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Siri Gives Apple Two Year Advantage Over Android
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.'"
Inb4 troll
Yes, because only Siri can do this. No-one else can. Arsehole.
Intentionally not supporting Apple at this point. Their entire product line is aimed at people who can barely power up their computers, the Iphone and this Siri are no exception. It may be cool to be useless and dependant these days, but its never made me feel good.
U Mad Bro? Looks like everyone wants to be a google killer these days
http://siriouslyweird.tumblr.com/
http://sirisaysthedarndestthings.com/
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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
Stopped reading after that
Because, of course, the one and only thing that matters in choosing a smartphone is voice control.
That's funny. I've been using voice commands on my android for two years. Guess they got that advantage backwards.
I got my popcorn ready to read the comments in this thread. Let the Apple bashing commence!
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.
I just want to know whether it works with Scottish accents.
Two years? Siri-ously...two weeks, perhaps.
So some Apple dude, echoing the tech-savvy Forbes magazine folk....
Say no more.
cheers,
iOs can only run on Apple iPhones and iPads, Android in any other kind of equipment (not only smartphones and tablets) and brand, for developers, Android is more attractive if you see it that way, I see some parallelism of what happened with Apple and IBM compatible PC at the 80s. . Siri is far from being a killer app, IMO, the former consideration is clearly more important.
"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.
"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline." - Frank Zappa
If he's an artificial intelligence expert, why hasn't he invented artificial intelligence?
The Apple PR edifice is quite amazing, reaching from grass roots product evangelism to middlebrow business porn to continuous Jobs hagiography by analysts. I even saw a troll on the Economist the other day saying that "Jobs probably had more ideas than his 50000 staff combined".
It's not like they don't have consistently good industrial and UX design. I just don't see this amount of all-aspect marketing on other status goods. Maybe I should quit /.
Markedly "less than" that should read. Silly me.
"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline." - Frank Zappa
What a crock of BS. Has nobody seen Google's voice seach? It already does 99% of what Siri does, 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. If I had the source code to google voice search, I could do it easily. (I am a professional programmer, btw) it should be fairly easy for Google to duplicate everything Siri does just by adding a little additional code. It would take them days, not years. I love how the author doesn't know jack about anything.
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
Siri is the best jedi mind trick Apple has pulled so far. It is amazing how much press this one feature is generating. My prediction is that in 6months nobody is using it anymore.. just like facetime (anyone still remember what that was?).
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.
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
I just see this as a confirming instance of large advertisers being able to control the content of publication. I know from personal experience that if I advertised enough in a publication they would let me write the stories. When you are at Apple's level it looks like they give you a reporter to do it for you.
Gary Morgenthaler, a recognized expert in artificial intelligence and a Siri board member
It;s hardly surprising that a Siri board member thinks that Siri is great, but if you're going to tell us that he's a "recognized expert in artificial intelligence" then for pity's sake, please tell us WHO recognizes him as an expert. If you mean that he has some relevant phd or something then tell us that, if he's written some seminla work on the subject then tell us that, but don't tell us vaguely that someone somewhere 'recognizes' him because that's completely worthless.
Not only do I not think that Siri is *so* good that it is a whole 2 years ahead of Android's speech-to-text capabilities, but is it really that big of a deal?
Its not the speech-to-text software on my Android which is apparently so behind that stops me from using it; its because I generally don't like speaking commands to my phone out in public (except when driving) and risking potential embarrassment (I would be much less likely to text 'Hey mum, whats for dinner' at work if I had to say it aloud infront of all my colleagues)..
Im sure im not the only one who doesn't like speaking to inanimate objects.
I can already do anything siri can do pretty easily with voice command on my galaxy II s. Including relatively abstract commands like "Find a bar" or call my gastroenterology. So ... its a two year lead in smugness, and scripted responses to nonsensical questions that give an appearance of personality? Its like jobs never died!
Because when I look for a phone I don't look for call quality, screen, or battery life, I look for a feature that lets me waste time talking at my phone like a retarded goon instead of just pushing 2-3 buttons and getting the same data.
I mean, why discreetly browse my calendar for an appointment on the street or on the bus when I can hold my phone in front of me and command it to show my appointments?
Has nobody seen Google's voice seach?
Of course not. Apple zealots and their paid sycophants do not live in the real world with the majority of the population, and deliberately avoid anything without an Apple logo. They take other peoples' opinions as personal slights and become offended that one would actually prefer something else.
I'm confused. I've been doing voice search on my Android phone for quite some time. Google has been collecting this data for at least a year (probably longer), and also has voicemail transcription data as well, so accuracy is not an issue.
I actually much prefer having it take me to Google search results instead of just giving me one answer, because sometimes my question is not that simple. Most of the time, the first search result is accurate, but I like having the options there.
I guess maybe I just prefer to have the answers clearly referenced. Maybe if I used Siri, I'd understand what all the fuss is about. But ultimately, I have zero interest in using the iPhone, because I do not like iOS.
Because this is so asinine, it's beyond me. I'm using the speech feature on my android phone as I write this and it's working fine...
FWIW, I thought the iOS platform was supposed to be the end-all-be-all of smartphones anyway; if you have to use a gimmick to beat the competition, you're already failed.
What a bunch of biased bullshit...
"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?
My understanding of the principles of SIRI is that they use a similar approach to voice patterns as Google did to search phrases.
Whenever someone typed in a search phrase into Google and it turned out to be wrong because of a spelling error, people corrected their search and typed in the correct phrase next time. By storing these chains of searches Google accumulated more and more data so that they could improve over and over.
It is my understanding that SIRI uses a similar technique, but for voice patterns. When people say what they want, they get an answer, if it is the wrong answer they repeat the question, giving the database a chance for improvement over time.
By altering the SIRI replies somewhat one then also improves the replies over time, seeing what minimizes the need for follow-up spoken questions.
If this is correct, one may wonder if Google patented some of their search algorithms... Yet another patent war? LOL
"People now expect that you should be able to expect to speak ordinary English" ?
Seriously, Apple seems to be grasping at straws for any edge over Android phones. I'm not going to make comparisons between Siri and Google Voice Search, as plenty of others are doing that. What I will say is that Siri (and other voice command systems) are gimmicks at best. Unless their entire client base is visually impaired, I doubt that it will see any serious day-to-day use once the novelty has worn off. Texting and twitter are growing because people aren't talking into their phones. What makes Apple think that Siri will change that trend?
The real story here is that people without iPhones now have a huge advantage over people who have forgotten how to use a phone book or figure something out on their own.
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
uhh.. did anyone actually know the program is collection data? for me this would be a big reason to stay the hell away from Siri.. also it's typically Apple, claiming something as if they invented it, even though there have been many likewise applications/designs on the market already.. Yes they are very good at marketing...
... in English, but what about voice recognition in other languages? Is it that good? I wonder.
Siri is mostly about voice recognition and Google/Android already has that. I think that if Google wants, with the inhouse search engine knowledge, they can bring to Android some kind of Siri overnight IMHO.
Not sure how long Vlingo has been out, but its been at least 6 months before they even showed Siri and it does everything Siri does and more. The best option to me is car mode which you don't even have to press a button to begin talking, it's listening all the time so all you have to do is say 'Hey, Vlingo' and it will trigger Vlingo to listen to your voice actions. Honestly the only thing missing is the 'personality', which of course Apple put first and pushed the rest to the background to give it that 'cool' factor and have everybody talking about it like its the next best thing. 'Car mode' can even automatically activate itself, for example mine is set up to go off as soon as its paired with Bluetooth and if plugged into the charge it goes into listening mode so I never have touch my phone to interact with it in the car.
Siri needs to catch up to Vlingo if you ask me.
Oh yea, I'm not on the board of Vlingo, Android or Google.
Siri is nice and all, but no one is going to replace typing , with talking to their phone. There is just so many situations where typing is so much better. The only time you would rather talk is if you are driving, or maybe inside your own house. If you are out in public, like at work , at the mall, or on the street I'm sure more people would rather type.
Perfect example... remember the Nextel walkie-talkie phones? I never see that type of communication anymore. You know why? Text messages replaced them.
...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..."
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English grammar is very simple compared to Romance, or Indo-European languages. maybe Google should try to flank Apple instead of attacking straight ahead.
All true. The difficulty isn't in the voice recognition, the command grammars, or the 'AI' itself, it is in providing a solid process for pouring data in, and that is simply a matter of scale. If someone puts the money in, it happens.
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And nobody noticed that this means apple is recording and analyzing every Sirius command?! Creepy!
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
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. 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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Is siri supposed to be a big deal or something? I disabled it as soon as I got my iphone 4s, figuring it was a pointless feature.
All that the iPhone 4S has shown is that once again it doesn't matter if you have a better product with more features and are first to market with it, its just how you market it.
So hang on, when I double click the home key on my S2, say "Hi Galaxy" and proceed to say "Text Mum, I will be coming over later put the kettle on" "send message" can someone tell me how Siri is 2 years ahead of my S2? Am I missing something here?
Two year advantage? How about NO advantage? I've got a Samsung Galaxy S II in my pocket right now that I can talk to in "natural language" -- it's every bit as functional and accurate as Siri and I don't have to handcuff myself to the phone's manufacturer to use it.
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TFS: "people now expect that you should be able to expect to speak ordinary English"
Given the context, wouldn't it be 'one' in ordinary English?
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
>It already does 99% of what Siri does
Siri is the 1%!
Occupy Siri!
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
And then all they'd have to do is wait for the patent trolls to file a bajillion infringment cases to block it from sale. I'm sure that Apple have patents in for "Talking to a phone" and "displaying a microphone whilst doing voice recognition"
Yeah, Chinese (or insert random non-English speaking countrymen) are delighted with Siri.
What is that load of shit doing on Slashdot front page?
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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.
Apparently some guys had a similar idea. I don't think they had access to the voice search source code, so it took them 8 whole hours to produce a working version of Iris. Ouch.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You have not tried the older iphone system. I had 100% reliability at 80mph on a motorcycle with mine. Siri on the other hand has problem with noise rejection.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Apple has crossed a threshold; people now expect that you should be able to expect to speak ordinary English — and be understood.
That is the key phrase what is only needed to know.
Most people follows what Apple presents. Google has actually never made any such media attention that when Google few years ago released Android with voice control it would been written in media and people would have know Android capabilities.
Now it is illusion vs reality and illusion is always accepted like blind faith when big corporation is presented in all media. So the reality has lost a case from a start as no one wants to believe anymore that such technology (like voice recognition) is already existing and in use daily purposes.
Now people believe that Apple made something special what no one has done earlier. Truth is, technology is out there, it is in use. But it is not so widely known by people that there are others than just Apple who does those things.
It is same situation with big corporations vs Open Source community.
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 ?
Congratulations Apple on providing feature relevant to 5% of world population. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_population
All my Apple fanboy friends are so excited about how "amazing" Siri is. Yet every time they try to demo this "amazing" technology, it falls flat on its face in terms of practicality. You can ask it very specific, pre-canned items and it works marvelously. Anything actually useful, and it fails, or returns a Google hit. The only new part of this technology is the fact that it is running on a phone (and it really isn't, it's sending the voice-to-text off to a server). There is nothing new or particularly innovated about this technology. It's practically worthless for real use.
All my Apple friends think that Siri is the coolest thing since sliced bread, yet it doesn't provide them with any valuable service. In the end, I guess that's what's important. If people like the novelty or believe that this is "cool" and "new" then that's just as financially successful as actually making a real technical breakthrough. I'd love to have a phone that could almost perfectly understand and respond to my voice commands, but Siri isn't it, yet. Furthermore, until we get a lot more processing power, and better grammar parsing and lexical analysis of English, this technology can only hope to remain a joke.
This author is an idiot. The underlying technology that really enables Siri (which does not actually work very well in my experience) is language processing not speech recognition. Google already has speech to text software. Google voice does that, today. Can it run on phone I don't know but I am sure the engineers at Google can figure that one out. Its obviously an achievable goal Apple having done it.
Language processing is something Google actually excels at. That little search box of theirs is pretty smart as it is. There were plenty of things query processing experiments in Google Labs as well before that went away. Google is not starting out in the woods with charcoal, timber, iron ore, and stone trying to figure out how build steam locomotive. They mostly just need to create a mashup of things they already have; I don't think its any two years. It might take them as little as two months with a truly concerted effort. Which is not say they actually will do that, just that if having a answer to Siri is something they really see as important, they could.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
It's the only time I have ever seen a machine process natural language in a way that mostly works.
Remember Siri was available on all phones until Apple bought it and shut it down on competing phones.
Bill would be proud.
I find being offended by me offensive.
You're talking to someone on the phone which is normal. This is talking TO your phone. Which is stupid.
"people now expect that you should be able to expect to speak ordinary English — and be understood"
I've been living in the US for 28 years. My English is quite decent. Yet I have a Brazilian accent. Siri doesn't understand a word I say.
I was scratching my head on this one - I didn't realize that technology was something that was sold in some store that companies line up to buy. Apparently Apple bought the last copy of "Siri" and nobody else can have it now.
Perhaps it is just a sign of the times, but it wouldn't have even occurred to me to think that technology was some kind of zero-sum game where inventions are bought and sold and new ones never actually come about.
The assertion was that Google can't make their own Siri since there are no other companies on the market doing the same thing for them to buy. I guess it never occurred to an MBA that Siri is nothing more than a big collection of C code or whatever, and replicating it just involves writing more C code to do the same thing.
Let's face it, voice search is not for everyone. A few people will use siri all the time. A few more will use it occasionally. I can voice search on my iPhone using Bing right now. It's ok, but not great. I tried using the voice search feature on google the other day from my laptop (debian + chrome) and tried to search for "starcraft 2 linux" inferring I wanted to run wine to play starcraft. No matter how I said "linux", I got "lyrics"
Worst of all there are hits for "starcraft2 lyrics"
I think they've got a way to go on this whole voice search thing.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I jknew Fuckle would be 2 years behind Apple. Fuckle is simply another M$. All that is needed now is for Apple to create a search engine to totally obliterate Fuckle. Once they also totally obliterate M$ they will reign supreme.
[It only needs] interface tweaks to make it as user friendly as Siri.
Some people will never understand what goes into good design and solid engineering.
Well now that I know what the "best" phone platform is, can anyone tell me the "best" vehicle to buy? How about the "best" style of house I should live in, and where the "best" place to live is? What's the "best" TV I should put in my house, and the "best" home theatre to go with it?
I just want the BEST!
Given how accurate the Android community has been at predicting Apple's downfall because "the iphone and it's software sucks" one has to take any response that includes how "Apple is grasping for straws" and "Nobody uses Siri" as somewhat dubious claims.
Also, talking to your phone is a fairly obtrusive action that may not even work in a noisy environment. You can whip it out and type in a query or dash off a text message without disturbing anyone around you. The more noise you make while fiddling with your gadget, the fewer the number of places it is socially acceptable to do so.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I've been talking into my android phone for almost two years in normal speech for various uses, mostly in maps. Its simply another case of putting together existing features and pushing it through marketing as the latest and greatest, just like facetime (skype) and their new commercials touting their 8mp camera on the 4S.
I don't really have a problem with apple being a solutions company, which is all fine and dandy, I have a problem with them having no sense of humbleness. They refuse to be forthright with mistakes like antennagate and their monitor problems, and act like they are the first to market with these features and that they're revolutionary. The worst part is people believe it and repeat it. Its like they create the perfect critical mass of ignorance with outright lies, which I find repulsive. I think its a major reason why the brand is so polarizing.
It's yet another voice recognition app with a tiny bit of actual back-end features. Unfortunately, due to the way that Apple does things it just makes more sense for 3rd party groups to write for it as a proto-type and bring out the real works once the market is large enough to justify the out-lay of resources - read that as once Android has a full fledged similar feature.
As someone who started with Apple's iPhone and switched to an Android, I can say that while Apple caters ot the unwashed masses, Android is what gets the tech weenies worked up, and they are the ones writing the apps. Also the iPhone is "easy" in that it does only one thing, from one vendor, whereas Android shows the power of capitalism allowing companies to truly compete - although it also takes longer to excel. So while Siri is a nice "toy" that is really all it is at this point, and by the time it has anything useful behind it, the voice recognition for the Android market will have exploded since it is the new kid on the block, and isn't old and stodgy.
Also, Jobs was the only person with vision at Apple, who had the "weight" to force change - so I fully expect the company to do the same thing it did when it kicked him out - flounder. Jobs was the "man in charge" and there is no other single person who carries as much weight at Apple as he did. So I fully expect that over the next 12-18 months to see infighting and a lack of a cohesive vision. Siri will mostly be useful for the hands-free group, but it isn't a game changer at this point. Once they have it integrated into a more apps - like Google's translate that will be a boost for the corporate types that travel a lot, but right now - it's kind of a neat toy but not too useful.
The advantage is at least 5 years, possibly more.
For one thing .. good luck to google trying to work around all the patents for the AI.
The other thing is once Siri is integrated into TV control it's game over for both Microsoft (with their lame Xbox Kinect voice control) and Google.
The ease of use of controlling a TV with Siri versus what Xbox Kinect has will be light years ahead. You would be able to easily record shows in the background, find interesting shows etc. try doing that with kinect voice control.
Siri is useful, but it is just one feature out of many and many can live without. I don't see how it is any different than Android offering free turn by turn voice navigation.
Apple had a two year advantage over Android because of its polished interface, large app library and ease of use. Everything else is just gimmicks.
Google Voice Search seems to do everything that Siri does (send an email, sms, "find me blah blah blah"). The only thing it doesn't do is talk back to you which seems like it wouldn't take nearly the time that this article suggests.
The thing that bothers me about Siri is that the hard processing is client/server based - it has to send the command back to base and thus can take 10-15 seconds before chirping an answer. This is the same thing that Android has done for quite some time. If Apple really wanted to make this the Google Killer, they needed to shrink the AI onto a chip and have it work directly on the phone with a response time of 3-5 seconds. It's not a natural language process when there are unnatural pauses every sentence.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I have no use of Siri here in Sweden since I can't speak Swedish to my phone... why would I want to speak English to my phone.
How does - "Siri, Call Mårten Rådström" compute?
Should I say - "Siri, Call Maarten Raadstroem"
Heck, my old Nokia 5800 could do this voice input thing for calling...
Somebody from Siri says that Siri gives Apple TV advantage of Google with Siri you can dictate stuff is crappy is this.
i lol at this.
Although it seems kindah wrong to occupy a nonexistent entity who's sole goal is to assist and help humankind despite having limited intelligence...while using every waking moment of its nonexistence to improve itself for the sole purpose of improving the previous axiom.
That's like occupying a puppy or invading Canada.
As of right now it's a novelty and nothing that others have to catch up to.
Just because something sounds cool doesn't mean it actually is useful. It's possible this changes how people use mobile devices, but I'd rather doubt it, and I'm not seeing any evidence of it. I am seeing *some* people that like playing around with it. But for the most part they still pick up their phone. For the same reason the voice features on the Android have always been underutilized. Talking isn't always convenient. If it gets your question wrong you're going to waste more time correcting it then it would have taken to just look it up yourself, and looking it up yourself is very quick anyways.
Glad to know we're getting an unbiased opinion.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
To hell with Siri. What I really want is technology that makes people talks less to their phones, not more. So they can stop bothering me with their loud personal conversations in which I have 0 interest but to which I'm forced to listen whenever and wherever I happen to be. Like a phone that can read peoples minds. Can someone invent it... please !
Wow! Apple has a two year lead in the... talking... cell-phone ... market.
YAWN!
Wake me when they start treating it as if it were a real computer rather than a toy.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Hasn't microsoft had pretty much the same thing for years?
I seem to remember you can type using standard Latin alphabet and then select from a drop down the correct character.
Or do you mean on the phone specifically?
How can you produce evidence of it being abused in the past???
I guess Apple doesn't expect people to think properly, just speak ordinary english.
an operating system iOS5. I`d like to see it try to kill Google.
How good is Siri for such groups?
I'm American. Siri has problems with my accent. So, if I were to guess: not very good.
At one point I got fed up with Siri misunderstanding me and said "do I need to speak slower or do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?" Siri decided I asked "data space lorikeet Thompson was a coming on my mouth." It couldn't come up with an answer for that. (I saved a screenshot of it.)
If I speak slowly and very carefully - in other words, unnaturally - Siri is very good at recognizing what I say. Otherwise, it really isn't.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I've been waiting years for the integration of:
1) CMU Sphinx
2) GNOME zeitgeist
3) Festival
4) A good looking virtual head with lip-sync to Festival
This would be the proper "office assistant". I want to log in and then ask the assistant (displayed instead of wallpaper) to bring up my email, or open the document I was working on yesterday, or whatever. Sure this would be rudimentary, but once the integration is done, people would actually start using these things and improving on them. Some would work on speech recognition - because they like it, but it's not good enough. Some would work on the AI - because it's neat, but needs to be smarter. Some would work on the assistant because they want photo-realistic hotness in their new virtual secretary.
Apple bought Siri, integrated the whole thing into iOS. This guy was an investor, and made his money with the Apple acquisition.
It's pretty common these days for companies to outwardly claim they do not subject their customers to automated phone tech support, because most people despise dealing with it. Suddenly, Apple 'invents' voice recognition and we are supposed to think it's cool now.
The truth is voice recognition is cool and it is the future, but it's not the end all be all--not any more than automated doors or toilets. There are plenty of situations where voice recognition can't be used because you either need to be really quiet or silent or there is simply too much sound around you. Not every door or window or light or appliance is automated (although they could be) these days because there are inherent risks and human-error related downsides to having everything automated. Voice recognition is handy, but it won't be used to even do a small majority of our computing.
"So don't get programmed by anybody but yourself" --Bill S. Preston, Esquire
And brings to mind one of my favorite onion articles: National Pork Council: Many Americans Suffer From Pork Deficiency.
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.
Have you checked out Google translator? https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.translate&feature=search_result
It has great potential to be a actually universal translator among normal users. But how many will know about that app again versus siri?
Funny that you do seem to be aware of other languages existing but not so much of other countries. Siri is a joke in the Netherlands for instance, and most people speak at least a decent level of english over here. Never mind the rest of Europe or the world at large.
Google and Apple might both be American companies, but Google has a much less US-centric view. Moreover, as many manufacturers of Android smartphones are Asian, a large push will be forthcoming to make Android and voice options in Android accessable, accurate and localized for these countries.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
When it can read my mind I'll be impressed... voice interface is too... "star trek".
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I hate to say it but as far back as 2006 you could control your phone with Symbian using voice.
It is not even considered a special feature on a Nokia, and it opens applications and functions on the phone without asking some server what does the command mean.
Apple is already well known to be on the wrong side of the privacy fence, why would you trust them with Siri?
Jim
Of course he is going to praise his own product. The truth is it's annoying as fuck. Voice recognition has been touted for AGES, like since windows95. But it's just shit and doesn't work well, ever. Anyone remember that keynote where gates tries voice to text with word and it failed miserably?
I, for one, do not want to talk to inanimate objects. I'll press a button every time and be sure of the response.
It's called "Iris", it's free and it works pretty much the same as Siri. Which tells me that siri isn't all that advanced.
Please remit $30 (USD) to my email address using PayPal so that I can replace the keyboard you just ruined with my coffee. Thank you.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Gary Morgenthaler, a recognized expert in artificial intelligence and a Siri board member
Microsoft software better than any other vendors software, says Microsoft.
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 thought that if there were a half dozen large computers in this country, hidden away in research laboratories, this would take care of all requirements we had throughout the country." More directly relevant? Look how many people claimed nobody would ever walk around in public with those goofy bluetooth headsets on with blinking blue lights. Makes you look like you're going to a Star Trek convention!
People ARE going to use Siri, a *lot*. They're ALREADY doing so. One of the problems with the iPhone 4S right now is that often, Siri's servers are too busy with requests to handle all the load so you have to ask Siri a question a couple of times before it goes through!
Before you write me off as another rabid iPhone fanboi, you probably should know I'm using an HTC EVO 4g right now myself. I can tell you why Android users didn't use the speech capabilities that were "there for years". The implementation stinks! The "Google Voice" app is one of the few that actually understands me when I speak to it with really good accuracy, but it can't even respond with speech! That alone makes it nothing like the Siri experience. If I'm trying to give my phone voice commands, it's very likely because I'm not in a situation where staring at the screen is convenient. Maybe the phone is buried deep in a coat pocket and I'm using a headset, or maybe I'm driving, or ?? Some of the other apps I tried have serious integration flaws that makes them worthless. For example, one of them I used was able to figure out how to open the "Messages" app on my phone to send out an SMS if I told it to "send sms", but wasn't able to pass the "Messages" app any actual data, so it I said "Send SMS to 3142212121", it'd just open the app and it'd sit there, empty, waiting for me to key in a new text!
...use indirect speech in TFT (the fucking title)!!
I'm picturing Steve Jobs in Jedi robes standing next to a display of Android phones saying "These aren't the Droids you're looking for".
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Siri isn't a google killer.....I for one, could care less.
The people who wrote Siri have been working on not just speech recognition, not just natural language understanding, but the entire concept of a speech-driven digital personal assistant, for eight years. Their results up to 2007 were academically published so Google and others can use that to get up to speed to that point. Then it was spun off as a private company, so Google's been cut off for four years.
It's going to be hard for Google or others to completely catch up this kind of advantage very quickly even with their copy machines running all-out, thus the reasonable conclusion that it will take a couple years.
Siri's biggest plus, I think, is the integration of text to speech within iOS. It's fairly accurate and no longer requires a separate app (like the Dragon dictate app).Now, if it's a text box that pops up the on-screen keyboard, you can talk to it.
Siri's downside comes in the limitations that appear to have been arbitrary decisions: I can't add or manipulate contacts hands-free, Most of the information (including directions) that siri retrieves will not be read. (Seriously, how hard is it to say read me the weather that was just retrieved without me having to ask "Describe the weather on sunday"?) and an inability to do simple tasks it has information for ("Pull up facebool/Open Angry birds.." or "List [songs|albums] by $artist that I have" both should be trivial)
I am happier with it's overall control for the ipod, however. It's about time I can ask it to play a song by title.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
Sorry Siri is not good enough of a reason to give up my freedom of choice on what I can run on the hardware I purchase. Thanks for the offer, but you can keep your choking black turtleneck.
P.S. You can keep your offer to stael 30% of the revenue I might generate for development of anything tossed into that rectal ring.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
1. Android has had google voice for years
2. Android has had Edwin and similar programs that are very similar to Siri... long before Siri was released!! Android had it first.. why didn't it get developed beyond what it is now? no one uses it... Hey maybe we should sue apple for that one... seems only fair
3. Assumptions are not the same as fact.
4. For some reason apple users get big headed about their products that really are no better than the competition... they are popular becuase they were first in the market and are well suited to simpleton users... anything else they do can be accomplished on another platform.
5. time for apple to grow a little more cautious.. Jobs is not around with his ideas anymore.
Siri is an English language oriented app, I think. That may seriously limit its adoption in other countries.
Troll alert.
Seems to be working well enough to type on?
ME: Siri do you give Apple and advantage. SIRI: I cannot answer that question. ME: Siri do you give iPhone advantages over Android. SIRI: Adenoids are glands in the throat. ME: Siri I said Android not Adenoids. SIRI: Androids do not hava Adenoids because they are not human. ME: I am feeling hostile because you keep misunderstanding my questions. SIRI: There are several hostels in San Francisco I will bring up a map. ME: Never Mind Siri: Never Mind is not a Hostel but a bar on third street.
Wouldn't a toned down version of Watson do even better?
You're talking wrong. :)
I don't blame the guy for saying it, of course he probably thinks his product is the best.
You can blame him. He says things like:
Which is a false premise upon which the rest of his argument is built. If pressed, he might try to argue that 'people' means 'a very small subset of technology nerds' but it's clear that he's implying 'most people' and that's simply untrue.
I suspect what's happening here is that Apple has a 2-year exclusive with the technology and he wants to position it well in advance as the industry leader so when October 2013 rolls around he'll be in a good position for selling licenses to other handset manufacturers.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Any sufficiently advanced hands-free interface is indistinguishable from schizophrenia.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
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.
"data space lorikeet Thompson was a coming on my mouth."
Are you from the Bayou?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I think people do not understand how hard NLP is. I also feel that people are thinking that just because phones and what not have had some level of speech control for some years now than it must be easy. Understanding build in commands is not NLP. Think IBM's Watson for example, it was a crazy cluster rocking like 90 servers and a combined total of nearly 3000 processor cores. Most of that was need simply to understand the abstract language of Jeopardy! questions. Even then it still got some wrong. Language is insanely hard to get right and does require many aspects of AI; machine learning, complex heuristics, huge datasets, etc... Siri is AI and I can't wait to see where it goes.
I buy more Apple stock.
He must have used Siri
Good-bye
with his fun with Siri it makes me realize how far we have to go. Some of the questions he asked while easily answerable by a person because we understand the question and relationship of the actors in question but Siri cannot understand that. Siri is like a smart pet, you treat it at that level its fine. However any four year old will whoops its ass in even the simplest of questions.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Perhaps he responded using Siri?
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
Lame.
I get all my predictions about Apple's impending failure from Slashdot.
You know what I haven't done in a while, check Apple's market cap--they must be near death by now. Let's just take a quick look.
Rule 34 made me giggle.
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Siri uses Nuance as their recognition engine so comparing Siri to Google Voice Search is a bit silly. What SIRI brings to the table is Natural Language processing. It takes that result from Nuance and figures out meaning. It also brings an AI that learns based on your usage of it. This should not be at all surprising since SIRI is based on the DARPA "PAL" project which stands for Personal Assistant that Learns.
The guy in the article is right, Google is going to have an uphill battle replicating what SIRI is doing. Not only will they have to improve their voice recognition to be on par with Nuance but they will have to develop a natural language processor and develop an AI system that keeps track of your phone's past usage in a profile of sorts.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Two big corporations both mining data.
One of them is doing it so they can better target ads at you.
The other is doing it so they can make a product you will like better.
Yet somehow, Google wins?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why would they need to "grasp at straws"? they are dominating the market.
How much did they pay you guys to run this piece of propaganda and self-promotion as "news"? How does this pass for Slashdot content these days? People are just using it to promote their own platforms?!
Windows Phone 7 has better voice recognition than Siri. Why hasn't that given them the advantage? Maybe because it is just not that important?
I never browse Slashdot without a spare keyboard nearby for just this sort of occasion.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Looks like Siri actually is pretty innovative: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228365.300-how-innovative-is-apples-new-voice-assistant-siri.html
that Apple fanbois don't mind looking stupid (they actually think they're being kool). So this might end up being a sccess anyway, just because Apple has the more devote users.
An interesting marketing-sociological idea, ain't it?
It looks no smarter than cleverbot.... so... not smart at all.
"is the massive data Siri will collect in the next 2 years â" all being stored in Apple's massive North Carolina data center"
Hu? I am thinking of the consequences of that as something far reaching and that can backfire badly... How is the users private data maintained here? Do you always known when your phone is in "command" mode, or may the phone send what you are saying as if a command unintentionally?
And will it be accepted in Europe that potential unintended voice recording of whatever you or those you talk with say will be stored in North Carolina?
To those saying Android had this 2 years ago, there were plenty of mp3 players before the ipod too.
Yet another load of cobblers from the stable of the thieving scumballs
Microsoft had a product called Voice Command which was available for Windows Mobile 2003...over 8 years ago. Voice Command was then included pre-installed in Windows Mobile 6. I know because I still have two old smartphones laying around (O2 XDA IIs - WM2003SE & HTC P3600i -WM6.1). Siri may be newer but the basic concept has existed for years. All I can say is "big fucking deal".
Does Siri understand profanity? I ask because every other voice control system I have tried to use in the past has quickly degenerated into me speaking profanity at the device. Just saying.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I will certainly give that the speech-recognition and natural language processing stuff is well done. Really impressive.
But remind me how does this make my life better? What's the killer use case? I can only come up with the following:
Dictate emails while driving.
Annoy the hell out of people on the subway.
Call up a contact while driving without looking away from the road.
Pretend to "sexually harass" my phone by asking rude questions when drunk at parties.
Stop using it completely after 2 months.
Cheaper (automated) phone sex.
The tech is cool but this is mostly useless and better served by other interfaces.
He's using speech recognition now.
Yeah, the iris app is making good progress. See also the Jeannie app (which identifies itself as "Voice Actions" once installed). The feature set of Jeannie is better (e.g. "enable bluetooth"), but it doesn't have the iris/siri-like display of the chat dialog. Maybe these 2 apps should get together and combine forces.
..wayne..
Every second day, they come up with ad-page selling headlines: "Why blah blah is a blah blah killer" AI and natural language processing have been around for a while. The state of the art that created SIRI is still around. Its not like they stumbled over a super-advanced alien technology that no one has ever seen or even thought about before. If I remember correctly, Android already has an app. that does basically the same thing. Its less polished, but then again, apple had a smart phone years before Google launched Android, and where is their market share now?
The power isn't in knowing HOW to do it. It's WHY and WHAT. Yes, if I told you I'd like it to understand "remember the milk when I leave home", you might be smart enough to build some tables that understands starting a phrase with remember means a "to do". You probably would have missed "when I leave home" to mean "around 9am, since tomorrow is Tuesday and that's when I leave", and you almost certainly wouldn't have though to build the geofencing feature, so that the reminder would actually fire as your car pulled back from the driveway.
But we'll know in a month, when Google adds it (I'm giving them a bit of extra time since it only takes "days".)
Siri is nothing new, Android has had similar apps out, VLINGO for one is just as capable as Siri!
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
MOD PARENT UP!!!
In addition to the usual Voice Search and Voice Control tools I have on my android phone 4 (!) tools that do pretty much what Siri does:
- Iris
- Speaktoit Assistant
- EVA Intern
- Pocket Blonde
AFAIK all but one were around before Siri.
So where exactly is the "2 year advantage"?
and is more perfected, works on any language, there are programs that use dragon to auto translate languages in real time.
there is also dragon dictate software, for doing normal dictation as well as controlling your pc.
I was using Dragon naturally speaking in the 90's to remote control my television on my media center pc without need for remote.
that apple article is 100% lies and propaganda, as there have been voice control software since the 90's and dragon is the #1 voice software on the planet and the oldest.
Dragon voice recognition > anything apple has
Next on Slashdot, Siri is tracking your every word spoken while using it!!
Why does Siri point to Google when it doesn't know the answer to a question? Theoretically, if Google were to buy SpeaktoIt and integrate it with their software, they would trump Siri in no time, Siri is relatively new at searching and also uses Google. Google could play dirty and say don't point to our site through your software. Google could also integrate their Software with the years of data they have from their search engine.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
So what if Siri is just now starting to collect speech recognition data for Apple? Google has been doing it for years with Google Voice. All of the calls that it handles and voicemails it transcribes give Google a huge amount of voice data. When you include that along with voice/context data that it may get from Google Voice Search and context data it gets from regular Google searches, I don't know that Apple really has a "two year" advantage.
I was going to say the same thing... I have the Samsung Epic, a 1 year old phone... And it fully supports Voice commands and Voice Searching via google. I can write emails and texts via voice as well... Shouldnt the article really say, Apple had to buy another company to get where Google was last year?
Recognized by...? By his own glance into the mirror? Read his background. Looks like an accomplished VC and a good businessman, but unless his bio forgot to mention any possible connection in any fashion to AI, he seems to have no tangible technical experience with it. On that basis he's a recognized authority?
Just more proof of what you can get published these days without regard to the facts.
what Apple does?
That's the point I was trying to make. There are all these crazy conspiracy theories about how Apple is using Siri to listen in to all your conversations and thus somehow rule the world--but the same people never fabricate those kinds of conspiracies around all the snooping that Google does.
He posted via voice recognition.
Yet an obvious PR shill article/summary like this one attracts over 500 comments, most of them smacking of way too much defensiveness.
Hint: your platform has won when you can simply roll your eyes at a PR shill and move on, without even feeling the compulsion to comment on it. No serious Apple fan is going to come to the defense of this one, so just who are you arguing with, or trying to convince, anyways?
Clever of Apple to buy this technology to prevent it from landing on Android and other competitors' mobile platforms, which is where it was heading before Apple bought Siri.
I see a lot of comments along the lines "Google [or we] already did that with X! Well close. We are missing Y and Z but that is nothing. So XYZ already is Siri!" Doesn't work that way. Almost only counts in horsegrendades and handshoes. Mixing the missing pieces together are not trivial. If they were, someone would have done it already.
Who is more foolish looking? The person making an aside to their assistant or the person slavishly looking at their phone and ignoring everything else around them? I think Microsoft made a commercial along those lines. Like some others pointed out, it looks different now, but soon it will be natural.
The fact of the matter is for a lot of people this will work. Being able to tell Siri that Mary is your wife and it storing that relationship in your contacts and then using that later casually is a big thing. Most people wouldn't even know how to relate Mary to themselves as their wife in contacts. And why should they when they are the only one that could use the information. But now that Siri can use that information, it is more useful.
It is the integration into the apps that gives Siri real power. It's not just a search engine. Its not just voice activation. It is not just semantic recognition. It is a synthesis of all those things and the sum is greater than the parts.
So what they're admitting is, no Siri-like system existed on Android before Apple (re-)released it?
I use google search bar to say "navigate to 123 orchard st" or "navigate to joes pizza" and the voice navigation on Android takes me there. Siri can't do this... at least it can't talk back to me to help me navigate? This is my killer app.
Who is two years behind?
Now with Siri, they've caught up. 2 year advantage just like they said. Now as for the Google killer comment, has anyone checked to see the response when you ask, "Siri, will you kill Google for me?" I'm a little afraid.
....business model. I would never use it. There will always be opposition to any form of control system such as Apple's. The real data on Apple's model is coming out and aside from the fewest of app developers, Apple is the only one profiting off their app store model. I don't particularly like computer jails. If I want to install malware or fart apps or pay $1000 for an animated diamond ring wallpaper, that should be my choice not theirs. Lo and behold, I can do just that on nearly any non-Apple system. Capitalism affords us that benefit so there will always be that choice. As long as Apple wardens a jail, there will be competitors that will feed off consumers' distaste for being treated like criminals.
PS: How much more innovation would there be within even the iOS platform, if these crack hackers didn't spend all their time and effort trying solely to dismantle an Orwellian system that shouldn't exist to begin with.
I don't want to talk to my phone, damnit. I barely even make actual phone calls on it. But even if you can get really good speech recognition, I don't want everyone around me getting a running commentary on what I'm doing with my phone.
Depends on what you consider Siri-like. Seems like they were quite a few things that would do things based on what you tell them. At the very least all the components were in place, 8 hours would mean it's mostly glue code.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I met someone months ago who liked using Google Voice Search on his smartphone. He said the best thing about it was that he didn't have to use the small screen keyboard on his phone. I wouldn't underestimate this as a motive for usage, if it's faster and easier to do it this way, people will use it. My tablet had come with it preinstalled, with a microphone button on the top left, but I never bothered with it until I met him, after I did I tried it out and it worked well. I myself don't use it regularly, if I'm showing the tablet to someone I might show them it can do that, but I haven't used it much otherwise.
I don't see this as an Android killer at all. Today you can download various Android apps, including Google Voice, that can perform tasks by voice activation and recognition. Even if Siri is superior to them, and maybe it is currently, they're good enough in the time being for most people.
Apple's Google+.
So Dragon can't be any better at speech.
On top of that, you have the recognition of meaning, not just mapping keywords onto commands. This is like Watson on Jeopardy kind of stuff, done in Apple's datacenters, not on the phone, and learning more with each request. It even learns from the current user, personalizing itself.
nah it's probably lisp not C
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
All the components may have existed separately, but more than a few comments said that the result after 8 hours was something they installed and deleted five minutes later because it was nowhere near usable (the authors themselves said it was alpha).
To use a car analogy, it sounds like the 8-hour solution is a cobbled-together car with parts from different manufacturers. It might technically be drivable, but the parts don't fit together right, doesn't drive well, and isn't comfortable to be in. A car geek might love it for its technical ingenuity, but ordinary people won't go near it.
The fact that half a month after this "8 hour hackathon", they're still working on it to make it close to seamless and usable as Siri, indicates it's a lot more than just glue code.
Not sure I want to talk to my phone. More importantly I don't want to _have_ to be on the network to allow some app to always be connected. BTW: Siri users experienced a nice little outage today. http://venturebeat.com/2011/11/03/siri-outage/
Why Siri? The answer is similar to the one I gave my computer teacher, who upon learning that I was the proud owner of an IBM PC (4.77 mhz) with a CGA screen (display 4 colors out of a palette of 16) asked me "WHY did you get a COLOR Monitor? More than 80% of the world's computer programs are written in monochrome." Some people will not adopt voice control because they don't believe it is fully mature, others will not because that's not the way they done things in the past.
In the future, kids will be saying "like, what's an onscreen keyboard?" and we will be saying "in my day son..."
Most of the research that forms the basis for Siri was done as part of the DARPA Calo project:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO
The technology used in Siri is mainstream and Google has lots of experts working on those areas. Few or the people involved at that are now at Apple. There are probably more ex-Calo contributors at Google than at Apple.
It seems like Apple shills are busy talking up their investments; Morgenthaler was involved in the Siri spin-out and probably has lots of Apple stock now.
I Bing it.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
My Android phone with Google Nav gets my spoken directions right about 95% of the time (1 in 20 failure rate). My wife's iPhone w/ Siri has yet to send us to the correct location (100% failure rate).
Siri is disappointing at best.
Really? I have to at best guess that this is just product placement crap. Otherwise the "researcher" in questio really needs to have his college diploma revoked. Heck, My T-Mobile 3G Slide had voice-driven functionality out the box, matter of fact, it has a dedicated hardware button for it. I also have vlingo installed, and have even tried Iris. which was developed in 8 HOURS, after the big huge Siri "Launch". yeah, sorry, advertising that you are first-to-field with a feature other phones have had for years just seems disingenuous.
Co-worker asked Siri "Where is the best spot to bury a body?" It provided a list of local graveyards and (the weird part) local parks! More interesting was the funny look when I asked her "Why did you ask that?" It you don't hear from in a few da.... ahhhH!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
It's, what, maybe two years old?
The Siri guys have been working on this stuff as a dedicated project since at least 2003. And it leverages Dragon speech recognition technology, which has been in the works since the 80s.
More like 2 years behind. Google Voice has been analyzing and translating messages since 2009.
Apple had a pretty slow last quarter due to everyone waiting to buy the newer model iPhone.
I'd say there is only one real reason to care about marketshare now. You're worried about the future of the platform and the support of developers. Both Apple and Samsung are pretty solid in the phone industry, so neither of them is going away.
Neither Apple nor Android are going to die any time soon and both platforms have a critical mass of developers, so it's a non-issue for the forseeable future regardless of who has the higher marketshare.
Even as an investor I wouldn't care about marketshare. Apple was raking in the majority of smartphone profits while Nokia and RIM were the undisputed kings of marketshare.
Funny, I remember Jobs saying he'd be happy if his new phone caught 1% of the smartphone market, and people like Ballmer and Dvorak who said it would be a failure. Now look where we are.
It doesn't work with many accents, so how has it cracked the code?
Example: New Zealand is not expecting to get Siri enabled when they buy their Iphone 4s (not that you can at the moment, few more months away).
The only problem with that hypothesis is that Apple refuses to adopt 4G. I don't know about you, but I would rather have fast internet, than fancy speech recognition.
It would be a shame if Google wasted the next two years trying to imitate siri.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
Obviously Caps Lock was not working OR ELSE IT WOULD LOOK LIKE THIS!!! And holding down the shift key is too tiring...
I don't want a bi-directional conversation with a hand-held device. I want a uni-directional channel to issue commands and get results. Android has this.
it should be fairly easy for Google to duplicate everything Siri does just by adding a little additional code. It would take them days, not years. I love how the author doesn't know jack about anything.
Agreed, I don't see anything magical coming out of Siri other than Apple marketing. Google has been collecting voice data for years now and will probably turn out something even more advanced that actually understands accents. Given some decent voice recognition I could churn out the rest of the "Siri" code in a few days. Hurray for keyword tables. ;)
Sigs are bad for you...
I receive google news alerts in gmail from google that are always marked as spam.
Even when i've marked them as not spam more than 100 times, they continue to be flagged as spam. Same for gmail password resets.
WTF is that, artificial ignorance? If their voice recognition is engineered like their spam recognition, Apple's gonna eat their lunch.
At google, does PhD stand for "pointy headed developers"?
Ask Me About... The 80's!
Widgets have given Android a 10 year advantage.
Because it's such a prominent feature on Android, Apple doesn't want to copy it - that's why you'll never see non-jailbroken iOS devices running widgets on the home screen. You read it here first.
I just can't understand why when apple proposes a product, the need for that product suddenly increases.
No one needs a stupid talking AI in his pocket.
Does everyone take out their phones and talk to it in the middle of street, class, work or else?
People use it just for fun only when they are alone or with some friends.
It really helps little to make life easier.
> Apple now has at least a two-year advantage over Google in the war for best smartphone platform.
In late 1945 the USA had at least 20 years of advantage over the USSR in nuclear weapons technology. That was what the Pentagon said, no less. Then one day in 1949, somewhere in Siberia, the "Joe 1" A-bomb went off and swept away the american dreams of nuclear-backed world dominance.
Based on historical analogy, I will give Apple like 4-5 months, before Google adds HAL-9000 to Android.
Assuming this were true and that Apple will be able to collect voice data for training Siri, my guess is that Google has been ahead of them for more than 5 years with Google Voice's voice to text. That means that they already have more voice training samples for their voice recognition system. [FAIL]
-Dickens
1) Siri is just a stupid toy and not that important.
2) Android had it first and it was almost as good a Siri, but nobody cared because Android is just a mom and pop shop with no money to advertise and build up hype.
I'm pretty sure that it wasn't a case of "oops we forgot the Netherlands" in Palo Alto -- more, "let's do this right for the US, our largest market, and then roll out elsewhere when we've got sufficient resource"
Sure, voice interaction with electronics is helpful in certain instances (i.e. while driving) and for a very limited number of tasks, but most of a smartphone's capabilities can only be utilized with a combination of audible/visual/tactile input and output. As many of you have pointed out, Siri or any similar technology does not allow for complete audio-only interaction with the device. I cannot see why a far-from-perfect voice recognition app would tip the scales so drastically for Apple and for so long. Besides, Siri and related technology incourage laziness and ignorance. One should not substitute merely talking about something for actually doing it. Soon Apple cultists won't be able to read and write: Siri will handle everything for them so they can focus on important stuff, like giving Apple more money and surrendering their freedom.
Anonymosity - Combination of Anonymity and Animosity. (A seriously angry man with no face or a very angry Anonymous Coward).
He's using Siri, obviously.
Is 1563649 a prime number?