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Apple's Siri As Revolutionary As the Mac?
hype7 writes "The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: 'The advantage of using speech over other interaction paradigms is that we have honed its use over thousands of years. It is entirely natural for us to talk to one another. Talking is one of the first things we learn how to do as children. It's second nature for us to ask a colleague or a friend a question and for them to answer the same way. Being able to talk to a phone like it's a personal assistant is something that people are going to get very used to, very quickly. It's a much more natural approach than using a mouse on a desktop. And I highly doubt the impact is going to stop at phones.'"
Voice Actions, it works exactly the same. Maps, Nav, post updates to social, schedules reminders/ calendars. send email / sms. Its been there since the start of 2.3
Except it doesn't have a fancy interface . it just shows a big microphone icon on the screen and lights up green when you talk
Android's 'Voice Actions' can only understand a predefined set of phrases and keywords. Siri can understand very natural language, and even follow context. Siri is far more advanced. But Google has some of the best engineers on the planet. A nice upgrade for Voice Actions will likely come sooner than later.
The real issue with it is how much of a dork you look like talking to your phone.
Back in the olden days, talking into your phone was all you could do with it.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
You don't have to manually launch anything.
Just start voice search and say "Navigate to McDonalds" and it will launch your navigation app and plot a course to McDonalds for you.
This also works with your other example: "Text Bob Dole Hey man" will launch your messaging app and put "Hey man" in the message.
It's pretty neat once you start using it a lot.
Android speech-to-text actually works pretty well. I'm using it now to write this and I find bark bark shaddup I find that it bark bark shut up damnit bark bark don't make me come down there I find that bark bark okay that's it I'm coming down there argh crash thud bark bark bark bark bark bark
Shamelessly stolen
Android speech-to-text actually works pretty well. I'm using it now to write this and I find bark bark shaddup I find that it bark bark shut up damnit bark bark don't make me come down there I find that bark bark okay that's it I'm coming down there argh crash thud bark bark bark bark bark bark
Troubles with the wife?
Heard a technology interview on NPR this morning. It was very funny. They kept asking Siri questions it could not answer. Great entertainment. Actually saw the technology a couple of years ago at the Semantic Web in San Jose. It was very funny then too. The problem I have and have always had with this type of thing (hand writing rec, voice rec etc) is that when it gets it right you are amazed when it gets it wrong you are mad. If I type character in my computer by keyboard and the wrong thing shows up on the screen it is my fault. When the computer recognizes the wrong characters it is the machines fault. We expect better behavior from our machines than we do from ourselves.
You had me until the second to last paragraph. Macs wouldn't evolve nearly as fast if there wasn't Windows (and to some extent, Linux) adding new stuff. With a lot of the cool things Apple do, they aren't the one to first do something, they are the first to do it in a way that appeals to the mainstream. Look at smartphones, Windows Mobile phones were around way before the iPhone, but they were never popular in the mainstream because they didn't have the "cool factor". And if it weren't for webOS and Android, iOS would quite possibly still have the crap notifications system that just got replaced with iOS 5.
So, yes, Apple are great at what they do, but to say that they would be where they are without the competition is ridiculous.
(Reply written before most other posts, was distracted by work, going to post anyhow even with some now redundant info. Hope it helps.)
Android's voice recognition is mostly a search input box, driven by voice instead of text. It's pretty clever how Google built the system, they used voice input from the old GOOG411 number to help adapt it to different languages and accents. For the most part though, it will parse what you say and do the equivalent of "I'm Feeling Lucky" on google.com.
It also does dictation for typing in notes, or other apps. Basically anywhere the keyboard will appear, voice can be used as a dictation input.
Siri is a step beyond what Google offers, due to the conversational style of input vs just basic voice commands/dictation. You can say "Joanne Moore is my mother" to Siri once. Later, saying "Text Mom that I'll be late for dinner", and Siri remembers mom = Joanne Moore, or whoever. This just scratches the surface, the other power of Siri is the capability to understand questions like "Do I need a raincoat today?". It turns that into a search of the weather at the current location, scanning the days forecast for the possibility of rain. A followup of "what about Saturday?" would cause Siri to recognize this is a followup request, and it would link it to the previous weather query. The logic is in the Siri system, not in a search engine being queried. Minor detail, and either approach can work.
Google can improve their services on Android by improving what Google.com does, and this benefitting web users as well. For Apple, they have to decide what services to tie into. Many queries in Siri are farmed out to Wolfram Alpha. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri_(software) has more info on other services it integrates with to try and answer questions. If none of those work, it defaults to running a web search similar to Android.
According to the writeup on wired (reprinted at cnn), they already addressed that problem by having you hold the phone to your ear when talking to it (instead of at arms length as when typing into it) to make it look normal.
(I would imagine this was also done to improve the quality of speech recognition by putting the microphone closer to your mouth.)
Incorrect. It's done in the cloud, just like Android's implementation. You need a data connection for it to work. Apple stated this in the introductory announcement.
If you are a hacker, want power, or are smart, Apple makes mediocre products.
(What do I mean? The command line, emacs, etc.)
Exactly. If only someone could merge a *nix box (with niceties like the command line and emacs and such) with good hardware and a nice design aesthetic.
That would be awesome.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
Actually, Linux computers are the closest thing to Linux you're going to get off the shelf. Netbooks, some Dells. Also if you order from PC builders you can easily get Linux out of the box with anything.
If you're really smart, you buy your 27" monitor separately rather than built into a computer that's going to be obsolete in a couple of years.
which is totally what she said
Really, is Apple going to be the only company in the world that gets human interaction? It's staggering how much they've advanced society on their own and all their profound technical achievements
I guess that you are not aware that Apple purchased the company that made Siri and then immediately stopped the development of the Blackberry and Android versions. They basically did a Microsoft.
Actually, that is not fair - you could say they did an Apple. The question of whether Siri is a revolutionary as the Mac is telling as both of these products were based on groundwork made by other companies. This is not to say that Apple didn't add the pizzazz to them though, but even those pizzazz elements can be found elsewhere (so many of iOS's user interface ideas that people love can be found in other people's work). Apple's great trait is that they can commercialize the ideas of others. Want another example:
Maybe learn painting or drawing or something. Maybe start liking turtles. (remember Apple LOGO??)
Logo was created in 1967 - 15 years before Apple Logo came on the scene. Did you think that Apple invented it?
Oh boy, some people never learn. Android voice functions is literary the same things that has been in the archaic nokia phones from back in the day.
Voice Actions for Android is almost identical to Siri (another example). The iPhone actually had Siri before Voice Actions came out for Android, only difference is now Siri is built into the 4S and Apple bought Siri and removed it from the App Store and made it only for the 4S :( That's a pretty jerk thing for apple to do
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
"Losing ground" = higher sales year-over-year?
Why not? RIM has been growing year-over-year, though if you listen to the tech-press and slashdot commenters you'd think they were on the verge of bankruptcy.
Required reading for internet skeptics
I'd never actually looked at the raw data before, so I decided to based on your post. And...yeah, that's pretty interesting.
Anyone interested... http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/financials/financials.asp?ticker=RIM:CN
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Not smartphones, all phones....
http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/29/apple-captured-two-thirds-of-available-mobile-phone-profits-in-q2/
There is not much profit in $30 phones -- ask Nokia
The claim was that Apple was "losing". How is a profit seeking entity losing when it makes 2 out of every $3 in the industry?
units moved are what counts for everyone else. Developers don't give a crap how much Apple is making, they want to know how many potential customers they have to justify developing for the platform to judge how much THEY stand to make.
Developers care about the people who are willing to buy stuff. The Apple app store generates over 17x the revenue of the Android app market.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/21/861-5-percent-growth-android-puny/
Well it doesn't matter what "most users care about". A statement was made, I refuted it with facts.
I paid $200 for a $700 iPhone 4 under contract. A high-end Android user paid the same $200 for a $450 phone. We are both paying the same monthly bill. Why do I care that the carrier paid a higher subsidy to Apple than the Android manufacturer?
If by falling fast, you mean holding steady....
Google just announce 190 Million Android devices sold during their quarterly report today. Apple just announced 220 million iOS devices sold during the iPhone 4S launch.
Didn't you just say that developers care about units sold? So which is it? Do developers care about units sold are the number of people who actually have money to buy stuff?