“Asking Apple Inc.’s voice-activated assistant, Siri, what the company plans to unveil at its Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco next week elicits the response: ‘If I told you, they’d probably make me sit through product security again,'” Alex Webb reports for Bloomberg. “Witty, perhaps, but Siri will have to supply more satisfying answers if it’s going to convince customers, developers and investors that Apple is keeping pace with Alphabet Inc.’s Google Now and Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa in one of the hottest emerging areas of tech: virtual personal assistants.”
“Alongside updates to Apple Music and the company’s mobile, watch and television operating systems, Apple will announce that for the first time it will let outside developers integrate Siri with their apps, according to a person familiar with the plans,” Webb reports. “‘Siri needs to grow up and get smarter, and by being in other apps it will get smarter because it will know more of what I do,’ said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies in San Jose, California. ‘It’s like quicksand — if you move slightly, you sink deeper. It’s another little thing that gets you more entrenched into the ecosystem.'”
“Apple got a head start when it introduced Siri in 2011. Yet in the years since then it has lost ground to Google Now, which followed in July 2012, and Amazon’s Alexa, unveiled in November 2014,” Webb reports. “Amazon released a software development kit for its virtual assistant a year ago and Google did the same in March, just two months before it announced an Echo competitor called Google Home. A Siri SDK could lay the groundwork for a similar piece of hardware from Apple, according to Royal Bank of Canada analyst Amit Daryanani.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We can’t wait for Siri to shift int a gear the pretenders don’t have (developers, developers, developers!) and speed far away from the pack!
By the way, many of the problems people have with Siri are due to lack of use. It’s a chicken or egg thing. People give up too soon and then Siri can’t learn their language patterns and other important info, so they claim “Siri doesn’t work for me.” You have to let Siri work for you first. A little on-the-job training it all Siri needs for most people with Siri issues.
How to use Siri properly:
• Speak quickly without long pauses
• Correct Siri when it makes a mistake
• Learn and use key commands correctly
• Understand how to use punctuationMore here.
SEE ALSO:
Go ahead, ask Apple’s Siri, ‘What can we expect at WWDC?’ – June 9, 2016
VocalIQ acquisition hints at how Apple’s Siri plans to win the intelligent assistant war – May 30, 2016
Apple reportedly planning huge upgrade for Siri – May 30, 2016
Apple acquires advanced artificial intelligence startup Perceptio – October 5, 2015
Apple buys artificial intelligence natural language start-up VocalIQ – October 2, 2015
I’ve been patient with trying to get Siri to demonstrate some real smarts. I order take out from “Classic Crust Pizza” about 5 times a week, a business within ½ mile of my home. I purposely left the contact info out of my contacts to see if Siri could learn my preference. Asking Siri to “Call classic crust pizza” always brings up a long list of pizza places from which she asks me to choose, and sometimes the one nearest my home is not included. If I give the name of the business and the street it’s located on, she does find it but has to ask me again whether or not I want to call. An additional step that seems redundant . If I am more than few miles away from my home and asked to “call classic crust pizza” I am only presented with a long list of pizza places which may or may not include the exact name that I’ve given. Siri is not yet in intelligent assistant that demonstrates meaningful AI learning based on habits and frequent requests over time.
Add “Classic Crust Pizza” to your contacts.
When you ask Siri to make a call, it looks first in contacts. If it is not in Contacts, it has to do a map search.
Siri understands me most of the time, but presents answers that have nothing to do with what she just printed on the screen.
History Distorted:
Apple got a head start when it introduced Siri in 2011
Actual History:
Who Invented Siri
aka Biography of a Digital Girl
Siri voice recognition software, did not originate with Apple, Siri was originally introduced by Apple as an iPhone application available in the Apple shop in 2008. The company Siri Incorporated was then acquired by Apple on April 28, 2010 for reportedly a little over $200 million. Apple re-launched the Siri app as an integral part of the iPhone 4S and iOS5 on October 4, 2011, and at the same time removed Siri from Apple’s app store.
Originally, Siri was to be developed for the BlackBerry and Android-powered phones as well, however, plans for the support of any non-Apple platforms were cancelled after Apple’s purchase, a savvy business decision by Apple and a testament to just how good a product Siri is. Compared to Siri, developments in voice recognition software made by Apple pre-Siri were just nowhere near as good.
… And as usual keep in mind that Siri is NOT ‘voice recognition’. That is accomplished by software derived from Dragon, currently owned by and licensed from Nuance. Put the two together and you get the full working system.
Hey Siri, I need driving directions to my next appointment. “Where would you like to go?” To my next appointment. “Your next appointment is at 6:30pm today.” Could I have driving directions to that appointment? ‘I found this appointment.” Using Siri is an exercise in frustration.
I would LOVE to teach Siri. But maybe I speak geek too much to find out what the on-ramps are to do so? I dunno. Having some basic command language would be perfectly helpful. Like “hey, you are wrong about that.” “I’m sorry John, what can I correct?” Instead, it’s like I have to conjure up in my head a personality for Siri so I can correctly interact with her, instead of her just honestly being a non-human, like we normally expect phones to be.
Anyway… let’s hope this gets a whole lot easier.