a benefit and BETA because it is the FUTURE for perhaps all USER INTERFACE to all computing.
Graphical point and click INTERFACE
Graphical touch and move INTERFACE
Graphical voice assistance INTERFACE
all brought to YOU by APPLE the one company who truly leads in innovation and USER experiences to the consumer masses.
Except that: iPhone 4S is not identical to iPhone 4. Every internal component is different, but the big ones are A5 chip instead of A4; upgraded graphics; 8MP camera instead of 5MP, plus improved lens; CDMA radio as well as GSM.
And Steve didn’t demo Siri. Scott Forstall did.
I think that a more plausible explanation for releasing Siri in beta is that by doing so, Apple can gather immense amounts of data from users with different accents and also discover how they are using Siri.
Apple can fine tune how Siri works using all those voices and queries, so the version that will be launched as a ‘proper’ version will perform considerably better than would otherwise be possible.
Bingo!
From the PIONEERS of touch interface to voice interface ASSISTANCE – APPLE leads once again…
HURRAY FOR APPLE – LONG LIVE SIRI.
Tim Cook are you paying attention …. To fulfill Steve Jobs dying wish, get Siri on ALL Apple mobile IOS devices and kill googles mobile ad revenue…. Ad Siri to A near future Lion update and kill their revenue from Mac searches… This will cripple Google which will severely hamper Androids R&D budget ( since it makes no revenue from sales… It is free)
You will fulfill you illustrious founding father’s wish for bring thermonuclear war to the thieves at Google. War is Hell… Take it to them…
Perceptive, Alcancun. Dying wish, yes. The thing is, I suspect that Tim Cook has it in for Google even more than Steve Jobs did, minus the histrionics. Prepare the phalanx!
Highly relevant blog post, by someone who worked on this at IBM:
http://www.benoitmaison.org/2011/12/06/why-siri-had-to-start-in-beta/
(via John Gruber)
Thanks for the link. Very well thought out reasoning by the author. I left a couple of replies there.
Thanks again!