“As long-time readers will know, I’ve long been a fan of Siri,” Ben Lovejoy writes for 9to5Mac. “But Siri does have one major failing: it has no access to third-party apps. There are countless apps where I’d love to be able to get Siri to do the heavy lifting. If Apple offered an API to allow third-party developers to take advantage of Siri, I’m confident that many would do so.”
“But it turns out that Siri’s original developers wanted to take things a step further,” Lovejoy writes. “Rather than simply ask Siri to call on third-party apps to carry out tasks, they wanted to cut out the middleman and integrate directly with the underlying services themselves.”
The team behind Siri debuts its next-gen AI “Viv” at #TCDisrupt https://t.co/m3Kf6OrtXc
— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) May 9, 2016
“A full third of the [original Siri] team left Apple to create a brand new intelligent assistant that would do all of the things they weren’t allowed to do with Siri: Viv. Yesterday, we got our first look at the result to date – and it’s incredibly impressive,” Lovejoy writes. “Why Apple wanted to turn down this kind of power defeats me. Perhaps it’s Apple’s penchant for control.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Perhaps there are security/privacy issues that Apple’s considered in their admittedly very go-slow (neutral is more like it) Siri approach? Or Apple’s guarding against the world’s most popular personal assistant being misused/abused in some way – by pranksters or rivals for marketing gain or criminals or something?
There has to be some reason for Apple going so very slowly and seemingly cautiously with Siri, right?
We certainly hope and expect that we’ll be hearing more about Siri next month at WWDC.
SEE ALSO:
Meet Viv, the next-gen AI assistant, from the creators of Siri – May 9, 2016
One-third of Apple’s Siri’s team left and MDN expects something great and wonderful from the remaining 67%. That’s a very positive outlook, MDN. Unless of course the 33% that left were the intellectual core of the team. Not to mention the loss of morale. F*ck, Tim Cook loses 33% of the team and no one questions why. Who else at Apple has left or plans on leaving one way or another? It seems the U.S.S Apple is slowly sinking and Tim Cook thinks that babbling on talk shows will resolve the problem.
Hi, my name is Joe, but you can call me dick.
You are a prime example of the intellectual deficiencies of Apple fanboys.
You are a prime example of the intellectual deficiencies of a dick without a clue.
Joe does communicate like a dick, and wastes his credibility by overgeneralizing real problems into “Apple [] slowly sinking”, which is emotional driven ignorance. (Apple is the most successful company in the world right now, and regardless of slow downs, there is no challenger in sight.)
But he is right about one thing, its bad that 33% of a team leaves after Apple acquires a very innovative technology and then goes on to create a new version because Apple dropped a lot of its generality instead of expanding on it.
That’s looking on the bright side. Apple loses qualified people, unhappy people, frustrated people, angry people, unfulfilled people and you never ask why are these people quitting Apple. These are symptoms of a sickness. For every one person who walks away there are tens of others disengaged and wanting or hoping to leave. All is not well at Apple. The environment is toxic, dismal, and dreary. Given that Apple has already promised decreased profits for the next quarter one only has to ask what Tim Cook will do to reverse these trends. So far, all he has done is offer excuses and deny responsibility.
You were right about one thing (Siri group problems) but wrong about the other (Apple is not showing any signs of being in trouble relative to its competitors).
Why shit on your own sandwich? Stick to the point that you had evidence for.
Joe loves the sound of his own dickless ramblings. The rest of us are bored silly.
I think it’s very troubling. After Apple acquired Siri somebody (maybe Scott Forestall, instigated by Steve Jobs) started tinkering with her, changing her functionality in basic ways that departed from the original team’s vision — which is why, I think, some of the team quit and went on to develop Viv. Even in beta Viv outclasses Siri, showing the comparative lack of progress by the Siri team in the same time frame. Other voice assistants like Cortana are outstripping Siri, moving onto the desktop, showing more sass, learning to be more personal.
I can’t help but sense that Apple is turning slothful. Not just Siri, but everything takes way too long and they don’t even bother to give us a teaser of what’s to come…They’d like us to believe they’re keeping their ideas secret, but they could just as easily be keeping secret that they have no ideas. They wouldn’t be the first company that persuaded themselves, after gloating over their P&L, that what they already have is good enough.
The original Siri outclassed Apple’s Siri. We don’t know why, but Apple cut out Siri features and sterilized its commentary. We know some of the Siri features depended on outside data sources. Perhaps those sources had no interest in working with Apple. I’d enjoy reading the book about this story.
As for Apple turning slothful: All companies become increasingly slothful as they age and get larger. It’s the prime organizational behavior of aging. The solution is to become entrepreneurial again. OR allow sectioned off parts of the company to go entrepreneurial without the big biz bosses breathing down their neck.
I am reminded of the pirate nature of the Macintosh project, as exaggerated by Steve Jobs himself. That was one reason the project got things done as quickly as they did.
At this point in my post I could dig into Eastman Kodak history, where I got to watch a great company grind itself into bankruptcy. In their case they let the marketing executives take control, thus doom. I don’t yet have any sense of that happening at Apple. But certainly the DRIVE that is part of the entrepreneurial spirit is rarely evident in the company.
It would be great to have a real entrepreneur back at the helm of Apple. Obviously, that’s not Tim Cook. But where is that person? You don’t throw out a highly successful CEO (and Tim Cook obviously is, so there Cook haters!) without knowing exactly who will be BETTER.
Meanwhile, we know Apple has piles of patents that have not had the rubber hit the road. As with how I see VR/AR playing out, the technology has to gather and mature to the point where it is ready for prime time. I’m not so sure VR/AR is there yet. I know for a fact that A LOT of VR/AR products are going into the garbage can of history simply because their are so many of them! It’s going to be interesting to watch. It’s going to be interesting to see if Apple leaps into the chaotic fray or waits until the chaos is over then provide the perfected rendition.
Side point: I’m an A-type personality. So I will figure out how to use the equivalent a cattle prod to get the company moving. Then everyone hates me, but mission accomplished.
People are leaving Apple at the same rate as when Steve Jobs was roaming the halls. Is it his ghost that’s driving them away, they way he once bullied and belittled them, thinking he was driving them to do their best but instead burning them out?
Maybe the ghost, and its baleful influence, will vanish once everyone is ensconced—uh, settled—in the new spaceship Apple Campus 2.
Unless…the site is still haunted by the ghosts of Bill Hewlett and
Dave Packard.
Unless they have reinvented VR somehow. This newer class of devices are barely better than their predecessors: they are bulky, cause dizziness, and the “good ones” require powerful external computers.
Remember, smartphones and tablets sucked before the iPhone and iPad. If Apple has cracked the VR nut then they might have a play.
There is a pile of companies attempting to break into VR right this moment. I hope something comes of it.
Hmmm. I am not hoping something comes of it.
One of the things appearing are studies showing kids are having negative effects from high use of smart phones.
And yet, some people think VR is going to help us? I can see it for specific technical uses, but not much more.
First off, it’s so ridiculous to blame Apple for every person who leaves the company. Yes, a third of the original Siri staff left. Perhaps it’s because they are entrepreneurial types who love working on their own in a small company, had already made some great money with Apple, and could do so? Remember, a lot of these talented tech types love to work on their own, and don’t like working for any big company, no matter how well they are treated.
As to functionality…let’s remember this is just a presentation. How many presentations have we seen from so many companies that never make it to market, or else when they do so, it’s not nearly so impressive? Sure Viv may work great…but maybe not so much either. We’ll have to see. I’ll believe it when they have a shipping app / product.
Also as a security measure Apple’s iOS sandboxes the apps; it’s a key security feature. It’s a very big deal to allow apps to work together. Apple has provided that with extensions; we’ll see what happens in the future. But it is not trivial and not without security tradeoffs to allow all of this app to app integration.
Indeed I have no figures admittedly but I suspect over a 2 year period up to a quarter of people that you describe from such a former independent business would leave for one reason or another simply because the environment is so different to them. SJ himself could not tolerate that, he wanted to be a big part in (then) small pond with great hopes than an inevitable small cog in something massive. A third does sound on the high side however but integrating such technology seamlessly into a bigger platform is always going to limit potential somewhat for the greater good or you simply get ‘technically better’ in performance but a pain to use effectively. Not an excuse for the apparent slowness to Siri development and I really can’t understand why it is not on the Mac where I would probably use it more than on my iPad for the simple reason it can be used while I am working to do things independently whereas on the iPad it is simply an alternative method to simply doing a search which it might send you to anyway. Making its underpinnings consistent with all other aspects of the platform must be problematic but necessary too. However that is only part of the story and Apple has hardly excelled itself here.
However I do remember the Be OS looking so much better than anything else around during demonstrations but even when bought out little of it ever filtered through and/or became usable in the real world. So one does have to be a little wary of such demonstrations where potential malevolent use is not in question.
“So one does have to be a little wary of such demonstrations where potential malevolent use is not in question.”
This is an odd statement. Why wouldn’t one also be wary of demonstrations where potential malevolent use *is* in question?
… Because Apple didn’t provide an environment for all of the Siri executives and staff to remain comfortably at Apple. So they went off on their own again. Apple somehow or other blew it, OR Dag Kittlaus and pals never had the intention of staying at Apple beyond the Apple release of their compromised version of Siri.
All things great and kewl need not be Apple! I’m glad Viv is developing and glad Dag Kittlaus and pals are still inventing and innovating! That’s what’s important.
If Apple cannot invent and innovate at least someone will, is that what you’re saying. If Apple cannot retain innovative people it’s all right, if that what you’re saying. Scary thoughts.
From one point of view, such as an AAPL stockholder, the ideal would be for Apple to monopolize technological innovation.
But that’s fantasyland. I’d dearly love the rise of better companies than Apple. What I don’t like is sleezy, cheapass, ripoff companies, ScamScum ad nauseam, pretending they offer anything useful to the world except a few tidbits of real invention.
I ONLY champion Apple because they do technology right, and business right, and customer respect right, and user interfaces right (albeit dragging their feet into truly modern interfaces). They’re the best there is… for now.
What’s seriously scary is all the things Apple does grinding to a halt. But again, it doesn’t have to be Apple. Realistically, it won’t all be Apple. Theoretically, Apple could drop dead (as so many analcysts wish they would) and some incredibly new creative organizations not only pick up the slack but drive forward well beyond Apple.
As noted above, you have discussed evidence for one real problem.
Emotionally blowing that up to the whole company doesn’t make it so and just suggests you have chronic tunnel vision or a bad logic unit.
One Note Joe strikes again! Please everyone – do not feed the a-little-bit-of-knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing troll!
I’ve only ever used siri a few times, it just doesn’t save me that much time. More often than not I can do the same things in a few touches of the screen, often whilst I’m talking to someone, or listening to something and don’t want to have to stop and interrupt that. For me, speech recognition is great, but why is Siri voice only? Would it really be hard to allow text input as well?
An excellent point. Already, on my iPhone I can tap to edit my voice command to Siri and she will obey. That capability could be extended and made more intuitive
I am confused on original Siri purchase: it should have included every patent that would make Viv possible. Apple was extremely shortsighted if those patents weren’t part of the purchase, or Viv will soon belong to Apple if they were!