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)
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Re:So true (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm an iphone 4s owner and wish that instead of Siri, I had a phone that could actually just not drop calls every 5 minutes. Seriously, the 4s is way worse than my old iphone 3G in this respect.
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With no more to go on than my own anecdotal evidence, call quality and longevity seems much better than my 3Gs. I currently live in what was, up till now, a cell phone blackhole. I was lucky to be able to send a text message inside my apartment. Since I upgraded I get at least a bar or two and can use the phone if not always perfectly. Thankfully I'm moving from my sub-first floor apartment to a second floor place next month, so this problem will hopefully correct itself completely through non-technical
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:So true (Score:4, Interesting)
Siri is based on an open sourced framework. I can't find the page in my search history, but the AI portions were based on a set of DARPA or DOD funded applications. Google already have good AI guys like Peter Norvig too. They will be able to come up with something similar within a few months if they want to.
I agree that it's likely the voice thing will be seen as more of a toy. It's definitely one that I'd like to play around with, but I don't know if I'd actually use it properly.
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If you think Siri is about voice recognition you're completely missing the point.
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Well the original iPhone was about 2 years ahead of the market. It doesn't mean they will start seeing copies after two years, but you will see cheap ripoff products for a few years then finally after 2 years you will get something that is truly competitive.
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Siri is slick, but it's not like similar things haven't been developed on other platforms. Here are a few competitors on Android (definitely less slick, but not far from the mark):
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.voicesearch [android.com] (Google standard issue)
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.pannous.voice.actions.free [android.com]
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.vlingo.client [android.com]
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dexetra.iris [android.com]
Two years behind? More like two months. With megapixels, spe
Not to mention the comic advantage ... (Score:5, Funny)
http://siriouslyweird.tumblr.com/ [tumblr.com]
http://sirisaysthedarndestthings.com/ [sirisaysth...things.com]
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One day I said to Siri "tell my girlfriend I love her" The message that popped up was nicely addressed to my girlfriend and said "have her".
Do people really have contacts named "girlfriend", "wife", "grandmother", etc.?
If not, I think the database that Siri must be using is something the NSA would like to get their hands on.
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.
Iris (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.xda-developers.com/android/enter-iris-so-long-siri-we-hardly-knew-ye/
Just letting you know that android has a similar service and it was only made in 8 hours time.
So I suppose this will get alot better
Re:Iris (Score:5, Insightful)
It's mostly done for the few people that care. As much as apple would love for siri to sound like an amazing feature, it is far from groundbreaking and most people just don't care.
Essentially what it gets used for is a decent voice command here or there. I forgot what site it was that was analyzing siri's data usage and categorized people by number of uses per day. I think the average was 3. People use their phones more than that in a day, let alone what that shows of siri.
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I can't tell if you are trolling or not. Obviously no magic tech is going to make technology usable for all disabled people, but for those with limited motion in their hands and arms or poor eyesight Siri is actually a big improvement. I wasn't insinuating that Siri somehow makes blind people see or deaf people hear... You're attacking strawmen here... Do I know what I'm talking about? Well, I'm not disabled. My comment came about after a discussion w/ a disabled friend about Siri. He's not blind or deaf th
Re:Iris (Score:5, Insightful)
Iris is a weak attempt.
Siri's advantage isn't the speech recognition or ties to Wolfram Alpha, but that it handles natural language (as TFA is referring to). I can tell Siri "I locked myself out of my apartment" and it will show me a list of nearby locksmiths to choose from via Google Maps. Iris will soon be able to do google lookups of math equations or tell me the capital of a country, but Siri goes far more than that.
It's not about knowledge or access to data, but about your device recognizing what you mean. This is unlike even established products like Dragon dictate; it stops becoming LCARS from Star Trek and turns into JARVIS from Iron Man. The various wisecracks that Siri can deliver back were also part of Apple's design to give it some attitude.
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Iris is a weak attempt.
Siri's advantage isn't the speech recognition or ties to Wolfram Alpha, but that it handles natural language (as TFA is referring to). I can tell Siri "I locked myself out of my apartment" and it will show me a list of nearby locksmiths to choose from via Google Maps. Iris will soon be able to do google lookups of math equations or tell me the capital of a country, but Siri goes far more than that.
It's not about knowledge or access to data, but about your device recognizing what you mean. This is unlike even established products like Dragon dictate; it stops becoming LCARS from Star Trek and turns into JARVIS from Iron Man. The various wisecracks that Siri can deliver back were also part of Apple's design to give it some attitude.
This sort of feature is incredibly interesting, but how well does it really work for things that might not be already known by a normal person? I mean, it is pretty simple to know to say "find the nearest locksmith" if you are locked out; I highly doubt *anyone* responsible for locking themselves and their belongings up does not know that a locksmith is the go-to resource for such things. What if I said "i need to find a cheap glockenspiel" or "I just lost my wallet" or how about "i need to break up with
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Well.. [tomshardware.com]
From that article:
"What is the weather like" -> Does not understand (but gives you weather forecast for "what is the weather" - which is arguably wrong ;) )
Also:
"Understand crazy monkey weather" and "what do you think about this political climate" both returned weather forecast..
Not exactly what I would call "your device recognizing what you mean", to be honest. Still looks mostly like the good old "looking for keywords" approach.
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How narrow-minded of you. It would be a strength for people like my wife, who somehow managed to graduate from a University with a decent GPA yet can't ever remember how to turn her phone on (no matter how many times I show her). She probably wouldn't realize that a phone could actually perform a search like that (much less figure out how) without an assistant to tell/remind her. Siri would be a great help to me because I could tell her to ask the damn phone and leave me in peace. ;-) And my wife and I aren
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> How narrow-minded of you. It would be a strength for people like my wife, who somehow managed to graduate from a University with a decent GPA yet can't ever remember how to turn her phone on (no matter how many times I show her). She probably wouldn't realize that a phone could actually perform a search like that (much less figure out how) without an assistant to tell/remind her. Siri would be a great help to me because I could tell her to ask the damn phone and leave me in peace. ;-)
My wife is a profe
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"In any case, don't you have to activate Siri somehow, like pressing a button?"
Not sure. I don't have an iPhone, and my iPod Touch died soon after I upgraded it (backlight went out). Obviously Siri won't help her during those times when she can't figure out how to turn the phone on. But hopefully there's an "always on" option to Siri so it will always be available as long as she can figure out how to power up the phone.
Great quote about the keyboard, BTW. About turning her phone on, my wife's is always: "It
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Last weekend I was going to have lunch with a friend of mine, she happens to be very indecisive. We're driving downtown, trying to figure out where to eat, she's typing into yelp, its trying to find our coordinates etc, when I have the eureka moment, grab her phone and say "where's good for lunch?", Siri spits back a list of four places and we're sitting down 10 minutes later..
That was awesome and a _huge_ time saver.
Re:Iris (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd much rather have in-phone implementation of basic voice commands like: "text contact message send text", "navigate to address/business", "add contact name name number number, etc.
Oh God yes. If you haven't tried Siri, it's considerably worse than existing voice commands for one simple reason: lag.
The most annoying one is for iPod voice commands. Like, for example, "Play" to start playing whatever's on the iPod app. In earlier iPhones, this was a short pause for it to understand it, and then the music started.
In Siri, this is now a one second pause for it to round trip to the server, then Siri saying "OK," and then, finally, the music starts playing.
"navigate to address/business"
Yeah, you ... can't navigate on iOS. At all. Sure, you can get a list of directions - but good luck following those without driving into something, especially since it won't automatically move through the next steps while you're moving. Annoying as the passenger, impossible as the driver.
"and a Siri board member" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Re:"and a Siri board member" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Iris [android.com], does this article look like a steaming pile of turd to you too?"
Yes Dave, it does look like a poorly researched paid product placement.
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So then you agree with him. And "voice recognition" is not what it is, any more than a "wheel" is a car. It won't work without it, but it's only part of the foundation.
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
People aren't going to use Siri very much, because talking to your phone makes you look stupid. It's been on Android for years anyway, and no-one used it there. That Apple claim it's more useful now means nothing. It's like forward facing cameras - outside of a tiny niche no-one cares.
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Exactly my take on this. Its fun for about ten minutes and then 99% of all people just shrugs and move on. I have played with voice control for a long time and i always thought the problem was the software. Later on i have come to accept that voice input is just a gimmick. No matter how good the software becomes it still sucks as an input method, unless you are speaking with another human.
And if we take a look at the world and all the killing going on, does it look like we humans are good at interpreting la
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
People aren't going to use Siri very much, because talking to your phone makes you look stupid.
How do you make phone calls then without looking stupid?
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How do you make phone calls then without looking stupid?
By using a bluetooth headset so nobody can see I'm talking to my phone, duh!
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People aren't going to use Siri very much, because talking to your phone makes you look stupid.
How do you make phone calls then without looking stupid?
Easy. I connect to another person and talk with my phone, not too my phone.
But seriously, for the folks with Siri, is it that useful? Do you use that often?
I've played around with the voice recognition features of droid, and they're more annoying than useful. Part of it is, the only time I'd really want any of those features is when driving. Otherwise, my fingers are much more accurate than my voice.
I haven't played much with Siri on my wife's 4S, but if it's anything like the voice recognition on Apple
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What I've found I use Siri for the most is things that would require typing more than two words, especially putting together to-do lists and reminders. It's much faster to say what I want than to type it out. I have never used android's voice features, but I get the feeling that I probably wouldn't want to have to memorize and remember the exact order of words to use for the commands I'd want to use.
Having to memorize a set of actions required to interface with a computer is fine for most geeks, but a defi
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Judging by the "muahahahahaha, with the data we're collecting on Apple's servers over the next two year, we're going to kill Google" comment in TFS, I don't think you have misunderstood anything.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't have any hard data yet, but anecdotal evidence so far says you're incorrect. ArsTechnica's poll of their employees with a 4S indicate anywhere from 3-15 average Siri uses per day. My wife already prefers it to typing on the phone. I think it's especially interesting since it integrates fairly well with a car's bluetooth integration.
I can imagine a future screen-less phone that's just a stick with a speaker, mic, and button, with everything being done via voice...
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 thou
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I also have an EVO (3D now), and you are defintitely right about how worthless its voice rec stuff is. However, its going to take a lot of convincing to get me to think such a feature on an electronic device would ever be something I'll find useful.
People used to say the exact same crapola about hadwriting recognition. Look how useless and unwanted that turned out to be.
IMHO it isn't "vision" to think that people will want to use the same error-prone interfaces for their electronic devices that they use
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the voice recognition system is anything like the ones I've dealt with, allow me to explain EXACTLY the issues that occur with such systems.
In many cases, the call starts with an uninterruptible intro statement that's slightly longer than some of the works of Shakespeare, to the point where the caller just puts the phone down, does their laundry, and comes back later.
The first menu says "tell me what you're calling about. You can say anything from "problems with my widget" to "I have a billing question"". There is no guidance given as to what to say, so we humans make the mistake of actually taking to the computer like a person and summarizing exactly what we're calling about.
The computer then makes a guess based on its transcription of the word "the", which of course has NOTHING to do with what we're actually calling about.
The computer either gives no feedback as to what it heard, or it does...and tries to send us through yet another maze of menus, and repeats the process over again. For a customer who's either looking to cease their service or is frustrated with a purchase, this does the CSR's *no* favors by further exasperating customers.
At this point, people tend to do one of two things: either they say "representative" repeatedly, or they say something like "schnitzelhaagen" so that the computer can't understand them and fails over to a human being.
In the case of cell phone companies specifically, they tend to ask for billing credentials NOW, instead of at the outset of a call, and then proceeds to put me on hold for enough time to do another load of laundry. It's an added insult that after giving my account password and the computer green-lighting me that the CSR then asks for the exact same account information I've already given - either pass it along or don't ask on the call, but don't make me repeat myself.
As a quick aside, the worst company in this regard is Napster. When I had questions, it would send me to an audio recording of various parts of The Fine Manual, as if I hadn't already read it. After burning through eight cellular minutes listening to troubleshooting steps I already knew, I remembered the magic words: "cancel my account". It was at THAT point that I actually got a person on the phone who could help troubleshoot my problem.
All of this goes back to the underlying problem: voice-based support lines are essentially DOS prompts without the keyboard. Siri seems to be different in that it can actually understand and interpret what the person means, but Siri has yet to be implemented into any 800-number support line I've called and still has her own limitations. If you're going to have a voice activated DOS prompt, don't tell callers that they can "say anything", because they can't. Give short, single-word commands, and not more than five per menu, and no more than two menus deep before you get to a person. If calls can't be sufficiently filtered into 25 possible routes, you may need to reconfigure who actually receives phone calls.
Siri gets a bit more grace from users because they know that there is an alternative, and because it's generally not problem based. Asking what the weather is like can get a free pass if they have to start the weather app instead. If someone is calling a support number, it means that they already have a problem and need a solution. When their focus is on that problem, you'll hear about a snowball fight in hell before anyone would opt into guessing commands on a command line in order to get their first problem fixed. The solution isn't much better - transcription accuracy may get better, but each person will uniquely describe the issue, so "accurate" and "meaningful to the computer" are two completely separate problems to solve. Thus, the better way is to have the people learn. Tell me: what does it say about a customer who can accurately navigate the support menu? Answer: it means that they've called WAY too many times before, which means that either they are really, REALLY dumb, or there's a legit issue with your pr
BS. Google voice search is 99% of what Siri is. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:BS. Google voice search is 99% of what Siri is. (Score:5, Funny)
>It already does 99% of what Siri does
Siri is the 1%!
Occupy Siri!
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It already does 99% of what Siri does
Yeah, if by 99% you mean about 70% and with structured, formal commands. Apple had that too.
and all they have to do is make a different app with the same code as google voice and just add a series of lookup tables that convert common phrase fragments into Android commands. Easy Peasy
Yeah, simple. Why haven't those guys simply done it yet, it's so simple! I could do it in my spare time and make a fortune, but I'll just sit back smugly and let Apple have their day. Those jerks.
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Siri is now a search gateway (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple already sends a lot of the SiRi search outside of google. If a lot of smaller data companies sign up to be apple partners then google will lose a lot of search traffic. or at least a lot of the good and profitable search traffic
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A jedi mind trick (Score:2)
Gee, there's an unbiased source... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, board member of company says company's technology is the most amazing and groundbreaking thing since sliced bread. What a surprise. This just in, Bill Gates says Windows is the best OS, and Larry Ellison says Oracle databases are hands-down unbeatable.
I don't blame the guy for saying it, of course he probably thinks his product is the best. Maybe he even believes the thing about the two-year advantage, but he's also got a pretty vested interest in making other people believe it too.
Most financial news stories are PR (Score:3)
Re:Most financial news stories are PR (Score:5, Insightful)
>Most financial news stories are PR
An awful lot of all news stories are PR. Start looking for that certain tone, look at links to any sources... you will soon see a great many stories are copies of copies of PR releases
Wow... (Score:2)
What a bunch of biased bullshit...
This is just scary (Score:3, Insightful)
"Apple's biggest advantage over any other voice application out there today is the massive data Siri will collect in the next 2 years"
Anyone else regard that statement with pure horror?
Re:This is just scary (Score:5, Insightful)
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In honor of Steve Jobs, Apple is finally taking steps to remove the affront to St. Steve that is the keyboard. With all those buttons.
Siri is 'the next big thing'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Siri is 'the next big thing'? (Score:5, Insightful)
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While the AI aspect is interesting, the accurate voice recognition is at least a large a hurdle - and Google (via Voice and the Android search) has been collecting more data than Apple can even dream of for the past couple of years.
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I think the primary use is for scheduling, reminders and that sort of thing. It's not so much typing as it is navigating menus, setting dates and so on. "Remind me to [something] next thursday" that pulls up a new reminder, set to next thursdag is fairly useful even if the [something] bit isn't always right. Do you realize how many people don't know how to navigate their phone properly and go hunting through the menus all the time? And it doesn't matter that the feature has been on Android, the same people
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While I think the article is just a slashvertisement for Apple, I have to disagree about the usefulness of voice recognition. Food Mill (my Android shopping app) is significantly faster to use with voice input than with manual input. The only reason I don't use voice input more often is that it isn't always available. Sometimes the voice recognizer works, but it frequently will error out with an inability to connect. Since I don't have time to switch back and forth between voice and manual input, I just
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Actually, if you just add up Samsung now they're not in the lead any more, in shipments or market share.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15489523 [bbc.co.uk]
Laughable... (Score:4, Insightful)
...Siri is a decent aggregation of existing voice recognition, grammar based interactivity, and knowledge base retrieval. People, including ourselves, have been doing this for years. Our company does this in a more limited fashion, but technically very very similarly to allow Pentagon staff officers (and others) to navigate the GINORMOUS amounts of documentation that arise from large scale plans (thousands upon thousands of PDFs) - for example: "I need to see all of the documents produced in 2007 relating to humvee mine resistance testing" - "Sure, Dave, I can do that..." - and bingo 27 PDFs show up in a (rather special ;) ) UI.
Siri is Apple's way of drawing attention from the fact that they do not have an iPhone 5, or an iPad 3. It is Apple's way of drawing attention away from the fact that Android phones are out 'innovating' them in the hardware arena. Apple knows that they are winning the individual phone brand battle, but starting to lose the mobile war; ergo, the purchase of Saab defense systems mapping software in order to cut themselves further from Google.
It is the PC market playing itself out all over again. Apple makes a great software platform, but is greedy about it and doesn't let other hardware manufacturer's use that platform (not to mention their greed in the App market - protecting us from ourselves? LOL), locks out Flash, locks out Java (because they're unstable and really not part of the web - LOL again.) All of these decisions work great for Apple in the short run (5 years or so - just like with the PC) - in the long run it literally kills them.
Siri is a distraction akin to "hey, hey! Look over here at this hand, not the hand holding virtually the same phone you've been buying for so long now..."
60 comments (Score:4, Insightful)
And nobody noticed that this means apple is recording and analyzing every Sirius command?! Creepy!
Re:60 comments (Score:5, Insightful)
Not just that- they voice profile you.
Your Siri learns your voice and learns to understand you. The schematics of your individual voice is mapped.
So now in this privacy-free world- facebook can pick your face out of a crowd and identify you and Apple can hear your voice and identify you. Not long ago there was stories about software that can identify you by your walk.
Scary- there is no anonymosity anymore... ... except on slashdot- and I have ways of finding out who Anonymous Coward really is.
How good is siri really for non standard diction? (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing that really took me by pleasant surprise was Google's non-English transliteration engine built into edit boxes/text compose windows of all google sites. English has just five vowels with y and w coming in very occasionally to support vowel sounds . Most Asian languages have distinct glyphs for at least 12 vowels (long and short forms separated and a few more). Google allows me to type using an English key board, when I hit a space, it changes text to the selected Indian language. If the text is not exact, I press backspace, and it creates a drop down box that typically has a few variations, and I am surprised how good its guesses are about what I was planning to type.
If Google has been collecting such data about the most common english transliteration for the most common words in other languages, it has a treasure trove of stuff. If that probability engine could be adapted to voice, it would have a global reach. If Siri has an American English focus, its lead is definitely not two years. Do not count the non-native English speakers out. Hispanic population is increasing and they use smart phones to access the net mostly. On the high end, the median family income of Asian Americans is the highest for any ethnic group. Almost double that of Hispanics, the lowest. That probably would make the ratio 3 or even 4 when it comes to disposable income. Citation provided [census.gov]. Unless they tackle both ends of the income spectrum, siri is not going to make as big a wave as these talking heads are talking about.
Android already has this. (Score:3, Informative)
Definitely a beta product (Score:3)
After 2 years of using Android, going from love to hate, I returned to iPhone with the 4S. I hadn't even heard of Siri til I was leaving the store with the 4S and noticed Siri mentioned on a poster.
Siri is useful in a very limited number of circumstances. I routinely use Siri to set an alarm. S/he seems to be good at understanding stock market enquiries too. But the natural language parsing can be very random at times. For example, try "set a countdown for 10 minutes" -- sometimes you'll get "I don't understand", sometimes you'll get an alarm clock set for 10 mins from now, and sometimes you'll get what you want which is a timer counting down from 10 minutes. Try "set a timer for 10 minutes" and you'll get the same range of mis-understanding.
I'm fine with Siri being how it is at the moment. I know it will get better and more useful, especially when it can work with maps / businesses outside the US. But it is still definitely a beta product that is usually slower than performing the task yourself.
Siri in a year or two should be great. I'm looking forward to it.
No it doesn't. (Score:3)
Siri is a great demo or toy, it falls on it's face because it does not have an option to deliver ALL responses in voice.
I.E. I am driving and my phone in in my pocket, I should be able to hit the BT answer button to activate siri, ask something or give it a command, the response is completely in speech, I can then continue the commands and all responses are in speech, I should never have to touch the phone or look at it's screen.
Two reasons, First, accessibility, Siri is a utter joke to anyone that is blind... when it displays the result it's useless. The same problem is for normal abled people when in a situation where it is not safe to look at the device.
Second, Honestly voice control over something that returns the result on a screen is an Epic Fail. Come on, This is voice control, give me 100% voice response. I should be able to do all this without looking while walking down the street.
I hope they fix it, but I doubt it. it's really only a toy and done at a server farm instead of in the phone. Maybe when we are walking around with dual quad core processors in our phone they can do it in the phone.
Re: (Score:3)
Now, wait a minute. I think Lumpy makes an excellent point. Voice control is most useful in situations where it's dangerous or impractical to look at the phone, e.g. while driving. What benefit do I get from being able to "ask" a phone for information if I have to look at the screen to interpret the response?
Where's the data to support this? (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the summary, siri is a google killer and makes apple the best smartphone platform.
For those assumptions to be true, that means that siri has to be something that people want. While I admit there is a somewhat star trekian cool factor by talking to your phone. On*Star has had similar features. Ford's respond to voice commands and read text messages, etc. And yet, people aren't dumping their current cars for these must have features.
Granted siri is beyond the capabilities of On*Star and the like, but does the public really want to use a phone where you say everything out load for everybody around you to hear, too?
User on subway: Read Text Message.
Phone: From Sharon, I think it's time we move on and see other people.
User on subway: Damn.
Other riders on subway: Awwwww.
Don't get me wrong, there are times that this would be useful, but is it a necessity? If not, then how will it kill google ?
Apple is the new Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
Bill would be proud.
Re:will never use it (Score:4, Insightful)
Really?
Really!?
You feel that a voice interface makes people useless and dependant? Do you intentionally only communicate between other people using morse code via hand signals? (that's just the least user friendly and effective method I could think of)
Sometimes I weep for the stupidity of humanity... I can't even laugh at you because it's just not funny... it's fucking scary
Re:will never use it (Score:5, Interesting)
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This is a board full of nerds. As such, we're all used to people looking funny at us. People looked funny at me in kindergarten when I joined the computer club (PC Jr baby!). They looked funny at me in middle school when I was programming HGR graphics screen saver analogues on Apple IIs. They looked at me funny in high school when I was typing notes on a Sharp Wizard OZ9600 II.
And I'm sure most of you had similar experiences because like me you've been early adopters for basically your whole life, and early
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Talking to a device is just awkward. You try popping out your iPhone 4s in public transport and start giving voice commands to the thing. People will look funny at you.
Way to miss the point of owning an iPhone dude. People are suppose to look at you, thats the appeal!
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Using a second account to come to the aid of your first doesn't make you any less stupid.
I don't even quite know how to respond to this. It's pretty obvious, if you look at our respective comment histories, that delinear and I are not the same person (or if we are, we're one person who is unusually committed to being active on a sockpuppet account... Occam's razor suggests that this probably isn't true). Not to mention that you're truly committed to your insults. I guess I can't criticize you for not being willing to stick to your methods, poor though they are.
When someone actually responds to what I write, I tend to respond in kind. When someone says something completely unrelated, belligerent and fantastically stupid, I call them out on it.
It's ironic, because you're the on
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I once told siri to open the door because my hands were full with groceries. my roommates were suitably amused.
Re:will never use it (Score:4, Insightful)
"Their entire product line is aimed at people who can barely power up their computers"
Opinions and assholes, et al. This is simply overstated and wrong. Take it from a ton of users who are a wee more capable than you seem to give credit for. There are some who simply want their tech to Just Work without a lot of configuring and fiddling and other time-wasting nonsense.
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Apple's portable devices (laptops excluded) are designed to make the stuff you do 90% of the time extremely easy (take notes, check weather, etc), but everything else (e-mail a pdf, copy a simply link from a google-search, etc) either requires 20 minutes of stupid crap or is simply impossible.
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I *DEFY* you to send a pdf from safari via e-mail.
If you want to attach the PDF, then all you need to do is:
Or you could just click the action button in Safari and pick "Mail Link to this Page".
Apple's portable devices (laptops excluded) are designed to make the stuff you do 90% of the time extremely easy (take notes, check weather, etc), but everything else (e-mail a pdf, copy a simply link from a google-search, etc) either requires 20 minutes of stupid crap or is simply impossible.
Both of your complaints are pretty trivial to do...I've already explained how to attach the PDF, and you can copy links from any website by pressing and holding on the link until Safari offers you "Open" / "Open in New Page
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How do you know that reopening the same file in a different app is the right way to do it? Not having seen the actual interface I'm inclined to call that step very, very non-obvious.
Re:will never use it (Score:4, Insightful)
You are an idiot.
By extending your logic only trained pilots should ever fly in a plane; only mechanics should ever drive a car, only engineers should ever operate machinery, only physicists should ever use electricity.
Technology should empower people. That is its sole purpose. Apple groks this. They don't make computers or gadgets for geeks to tinker with, they make tools for average people to use in their everyday life.
Right... GOOD examples (Score:3)
Only licensed pilots are allowed to fly a plane. Only licensed drivers are allowed to drive a car OR if supervised by a licensed trainer. Only engineers can sign off on construction. Only doctors are allowed to prescribe medicine, only pharmacists are allowed to dispense it.
Gosh, the list of things restricted to licensed people is long isn't it.
Oh you meant passengers in a plane? That is like comparing operating a computer with watching a screen.
You analogies suck.
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"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."
kinda creepy
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Two Years? (Score:2)
Two years? Siri-ously...two weeks, perhaps.
So some Apple dude, echoing the tech-savvy Forbes magazine folk....
Say no more.
cheers,
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According to someone at Mad magazine, it'll take Google two years to catch up.
cheers,
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Here: http://apple.slashdot.org/story/11/10/22/2219258/siri-envy-iris-brings-some-voice-assistant-features-to-android [slashdot.org]
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.
Re:Two Years? (Score:4, Interesting)
Even Microsoft has this now. I was playing with voice recognition on a WP7 device and it worked pretty well. "Find Pizza", or "Call Norman" worked as expected. When I asked "What is the meaning of life?" it searched and found a couple of news stories about Siri being asked the same question. It might have been more fun if it came back with a canned answer like Siri does, but I have to wonder if that would've truly been more useful.
Microsoft's capabilities are also server based and they'll be able to tweak the capabilities fairly easily. All-in-all, I think the VR from iPhone, Android and WP7 are mostly a wash. Google appears to be ahead in other languages though.
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I'll give Google six months to catch up. Android has had voice search and voice actions for awhile now, so it really only needs a few interface tweaks to make it as user friendly as Siri.
But, seriously, Slashdot should really stop posting articles from Forbes. They're not a technology magazine, and their technology news seems to be little more than regurgitated PR press releases from the technology manufacturers.
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Google already has TONS of natural voice data.....the key is mining it properly. I've been using Google Voice as my voice mail service since I got it (and I'm sure others have too). I get text versions of those voice messages and have even answered the "was this helpful" frequently. And I'm not the only one. Siri is really just starting to collect the data, so in reality, Apple is behind Google in terms of data volume......how long before Google engineers figure out the best way to mine the data and lea
Very common misconception (Score:2)
"Voice commands" on Android are markedly the Siri interface. If you think that's all this is, you clearly have done absolutely no research on the tech.
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Do you stay away from Google? They certainly collect all your data, to improve the service if nothing else. Apple has a fine history of privacy, addressing issues as they arise. Plus their business model isn't based in advertising, unlike Google.
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Possibly map the human language and slang terms ?
Other then that they have to be able to tie it to a service that collects money.
Or maybe they will tie it to heavier data usage and collect a notch of data usage collection from the telco's who have an iphone on their network ?
There are places to make the money. Im guessing that they will start marketing location aware advertising where say dominos gets preference over pizza hut when they ask for pizza ? Maybe trying to steal some of googles worth in that are
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Once the novelty of it wears off, people will realize it isn't really all that much better than Android's current voice search. Meanwhile, Android is light years ahead of iOS in terms of Google app integration. Which is where the platform is absolutely most useful in my life.