Siri Gives Apple Two Year Advantage Over Android 800
Hugh Pickens writes "Gary Morgenthaler, a recognized expert in artificial intelligence and a Siri board member, says that Apple now has at least a two-year advantage over Google in the war for best smartphone platform. 'What Siri has done is changed people's expectations about what's possible,' says Morgenthaler. 'Apple has crossed a threshold; people now expect that you should be able to expect to speak ordinary English — and be understood. Siri has cracked the code.' The threshold, from mere speech recognition to natural language input and understanding, is one that Google cannot cross by replicating the technology or making an acquisition adds Morgenthaler. 'There's no company out there they can go buy.' Morgenthaler's comments echo the recent article in Forbes Magazine, 'Why Siri Is a Google Killer' that says that Apple's biggest advantage over any other voice application out there today is the massive data Siri will collect in the next 2 years — all being stored in Apple's massive North Carolina data center — that will allow Siri to get better and better. 'Siri is a new interface for customers wanting to get information,' writes Eric Jackson. 'At the moment, most of us still rely on Google for getting at the info we want. But Siri has a foot in the door and it's trusting that it will win your confidence over time to do basic info gathering.'"
So true (Score:2, Informative)
Re:"and a Siri board member" (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that, he completely disregards for no apparent reason those existing services that are exactly like Siri was before Apple acquired it (read: same functionality, inferior interface/design). Speaktoit allows you to speak english to your phone and will do almost the same that Siri does. Google would need to buy them and integrate it in a nice way with Android. The current interface is a bit lacking but the technology is definitely there.
This is obviously a VERY biased opinion from a Siri board member.
BS. Google voice search is 99% of what Siri is. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:"and a Siri board member" (Score:2, Informative)
there is an app in the android market called " Iris "
it is in the Alpha stage and work great, it is after 8 HOURS developing. imagine after the Final release .
another thing about siri, it is very hard to all software like that to deal with different accent of English, and its only work with English.
you can check you tube, but android done the real-time translation and i think if that joined the Iris or something similar in Android we will get Android version of Siri which works with any language.
Android already has this. (Score:3, Informative)
Apple is the new Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Bill would be proud.
Except they already DO! (Score:3, Informative)
I love the desperate comments from the Android-faithful and general anti-smartphone or anti-Mac crowd.... "It'll make you look like an IDIOT if you talk to your phone!" "Nobody will want to use THAT!"
Yep.... and it was crazy to think it was possible to build some kind of rocket ship that could go all the way to the moon. Nobody would want to sit around for hours at a time on their couch and watch things happen on a little glass screen (TV). Or take Howard Aiken's quote back in 1952; "Originally one thought that if there were a half dozen large computers in this country, hidden away in research laboratories, this would take care of all requirements we had throughout the country." More directly relevant? Look how many people claimed nobody would ever walk around in public with those goofy bluetooth headsets on with blinking blue lights. Makes you look like you're going to a Star Trek convention!
People ARE going to use Siri, a *lot*. They're ALREADY doing so. One of the problems with the iPhone 4S right now is that often, Siri's servers are too busy with requests to handle all the load so you have to ask Siri a question a couple of times before it goes through!
Before you write me off as another rabid iPhone fanboi, you probably should know I'm using an HTC EVO 4g right now myself. I can tell you why Android users didn't use the speech capabilities that were "there for years". The implementation stinks! The "Google Voice" app is one of the few that actually understands me when I speak to it with really good accuracy, but it can't even respond with speech! That alone makes it nothing like the Siri experience. If I'm trying to give my phone voice commands, it's very likely because I'm not in a situation where staring at the screen is convenient. Maybe the phone is buried deep in a coat pocket and I'm using a headset, or maybe I'm driving, or ?? Some of the other apps I tried have serious integration flaws that makes them worthless. For example, one of them I used was able to figure out how to open the "Messages" app on my phone to send out an SMS if I told it to "send sms", but wasn't able to pass the "Messages" app any actual data, so it I said "Send SMS to 3142212121", it'd just open the app and it'd sit there, empty, waiting for me to key in a new text!
Re:So true (Score:4, Informative)
...and it seems that it doesn't loose signal strength
And you know this because the nice software told you so? Handset vendors have been 'fixing' signal strength problems for years by simply redefining the scale of bars to signal. Apple included, [apple.com]
Re:Not to mention the comic advantage ... (Score:4, Informative)
You declare them to Siri. Tell Siri, "Ellen Jones is my sister." Siri will remember the association.
Re:Two Years? (Score:4, Informative)
By a strange coincidence; the Register has a round up of four voice assistants for Android [reghardware.com] several of which are older than Siri (and so presumably where Apple copied the idea from, if we follow Apple's lawsuit logic) and several of which were better than Siri, at least in categories the register tested.
What's telling about this is how much the Apple / Microsoft press is coming out as if Siri was a big new thing. It's pretty clear that the big boys who divided up the computing market are out to get Google for disturbing the peace. This kind of false "Apple is an innovation leader" story is pretty clearly designed to play to the judges and juries in cases such as the ones about the Samsung tablets.