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Apple Reveals Siri Voice Interface: The “Intelligent Assistant”
- shoota 15y agoNot terribly impressive. I wonder how realtime usage will be since all data processing is done in the "cloud".
- anigbrowl 15y agoI find Google's version of this pretty zippy and useful, so I'd expect it will be at least as good as that. It's usually a ~5 second turnaround, I'd estimate; I typically use it if I'm walking to catch a bus or suchlike and don't want to slow down or have an accident by typing at the same time.
- shoota 15y agoI think it depends on the carrier as well. Sometimes on my Droid 1 on Verizon it can take a good 10 seconds to get a get a response or 10 seconds to make the initial connection to the server to allow me to start talking.
- cryptoz 15y agoAndroid's voice search also does things in the cloud. It's not bad, actually. I can say, "Email Alex. Subject Hello. Body Hi Alex, how are you [question mark]" and my Xoom will open the gmail app and fill out all the fields in about 3 or 4 seconds. I imagine Apple will be approximately the same.
- ceejayoz 15y agoI'd imagine they down-sample the audio like crazy. They certainly don't need CD quality sound for it.
- vogonj 15y agothe standard is 8kHz-16kHz, 8-bit PCM. higher frequencies are of limited utility in recognizing human speech.
- gks 15y agoA lot of the rumors seem to indicate that it's an iPhone 4S feature because of processing power requirements. It sounds as though there is a lot of processing happening on the device. It goes to the "cloud" for looking things up that aren't on the device itself. Wikipedia, Wolfram Alpha, Weather, etc.
- zyb09 15y agoIs it done in the cloud? Why would it require an iPhone 4S then?
- shoota 15y agoMarketing reasons?
- untog 15y agoIt's good. But it's not that mind-blowing- I expect Google Voice Search to catch up pretty quickly. In the context of Android vs iPhone it's far from a killer blow. I'm actually more excited about the iPod Nano as a workout device.
- shoota 15y agoI think that its most impressive feature is how well integrated into the device it is. The overall tech isn't very compelling. It's interesting that it isn't running on the device itself for language processing so there is going to be some delay on 3G networks.
- danieldk 15y agoI'm actually more excited about the iPod Nano as a workout device. Indeed, and that the iPod Touch also gets iMessage. Which is nice for messaging with family members that do not have an iPhone.
- juliano_q 15y agoI agree. I think it is a pretty cool feature, but far from a killer one. And the specs of device are pretty close from 1 year old Android devices like Atrix. I was hoping for much more.
- gdhillon 15y agoApple is doing more than just the voice search. It is parsing what the user is saying and bringing back exact result or completing that actions. Just like Siri did when you wanted to book a hotel or restaurant.
- vogonj 15y agothis is exactly the same as voice search + "instant actions." there's no line between the two.
- roc 15y agoThe "jogging guy" portion of the video shows Siri juggling context to a surprising degree. I think there's a pretty clear line between that and voice search + instant actions. It's not unlike the line between what Google does and what Wolfram Alpha does.
- mrbill 15y agoThe "Siri" app on the App Store does a lot of this already (Apple bought the company and integrated the product) for current phones running iOS 4. It's really impressive.
- Gormo 15y agoIt's been removed from the App Store.
- mrbill 15y agoWow, that was quick. I installed it this AM.
- richbradshaw 15y agoTry it now, servers are shutdown. Site was up at start of 4S intro, down by the time I'd clicked download, redirected to apple.com as soon as I refreshed!
- hsuresh 15y agoI should probably register a site: siribloopers.com. Am sure we are gonna hear lots of stories about misadventures with Siri :)
- judofyr 15y agoSomeone just registered damnyousiri.com: http://twitter.com/cjno/status/121293035739955201 http://twitter.com/cjno/status/121293035739955201
- Urgo 15y agoI got a better name. Are You Sirious? areyousirious.com I thought about registering it but didn't. Feel free to if someone here wants it. If it becomes big you're welcome, remember me :)
- jodrellblank 15y agosirisly?.com (: srsly?)
- shoota 15y agoDamn.. someone beat me to it while checking out.
- mattberg 15y agodang it actually let me buy it but just got a failed registration notice. shouldn't have used a coupon code :)
- shoota 15y agoSame here my frugality got the best of me this time.
- bmohlenhoff 15y agoHow about whysosirious.com
- 15y ago
- drats 15y agoThis is a minor evolution on the voice capacity I have already been using on my Android for quite some time. Because all of this relies on technology in the cloud Google should have no problem leapfrogging this with weather, booking of flights, news, calendar etc. Also, any future "inter-agent" stuff will be totally broken on Apple, all of their stuff like iChat is a totally walled garden. For a small subset of people who are all on Apple with their friends all on Apple in some regions of the USA it will work great though. EDIT: For the down-voters I would just say I actually had a macbook for a few years. iChat is technologically impressive but has near zero value when you can't connect with people. Apple promised to make it widely inter-operative and failed to do so when I was using it. They almost had to be forced to give back contributions to Webkit and open it up fully. They run a closed ship more or less in everything they do, the Apple way or the highway. This voice feature is a thin UI on top of cloud services and interoperability, both of which areas where Google is light-years ahead of Apple (not to mention they have their own social network). Android is already crushing them in sales and Apple virtually doesn't exist outside the West + Japan, tens of millions of upper middle class Indians and Chinese will be using Android eventually. Apple doesn't stand a chance in the long run, which is why they are already resorting to patent suits against superior tablets like the galaxy. It's not a BMW vs a budget car, because 1s and 0s are free the budget car has the luxury seats and trimmings at no extra cost. They are toast.
- joebadmo 15y agoWHAT?? You mean Google copied Apple already? What next, notifications? [Ha-ha, just some good-natured ribbing, folks, please go easy with the downvotes.]
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- brador 15y agoThey really needed an iPhone 5 here. Every non-tech I know was waiting for it, now they're just confused. Would have been nice to make a big bang to break in the new guy. For Siri, how many of us will actually use it day to day in the office or commute? Personally, I was hoping for a new ipad 3 with retina. Would have been a nice gift for the kids pre-christmas. As it is, I'll be sticking with my iPhone 4 and ipad 1.
- Kylekramer 15y agoI know that I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but making it a 4S exclusive is one of the more blatant bits of planned obsolescence I've seen. I was running Siri just fine on an 2nd generation iPod touch over two years ago, and looking at the demo, it doesn't seem to be much different, just able to hook into Apple internal APIs.
- wvenable 15y agoI'm sure the jail breakers will solve this problem.
- 0x12 15y agoThey shouldn't have to. If there are no technical reasons why this can't work it should.
- doctoboggan 15y agoYeah but there is a monetary reason why this shouldn't work, and that is reason enough for most companies.
- blhack 15y agoThis has been standard operating procedure on iOS devices since...ever. There's also no reason that Safari can't upload photos out of the browser...except the fact that it would allow devs to write web-based apps that use the camera, meaning less mindshare going to iOS dev. Right now (well, as of about a month ago, the last time I looked), that's impossible.
- Terretta 15y agoAgreed about Safari, but iCab for iOS can upload photos from the browser. I have uploaded avatars to Twitter etc using iCab and those sites' regular upload forms.
- jcampbell1 15y agoI think the main issue is they don't want to rollout a beta product to 100M devices all at once. The secret to quality voice recognition is a great training set. The experience will get better over time. My guess is it will be rolled out to all devices after a beta period.
- abuzzooz 15y agoTo me it felt like Apple were clinging to straws by touting Siri as a "feature" of iPhone 4S. What was more interesting to me are the thoughts that came to my head. My first thought was of Clippy. My second one was of the McCain/Palin campaign insisting that Alaska's proximity to Russia gives Palin international politics experience. My third thought was that Apple must be smarter than this, or are they?
- joebadmo 15y agoSounds like it's an evolution over Android's voice stuff, and better integrated. But the tech isn't what stops me from using Android's voice commands, generally. It's that I'm not often enough in a situation to use it without feeling embarrassed (not going to do it at work or out and about, if I'm at home, I'm usually in front of the computer), and I usually forget about the function. Same goes with location reminders. I have an Android app that does them, but I never remember to actually set the reminders, because I don't have frequent enough opportunity to use it. The car is probably the only place I use voice commands frequently, but I don't drive that much. And really, aren't the bluetooth headsets a big enough scourge? Do we really need a bunch of people walking around talking to their phones without even having someone on the other end?
- jeffclark 15y ago"I don't use it, so nobody will use it." Slippery slope, man. Easy to forget there are a billion others you haven't met yet.
- joebadmo 15y agoOh, I wasn't trying to imply that it will fail. Just relating my experience that social norms and robopsychology are bigger hurdles than the technology, imo.
- drats 15y agoI imagine of the ~7 billion people alive today, perhaps 6 billion are not potential Apple customers at all due to price. Quite a few billion are potential low-end Android phone users though. As I said in another comment in this thread it costs to put luxury seats into a cheap car to attempt to catch up to a BMW, it doesn't cost to put a great many features into budget Android phones though. This is why Apple is starting to use patents, because they actually don't have much when you boil it down. Even an Apple fan would be hard pressed to say Apple is 20% "better" than the latest Android. They will mostly point to a few UI features and say 10% better. I would say Android is easily better than iOS, as do many others, it seems to be largely a matter of taste. The tidal-wave of Android phones will swamp Apple in the end unless they can sue tons of people.
- togasystems 15y agoWow. Now I might get a lot of naysayers here, but how long do you think before the keyboard becomes a niche product much like how the pen and pencil are becoming? Natural Language is a field that is going to explode.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoSee the comment above by Joe. There is a certain 'weirdness' about giving voice commands to a device in public, it feels so strange that people don't do it, and being forced to radically alter their speech tempo/patterns makes it even more uncomfortable for them. That being said, one 'fix' here is to call your virtual assistant and talk to them on the phone. We do that now with these irritating voice mail type menu trees but at least you are talking to 'someone.' When we get to 'Ironman' level of interactivity it gets more compelling.
- Florin_Andrei 15y agoI'm not trying to be funny, but there's nothing weird about characters in Star Trek speaking to the ship's computer. "Computer, make me a coffee." See? It's okay.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoSo at Google they stuffed people 4 to a cube. Lots of people have open floor plans. Most people turn off their speakers (and miss meetings because of it) because the noise is distracting. Imagine them all saying 'computer, start the debugger on that core file.' Like you I have seen a lot of Star Trek, it took a world class UX designer to point out to me that every time someone gave voice commands to the computer everyone else in the area had to be silent. There was even a little cultural thing going on, the captain says "Computer" in a loud voice, every one shuts up, and then he gives it some command. I did not pick up that insight on my own, it was pointed out to me and now when I see it in action I chuckle.
- roc 15y ago> "That being said, one 'fix' here is to call your virtual assistant and talk to them on the phone. " I'm sure you can hold the iPhone to your ear and pretend that you've dialed up Siri and are talking to them "on the phone".
- mikebo 15y agoThis is a segway feature -- amazing technology, incredibly embarrassing to use in public.
- dman 15y agoI am sure at some point wearing headphones was incredibly embarrassing in public.
- hammock 15y agoWhich point?
- jdminhbg 15y agoI don't know about headphones, but using a cell phone in public was at one point considered rude/embarrassing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Finale_(Seinfeld) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Finale_(Seinfeld)
- jarek 15y agoI wouldn't go out wearing a pair of those fuzzy-padding headband ones. Monochromatic earbuds? Absolutely.
- mitchty 15y agoI think it still comes across as rude or offputting.
- gamble 15y agoShould be an awesome feature when combined with a handsfree car kit. The existing iPhone 4 voice recognition is very limited, but it still saves me from getting $200 tickets when I need to make calls on the road.
- mfarris 15y agoHave you been out in public lately? I don't think anybody is embarrassed by anything anymore. With a phone, voice control is a real improvement over thumbing a wee li'l keyboard. And exposing your personal affairs to everyone within earshot is now just another way to demonstrate your importance.
- chintan 15y agoThere is an inherent friction in using any Software or a Gadget. A piece of technology or service that removes/reduces this friction is going to win BIG! Some successful examples: 1. DropBox 2. Swipely 3. Kayak 4. Instapaper 5. GPS Voice navigation 6. Multi-touch interfaces .... I believe Siri belongs to same the class of technologies.. HCI has still not reached 1.0
- vailripper 15y agoThis essentially exists already with Google voice search. It isn't exactly game changing.
- ugh 15y agoExecution. Execution. Execution. iDisk offered essentially what Dropbox offers. iDisk sucked, Dropbox doesn’t. I’m not saying the execution is great (I simply cannot know that at this point in time), I’m saying that execution is extremely important when it comes to whether something is game changing or not.
- tomlin 15y agoSiri was only for US when it launched, and the screen shots of the current implementation don't look any more favorable.
- _delirium 15y agoTook 24 years to ship, but the Apple Knowledge Navigator is finally out ;-) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGYFEI6uLy0
- heyrhett 15y agoIt's like Ask Jeeves, but for my phone in the cloud!!!!
- ryanwhitney 15y agoSurprised that "but the specs are close to ____" arguments are still found around here. Let's compare the iPhone 4's 5MP camera to the "8MP!!!" Androids.
- nextparadigms 15y agoGalaxy S II 8 MP camera is better than the iPhone 4 for one.
- kno 15y agoI foresee a new Jargon now in people communication just "tell Siri " if you need anything; Great job Apple as always.
- oflannabhra 15y agoI have a handicapped friend, and we have been trying to get a good smartphone solution working for him. He's currently got an HTC EVO, and as many people have said, Android's voice capabilities are pretty amazing (although Android has a separate called "Voice Dialer" which is absolutely terrible for some reason). One problem he's had, however is touchscreen confirmation. Siri looks like it will fix a lot of problems, and allow him much more freedom. Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to the folks developing Tecla ( http://scyp.idrc.ocad.ca/projects/tekla http://scyp.idrc.ocad.ca/projects/tekla ) for Android. It's an open source wheelchair integration for Android that uses the Arduino to interface with whatever controls the user currently has. I found it in my search for a solution, but my friend wanted to hold off until he gets a new chair. Regardless, Tekla is easily the coolest mobile open source project I've discovered, and I just wanted to give those guys credit. The project page is https://launchpad.net/meadl https://launchpad.net/meadl
- shoota 15y agoFor your friend who is handicapped it looks like http://www.vlingo.com/apps/android http://www.vlingo.com/apps/android Vlingo for Android might be able to help him a little bit more. The incar demo has talkback and voice confirmation. http://www.vlingo.com/demo/videos http://www.vlingo.com/demo/videos
- macrael 15y agoDo look at what iOS provides for accessibility. http://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/physical.html http://www.apple.com/accessibility/iphone/physical.html There are already a lot of built in features (which Siri no doubt augments greatly) for people with disabilities.
- oflannabhra 15y agoWhile iOS 4 provides great accessibility features, it mostly excels in providing support for visually impaired users. As a touch interface, it has certain mobility requirements that Jimmy didn't like. He would have had to mount the phone inches from his face (where he keeps his non driving hand). Siri seems to greatly decrease those mobility requirements, and he is excited.
- lordmatty 15y agoI can see this starting to take over simple tasks. Love the idea of being able to dictate a reminder, or ask the phone to wake me up at 6AM (7AM?!). How much quicker is it ask those questions, rather than navigate to the App, input the info? Lots!
- brvsirrbn 15y agoThink about the value of the aggregated data that comes when everyone (in every country) chooses to use Siri (in the US) as a primary input device. Privacy concerns, anyone?
- fatbat 15y agoHas it been mentioned if Siri would be open for Devs? If not are there alternatives to Siri that app developers can use that behaves the same but open for hacking?