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As far as I'm concerned, Siri is on death watch until Apple figures out a strategy to open it up. Outside of setting timers, creating reminders, setting alarms,

by stdgy 9y ago

As far as I'm concerned, Siri is on death watch until Apple figures out a strategy to open it up. Outside of setting timers, creating reminders, setting alarms, doing a little dictating or mishearing directions, the product is stagnant. I just don't see a lot of utility going forward unless they liberalize the service and allow other people to develop new experiences for users. That should also give them new data to mine and allow good voice UI patterns to bubble up. Not sure how they should go about designing a framework for developers to plug-in to, though. It's a tricky problem. But presumably they've learned some things after 'sharing' some of Siri with Uber and Facebook and that could help them move forward.

eridius 9y ago
Apple already opened up Siri. Third-party app developers can now add their own Siri integration (though I don't know how extensive this is, having never looked into the details myself). But it seems like not very many third-party developers are actually bothering to do so.
- dep_b 9y ago
  There's just a few things you can do. Call someone, send a message, hail a cab, ask for directions, stuff like that. Six scenarios in total. You could try to WhatsApp someone with Siri, probably that'll work. Though I hate using voice commands I never tried it.
dkrich 9y ago
I think that Apple has bet (correctly) that voice is a feature not a platform and that great hardware will make people buy into its services. Voice is great for a few things but very lousy for most things. Obviously it's all conjecture at this point, but my guess is that this product will augment the use of its devices for the things that voice is superior to GUI for (playing music and basic queries). Since Apple typically blows the competition out of the water with design and marketing, I imagine that this will do pretty well in this space (just imagine walking into an Apple store and seeing an IKEA-like display with a sleek home theatre and its speaker system on display). I do think that the walled-garden is concerning since you can't use it with all music services, for example, but on the other hand, if its a premium speaker system that might be enough to push me the other way and switch to Apple music. The question is is the product compelling enough to get people to buy into the platform.
- darawk 9y ago
  Apple's prowess is in designing physically attractive objects, and easy to use UI. Voice has very little UI, and it has even less use for physical appearance. That's not to say that how these things look isn't important. It is. But it's nowhere near as important as it was with a phone.
  - dkrich 9y ago
    My argument is that voice isn't all that useful in general and that if Apple creates a much higher quality product than Echo, for example, that people will want it because it's a very nice speaker that looks really cool and can play music, give the weather, and set a timer by voice, which covers the majority of use cases. In other words, a voice platform that works 10x better than another may only be slightly more useful to the average consumer while if the actual speaker is 10x better, it might be 10x more compelling.
    - darawk 9y ago
      Ah, ya. Then I agree with you there.
- stdgy 9y ago
  I agree that voice is lousy for many things, maybe even most things. And I think Apple is uniquely positioned to offer an end-to-end experience across devices (desktop, laptop, phone, watch, house/speaker) and that their design sensibilities could lead to a top notch speaker. I think the product will find buyers. But it's ultimate utility will remain in question until Siri improves. I think part of the problem is that the things 'voice' is good for tend to have humans on the receiving end that then carry out complex, human actions. "Stu, could you schedule a dinner for me at a good local Italian place at 7:30 and invite Scott and Robin?" Well shoot, that is a lot to unpack! It's a hell of a lot for a computer to unpack. It's a lot for anyone to unpack unless they know you and your circle of contacts. Carrying it out would require interaction with at least 3 people over a variety of mediums. I suspect that by opening Siri up (And other digital 'assitants') it might promote the growth of infrastructure and services that would begin to make some of these more advanced queries a little more tractable.
rajathagasthya 9y ago
I'd really love if Apple integrated the Workflow app they acquired into Siri. I think it could be a straightforward way to let Siri do more useful things than just setting reminders and asking about the weather. They also have improve the voice recognition big time since Siri has real difficulties understanding if you have an accent.

by stdgy 9y ago

eridius 9y ago

Apple already opened up Siri. Third-party app developers can now add their own Siri integration (though I don't know how extensive this is, having never looked into the details myself). But it seems like not very many third-party developers are actually bothering to do so.

dep_b 9y ago
There's just a few things you can do. Call someone, send a message, hail a cab, ask for directions, stuff like that. Six scenarios in total. You could try to WhatsApp someone with Siri, probably that'll work. Though I hate using voice commands I never tried it.

dkrich 9y ago

I think that Apple has bet (correctly) that voice is a feature not a platform and that great hardware will make people buy into its services. Voice is great for a few things but very lousy for most things. Obviously it's all conjecture at this point, but my guess is that this product will augment the use of its devices for the things that voice is superior to GUI for (playing music and basic queries). Since Apple typically blows the competition out of the water with design and marketing, I imagine that this will do pretty well in this space (just imagine walking into an Apple store and seeing an IKEA-like display with a sleek home theatre and its speaker system on display). I do think that the walled-garden is concerning since you can't use it with all music services, for example, but on the other hand, if its a premium speaker system that might be enough to push me the other way and switch to Apple music. The question is is the product compelling enough to get people to buy into the platform.

darawk 9y ago
Apple's prowess is in designing physically attractive objects, and easy to use UI. Voice has very little UI, and it has even less use for physical appearance. That's not to say that how these things look isn't important. It is. But it's nowhere near as important as it was with a phone.
- dkrich 9y ago
  My argument is that voice isn't all that useful in general and that if Apple creates a much higher quality product than Echo, for example, that people will want it because it's a very nice speaker that looks really cool and can play music, give the weather, and set a timer by voice, which covers the majority of use cases. In other words, a voice platform that works 10x better than another may only be slightly more useful to the average consumer while if the actual speaker is 10x better, it might be 10x more compelling.
  - darawk 9y ago
    Ah, ya. Then I agree with you there.
stdgy 9y ago
I agree that voice is lousy for many things, maybe even most things. And I think Apple is uniquely positioned to offer an end-to-end experience across devices (desktop, laptop, phone, watch, house/speaker) and that their design sensibilities could lead to a top notch speaker. I think the product will find buyers. But it's ultimate utility will remain in question until Siri improves. I think part of the problem is that the things 'voice' is good for tend to have humans on the receiving end that then carry out complex, human actions. "Stu, could you schedule a dinner for me at a good local Italian place at 7:30 and invite Scott and Robin?" Well shoot, that is a lot to unpack! It's a hell of a lot for a computer to unpack. It's a lot for anyone to unpack unless they know you and your circle of contacts. Carrying it out would require interaction with at least 3 people over a variety of mediums. I suspect that by opening Siri up (And other digital 'assitants') it might promote the growth of infrastructure and services that would begin to make some of these more advanced queries a little more tractable.

rajathagasthya 9y ago

I'd really love if Apple integrated the Workflow app they acquired into Siri. I think it could be a straightforward way to let Siri do more useful things than just setting reminders and asking about the weather. They also have improve the voice recognition big time since Siri has real difficulties understanding if you have an accent.