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Notably, unlike Xerox, which developed the Alto and its technologies in-house and let them rot, Apple launched Siri through acquisition of a fully functioning a

Notably, unlike Xerox, which developed the Alto and its technologies in-house and let them rot, Apple launched Siri through acquisition of a fully functioning application which was already distributed through the App Store. It's more like Flickr. There are some weird sweeping statements in this piece that I don't think represent reality, but I do agree that it seems Apple held Siri back from what it should have been, as a platform with a third party API, because it was afraid it would bypass Apple's control of the overall iOS platform somehow. Fatal mistake, and they lost a huge number of Siri's team by letting it rot the way they have.

alwillis 9y ago
Fatal mistake, and they lost a huge number of Siri's team by letting it rot the way they have. It’s not fatal—lets not be melodramatic here. I suspect they know they screwed up and have taken steps to correct. Remember that Siri on iOS, the watch, macOS and AppleTV were all different; they're working on a unified Siri across platforms so that the things Siri knows how to do aren’t in silos. We’re already starting to see the results of this: the new “read me the news” works on iOS 11.2.5 and also on HomePod: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/23/apple-releases-ios-11-2-5/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/23/apple-releases-ios-11-2...
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  It's not a good sign that they've lost so much of the original talent on the project. The WSJ had a very public exposé on the topic over the summer: https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-siri-once-an-original-now-struggles-to-be-heard-above-the-crowd-1496849095 https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-siri-once-an-original-no... I don't know of any good redemption narratives for tech products that lose their founding teams after acquisition and exist in the headless/nebulous state that Siri appears to be in now — outside of the Macintosh itself, but it had to hire back its founder and spinoff product.

alwillis 9y ago

Fatal mistake, and they lost a huge number of Siri's team by letting it rot the way they have. It’s not fatal—lets not be melodramatic here. I suspect they know they screwed up and have taken steps to correct. Remember that Siri on iOS, the watch, macOS and AppleTV were all different; they're working on a unified Siri across platforms so that the things Siri knows how to do aren’t in silos. We’re already starting to see the results of this: the new “read me the news” works on iOS 11.2.5 and also on HomePod: https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/23/apple-releases-ios-11-2-5/ https://www.macrumors.com/2018/01/23/apple-releases-ios-11-2...

ghostcluster 9y ago
It's not a good sign that they've lost so much of the original talent on the project. The WSJ had a very public exposé on the topic over the summer: https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-siri-once-an-original-now-struggles-to-be-heard-above-the-crowd-1496849095 https://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-siri-once-an-original-no... I don't know of any good redemption narratives for tech products that lose their founding teams after acquisition and exist in the headless/nebulous state that Siri appears to be in now — outside of the Macintosh itself, but it had to hire back its founder and spinoff product.