“Apple essentially created the personal digital assistant when it launched Siri with the iPhone 4s back in 2011,” Andrew Bulkeley writes for TheStreet. “In the last year or two, however, Amazon has taken over the category with its popular Echo device, and Alphabet recently announced its own plans to launch a personal digital assistant device called Google Home.”
“Now it appears Apple is looking to regain its dominance,” Bulkeley writes. “According to The Information, the iPhone maker will open its Siri digital personal assistant up to outside developers and provide guidance on how to produce apps at its Worldwide Developers Conference June 13 to June 17 in San Francisco. Apple is also reportedly working on an interactive home speaker to compete against Echo and Home.”
“Apple’s own device was reportedly under development before Amazon released its Echo devices last year and already includes connectivity for its HomeKit connected home technology,” Bulkeley writes. “Although the device may be months or possibly years off, analysts almost universally agree that opening Siri to outside developers is prudent, since external companies already have written what are essentially apps to expand Echo’s capabilities.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Opening up Siri to developers and launching an Amazon Echo-like appliance? Better late than never!
As we wrote back in April: Apple, the world’s most valuable company, looks LAZY from the outside. Where is the Retina Thunderbolt Display for Mac users? Where are the new Macs? Why can’t Apple manage to make a new phone every year when far lesser companies can?
SEE ALSO:
Apple to say ‘me too’ with a Siri-powered connected home speaker – May 25, 2016
Apple should make a stationary voice command device like Amazon’s Echo – May 19, 2016
Google unveils its Amazon Echo knockoff called ‘Google Home’ – May 18, 2016
Where’s Apple’s answer to Amazon Echo? – March 31, 2016
Amazon Echo leads mindshare in smart home platform war – February 29, 2016
Relevant to MDN Spin…
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apples-failure-to-scale
thanks for posting link, an astute summation.
Agree. June 2016 will be telling. This isn’t a “lets fix what’s under the hood year” having gone through that last year. People will take their queues about the future from this next presentation. Lets hope it isn’t light….again.
(0_o) FUD. Wringing of hands. Elaborate angst through analysis of minimal data. Yawn.
Stop falling for cocaine-addict demands for the future NOW NOW NOW! Doing technology right takes great time, effort and imagination.
A lot of the fear-mongering going on may well turn out to be justified… next year! Meanwhile, we live in REALITY, not in the amphetamine addled imaginations of WallNut Street analcysts. Let’s see how Apple’s third quarter does. Let’s see what WWDC brings. Let’s see the ACTUAL iPhone 7 instead of the confusing and contradicting stolen/faked bits and pieces released to the public.
IOW: Employ the skills of SCIENCE!
Ignore the pitfall of rumor-induced desperation.
SCIENCE!
She blinded me with SCIENCE!
Just got finished reading the MacObserver article. Don’t agree with everything, especially about the iPhone. But the Mac lineup is in deep trouble and has been for a while. As Marvin the Paranoid Android would say, “Oh God, I’m so depressed.” Bring back the cheese grater or whatever. Do something Apple!!!
I’m glad Apple is opening up Siri. I wonder if it’ll be everywhere, for example, ask Siri on the Mac to “open Duet on iPhone” or “send messenger thumbs up” and it’ll be done on iPhone, or even just sent to Messenger directly? If Siri could do such remote tasks as that, then I’m sure it’ll become very useful very fast.
>Amazon has taken over the category with its popular Echo device
Uhhhh…citation needed. I’d like to see some sales numbers before I believe that Amazon has “taken over” the category with something that has to be plugged into the wall outlet to work. I don’t know anyone who has an Echo, but almost everyone I know has an iPhone. I find it extremely unlikely that the Echo is as huge a seller as Amazon would like us to think it is, or that it is used even 1% as often as Siri. The only reason Echo exists is because Bezos couldn’t convince anyone to buy an Amazon Fire phone.
Apple needs to regain the game changing Charisma of Jobs. If not there will be no more super launches of new products. Jobs had the ability to make the rest of the industry a follower. If your phone doesn’t have the DPI as our phone, your phone sucks. If your phone doesn’t have personal assistant, it sucks even more. If your computer was even a millimeter thicker than the Air, Jobs made it
very, very clear, your computer sucks. The industry followed Jobs, everybody scrambled to make computers thinner than the Air. His criterias wasn’t even very important as times, It didn’t matter. He made the message very clear. Our way is the best way and if you do it differently, your way stinks. And it worked.
Now, post Jobs. Apple releases the Apple watch. It has a very unique feature, the digital crown. If Jobs would launched this he would make it very clear to the rest of the industry that this is the way you interact with a watch. Any other way is the wrong way. The industry would have followed, been accused of copying, put Apple in the front seat. This never happened. It never happened with 3D touch either. Nobody cares anymore.
Apple need to make this happen with this echo knock-off. Make it very clear that Apple was there first. Others may have tried, but failed miserably because they lacked this utterly important feature.
Others will again follow Apple.
True about Jobs.
Not sure I believe the stuff about the Apple Watch, though. The crown is just a rehash of the scroll wheel. Nothing new there except software floats hard-to-read icons around in the screen instead of scrolling through logical, easy to read list items on the iPod. Perhaps that’s why the market for smart watches is so limited — people just don’t like any of the teeny interfaces.
As for killer features, Slow Cook simply hasn’t rolled out any effectively. He’s a cautious follower, not a leader. On those areas where Apple could have led, it bumbled the rollouts. 3D touch is a pain in the ass most of the time, and Apple didn’t make it available in all phones quickly, nor does enough software (even Apple’s apps) make good use of it. Thus, slow adoption and eventual death. Retina displays and Lightning connectors, too: the implementation was so slow and Apple’s enthusiasm so faint, who got excited about it? Apple kept non-Retina screens around forever and pissed off legacy Dock connector users by charging $35 for clunky white plastic adapters that didn’t work with practically any cases.
Technologically, Apple has missed the boat a lot lately. The Apple TV was betaware when it was released, clunky to use, technically inferior to its competition by obvious measures, had no unique content advantage, and cost more. Apple seems to think that people are dumb enough to pay a premium just to get an Apple sticker on the top of the dumb box.
I don’t think Apple needs another Jobs to bullshit users. Apple needs a new product advocate that whips Apple into shape making class-leading products and forcing their development to be complete and user-focused before the world sees them. And Apple needs to stop pretending that legacy products can grow stale on the shelf and nobody would notice. Entire lineups of products at MacRumors buyers’ guide are listed as obsolete. At the prices Apple charges, this is just unacceptable.
That is why there is a growing dissatisfaction with Apple’s current leadership. They live in la-la land while users wait for competitive software and hardware to be delivered.
Yet again Tim Cook drops the ball, skates to where the puck WAS, etc….
CORRECTION:
Apple essentially created the personal digital assistant when it launched…
… The NEWTON in 1993.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
What Andrew Bulkeley who writes for TheStreet is attempting to say is:
Apple essentially created the VOICE ASSISTED PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) when it launched Siri with the iPhone 4s back in 2011. And that’s not exactly correct either. Siri was independently available for iOS in February 2010. I have a copy. Siri was acquired by Apple on April 28, 2010. Shortly thereafter, Siri’s server was disconnected. On October 4, 2011, Apple introduced the iPhone 4S with their implementation of a beta version of Siri.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri
My thoughts exactly. Then there was the Palm, and other such devices.
I have my assistant with me all the time… my Apple Watch… which allows me to get the hell out of the house on occasion. Having said that I’d love for Apple TV’s version of SIRI to be more robust and be on par with ECHO.
There were lots of MP3 players out there before the iPod was launched, too.
But not for long afterward.