Apple Reveals Siri Voice Interface: The “Intelligent Assistant”
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
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.
[Ha-ha, just some good-natured ribbing, folks, please go easy with the downvotes.]
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.
It's also another way that Apple drives upgrades in the high end: by making the old model look old and dated.
And it's a pretty old model. I agree with you that's a beautiful piece of hardware, and I think it looks better than any of the other models, and better than any of the 'teardrop' mockups. But it's already been in the market for, what, 16 months? If they don't have another refresh until next year, that's a pretty long time to have one chassis.
Counterpoint: Movado Museum Watch[1]. Latest fashion goes out of style. Great design becomes timeless[2] because it's not "simply an adjective to place in front of a product’s name to somehow artificially enhance its value."[3]
1. http://www.amazon.com/Movado-606085-Museum-Black-Leather/dp/...
2. http://garry.posterous.com/dieter-rams-his-first-braun-desig...
3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/8555503/Dieter-R...
Tongue firmly in cheek example:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2039931/Jamie-L...
You're right about the internals, but this discussion was about external design cues. Even so, to the casual user (the majority), software use on iPhone 4 will not be "considerably less functional" than on the iPhone 4S so in this case an external cue would not signal any particularly important functional change.
I also object to that remark attributed to Apple, the computer or smartphone company with the longest model design life cycles.
The vigorous aftermarket for Apple's supposedly "old and dated" models would also suggest demand for Apple's products isn't based on design obsolescence or design cues.
There will be people who upgrade as a signal, but I attribute that to those buyers, not to Apple, whose design innovations seem largely in pursuit of more usable, durable, or lasting product.
But I wasn't making a value judgment. I think it's a perfectly legitimate way to drive desire/demand.
I also think that long model design life cycles are carefully calculated to create desire as well as create a great product.
My 2011 Macbook Pro 15.4 looks remarkably similar to my old 2006 Power PC Powerbook. The 3GS is one of the best selling smart phones on market even though the form factor was set introduced in 2008. There was some compelling analysis a few months ago that made a compelling case that iPhone 4 sales were constrained by the ability to manufacture them.
Laptops are a different market. You have your phone on you all the time so it works much better as a signaling device, and it's only ~$200 to upgrade.
The 3GS sells well at least in part because it's less expensive. The ones you're targeting with design obsolescence are the high end who will pay again for the high end.
I've already seen comments around here to the effect of: "Hm, just an internal spec refresh. Guess I can wait until the iPhone 5."
"Next year" is only 8 months this time around. The 3G chassis lasted exactly the same duration, and they're using the 2 year operator contract renewal as their clock: tick for design, tock for specs.
Apple is very good at making you feel like you are using an obsolete piece of equipment.
On the other hand, they release iOS5 around the time the 3-year contracts for the 3G expire, so it's a good bit of planning (or coincidence) on their part.
You should see the PowerMac/Mac Pros...
MacBook Pro. Mac Pro.
My father bought an Ipad 2 the other day, no real reason apart from they 'are good for browsing email'.
If you notice Apple's design timeline they keep the same design for a number of iterations on a product. If they were still about the exclusivity marketing game they would be releasing new colours and names and designs every year.
I sitll think they missed a trick on the iPad 3. They should have done that instead of the ipod touch.
The 4S thing didn't surprise me too much. This keeps consistant with what they did with the 3G -> 3GS transition. For someone like me, who has an iPhone 4, I don't feel the need to upgrade out of contract, but will likely upgrade when the iPhone 5 comes out next year. Doing a major revision every two years makes sense given the way mobile contracts work.
> For Siri, how many of us will actually use it day to day in the office or commute?
I would definitely use it while driving. It's not hard to take a quick glance and read something while driving (I know, it's still bad) but it's significantly harder to try and type something in, which requires a lot more concentration and is much more dangerous. The flip side is that I'd probably use my phone more when driving, which is not good. Maybe it's like the seat belt thing, where the seat belt gave people enough sense of security to drive more recklessly than they had when seat belts were not a requirement for manufacturers.
> Personally, I was hoping for a new ipad 3 with retina.
Given the title of the event, expecting a new iPad was a bit of a stretch!
My wife has been using voice input on her low-end Android device ($150 with no contract) for months now, and she uses it pretty much every time she needs to navigate somewhere -- it's that good. I've also seen her use it for search -- general search and "Mexican restaurants near me" map search. It's fast, and it's pretty good at understanding what you're saying.
It's a cool feature, but the most compelling use cases are search related -- and Android has those nailed.
It's actually a very hard technical problem to create software that not only parses the user's intention, but can intelligently prompt for follow-ups. Google has many of the individual pieces of technology, but making it all fit together, with a good interface, is still hard work that takes time. That's probably why it took Apple 1.5 years to go from the Siri acquisition to the announcement today.
They are similar services, but Apple seems to have a greater variety of intents that it recognizes.
if it works the way it says on the box -- and remember, Apple already released Voice Control, which has a less-than-stellar reputation -- then it could be revolutionary. voice recognition often doesn't.
Another reason to hope is that Siri had 19 people when Apple acquired it and most of them are still at Apple. I would imagine that Apple scaled their team significantly. Who knows? Maybe 100 engineers working on it, since it's a cornerstone of the next generation of mobile devices (and probably coming to desktop in the near future too). But Google doesn't seem to have the same priority on natural language processing as Apple does cause more than 50% of Apple's revenue comes from the iPhone. How many engineers at Google are working on voice recognition and natural language processing? Maybe somebody here will know. Maybe max 10 engineers?
Apple also will be forced to scale Siri across multiple languages very quickly, especially if it works well. Currently they have English, French and German. But tons of people will want it, so that motivates Apple to innovate even more.
I guess we'll see very soon how good Siri on the iPhone 4s really is.
speech recognition maps a space of waveforms onto a space of utterances in a language. determining user intent maps that utterance onto the space of actions.
Siri has done great things in the field of the latter; they license their technology for doing the former from another company.
Google also has offered "special" search results for a while, such as evaluating calculations or exchange rates on the fly. I don't think what Siri does is more advanced than that. It is a nice touch to integrate it more deeply into the OS, like "get me home" - but then that is also just one button with a popular Android app (Öffi for example).
Google Calendar also does some "real text parsing" afaik.
Can't really think about a more complicated example atm. OK maybe "set up a dinner with Doug and Sandy, where Doug is a vegan and Sandy doesn't like to go farther than 2 km from her home" - can Siri parse that and pick a suitable restaurant?
I need some ideas for birthday presents for my child, can Siri help?
Apple earns about 50% of the profit in mobile handsets, a share that is trending upwards.
This number is just relevant for apples wallet, but what matters in the long term are market share and being technical superior.
Nokia and RIM had also very neat numbers some years ago.
Exactly. Apple has not been a status symbol or part of the counter culture for YEARS.
If they have questions any other iPhone owner is a potential support person. If they get some Android phone they either contact me, need to find someone else with the same phone or someone who is willing to learn the UI shell of a given vendor and where things are on that device.
None of this has anything to do with status symbols. The last person I recommended an iPhone to was a retired police officer who wanted something to get information on but did not want to deal maintenance like a regular computer.
After talking to him about the different approaches, including how iPhones prohibit you from doing things that are possible on Android, he was confused why he should care about not being able to do those things. He didn't want to validate permissions of applications when installing them, he just wanted them to not screw up his phone.
He was more than happy to give up some freedoms that he may never have used in order for someone else to try and protect him from malicious apps or to have everything "just work." I can't see that ever going out of style with people that could care less about underlying technology.
-- Andy Warhol
I don't think Apple's goal with iPhone is to make you want it because it's exclusive; you're supposed to want it because it's good.
The Macintosh ended up as more an exclusive, niche product, but with later products Apple has moved away from that as a market strategy.
The huge profits come from a overpriced product, Coke makes his profits from a clearly distinctive product in huge amounts. You have to explain a customer why it is worth to pay a huge bonus for a similar product. Coke lost this status symbol and is now cheap since Red Bull became the next cool thing.
Apple is incredibly good in sustaining a premium image with new versions etc. That is what the high profit margins come from today, i just don't believe that this holds on forever.
Apple wants you to believe that they are the "best" not good, everything they do is dependent on that promise. When the regular people don't believe that any more they have a problem.
Your edit ends with "They are toast". Seems like obvious flamebait, and is only going to attract more downvotes.
When Android return[1] rates[2] drop below 10%, then we'll talk.
1. http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/26/androids-dirty-secret-shipp...
Its another thing that People don't know about it because of Microsoft's poor image and marketing.
The reason at least I don't use voice commands is because I feel stupid doing it if the phone does not understand me in the first attempt. I haven't used Siri myself. I use windows phone and it has damn good voice menu system. But I still don't feel comfortable enough to use it.
Android and Siri. Android does well, yes, but Google's financial success has not yet been shown to be correlated with Android shipments (look at the stock performance over the last two years for evidence). In some interesting instances competitors (Baidu and Amazon) have gutted Android to be used against them. Every query that is performed on Siri is routed to services that are NOT search, which is where Google makes its money. Why Google would invest money in implementing mobile services that route computing away from the web is beyond me. It isn't in their interest. Joe Hewitt made this observation before too. So while yes, Google might be technically capable of adding voice assistant, it isn't clear how that leads to increased profits for them. Feature parity is the wrong way to think about the Apple Google relationship.
It scares me that Google is looking more like the "New Microsoft" scared of everything that everyone does and trying to get their hands at everything.
Many have a problem with what Apple because it's trying to normalizing sharecropping in the software development world. I have to give them a 30% cut if I want to sell software for their hardware. I have to pay them $99/year just to put applications I've written on my own hardware (effectively subscribing to use my own hardware). If I write an application they want to compete with they have the power to make my application unavailable on their device. If I write an application they somehow find distasteful or politically controversial they can make it disappear. Microsoft is following Apple's lead. Why would I want to support either of them instead of an alternative like Android?
http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/i-think-your-app-should...
This is clearly a value proposition offered by apple. Some people don't mind the closed system, and opaque rules.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2009/11/12/apples-rejection-i...
It's not reasonable for a hardware provider to dictate how I use my hardware.
Right, if you build something and Target puts it in their store you think they don't take a cut or doesn't take it out of the store if it crosses taste lines? Is that "sharecropping in the retail world"? Sorry no, that is just how business works.
Lady Gaga didn't become a big hit because she is the most talented artist and pressed her own CDs and kept 100% of the profits. She became a big hit because she signed a deal that gave 10% of her profits to her agent who got her another deal where she signed away another 70%+ of income to a company that got her the best beatmakers in the world and put her songs on the radio every hour.
Analogously, Apple has put a store together that brings tens of millions of paying customers right to your app's doorstep and makes it super easy for them to buy it. The deal they're offering is that they take 30% to cover expenses (customer service, servers, etc.) and as a finder's fee. If you don't like that deal you're free to say no but plenty of other people have said yes. Very few big software houses develop for Android but not iOS and very few develop apps for Android before iOS despite the market share disparity. Clearly they see Apple's deal as a lucrative investment and not sharecropping.
Even the Bonjour chat is open - just XMPP with ZeroConf discovery.
To say that iChat is 'totally walled garden' betrays a deep lack of understanding of the software being discussed.
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.
By focusing exclusively on the newest model, they can maximize the power of the feature.
Google has taken a different approach, where your voice sample is uploaded to a Google server, processed, and downloaded back to the device. This takes less CPU power but is also far less accurate, as the voice sample must be very low quality to have a quick response time from Google's server.
Apple/Siri are taking the approach that high quality voice recognition must be done on device in order to provide the level of performance and accuracy that voice recognition requires. I think we will find that Siri actually works and doesn't have as many errors as Google's voicemail transcription.
This is the reason for requiring iPhone 4S.
This takes less CPU power but is also far less accurate,
as the voice sample must be very low quality to have a
quick response time from Google's server.
Voice compresses nicely. Turns out we humans aren't capable of making such varied sound that it can't compress. Our mouth holes are ancient technology.
In practice, I'm in love with Google's voice capabilities. It seems to understand context. Its crazy how accurate it is. I often tease my iphone friends with it. I'm also highly skeptical that an application on a phone can outdo google's massive libraries and server infrastructure. If anything, I'd expect the Apple voice to be worse. Regardless, I can't wait to see this stuff in action. A war for the best voice recognition would be great right now as its been a patent blocked and ignored field for the most part.
The rumor is that Apple is sending the audio to Nuance servers, i.e., they're doing cloud-based speech recognition.
I tried Google Voice Actions on my Nexus One quite a while ago, but it was optimised for the US market. The accuracy for me was so bad that I didn't bother with it.
Then recently, a Google blog on RSS said the latest app had been optimised for my locale. Now, of course, it's spookily accurate.
You can't beat your algorithms in the cloud being bombarded with sample data round the clock.
The post got pretty popular on HN and I had 5 key questions/predictions, feel free to read all the details (and lots of quotes I transcribed straight from Gruber's video) but now I'll summarize my thoughts quickly below:
1. Very few languages for Siri (where's Spanish?)
2. No API announced for developers to add tasks to Siri
3. It's still named...Siri? What happened to Assistant? I guess it is quicker to say in practice...
4. Siri's in BETA? Is this the first time Apple's released a major iPhone feature with a beta sticker?
5. No payments integration with Siri mentioned. Can it buy stuff for me? as Gruber talked about in 2008?
6. No Facebook partnership for social knowledge on Siri, or even iPad app.
Particularly as they did just advertise that they added a custom ISP for the camera. I'd be surprised if they wouldn't go to similar lengths for the voice assistant.
EDIT : I believe > 1 src is needed for fighting noise so you sample the same audio from 2 locations and can distinguish between multiple audio sources in the input signal. This seemed to be one of the selling points of the mic array in the kinect
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?
Slippery slope, man. Easy to forget there are a billion others you haven't met yet.
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.
The 3GS is now free with a contract, just like the low-end Android phones.
It's great that small carriers are offering some great deals to lure customers and it's great that there are some cracks in the system for the tiny minority that doesn't want a data plan (or whatever) sbut that doesn't change the basic truth that nearly everyone is going to be paying for phone and data every month anyway.
These "total cost of ownership is obscene" things are always disingenuous to me. No, that's the price of the phone and phone service and a data plan for 2 years.
I think this thread is about the cost of ownership of a "free with contact" iPhone 3GS vs. alternatives, targeted at the low end. I think that's a significant difference for this market. You disagree?
I would guess the median low end Android buyer signs up with Verizon and gets the same data plan choices they would if they have an iphone.
I guess to me, the way bundling works, referring to the $1500 cost of ownership as the low-end as opposed to the $1700 cost of ownership seems wrong. That's what the carrier's want you to think, of course, that the only choice is between this "free" phone with the expensive plan and this "high-end" phone with the expensive plan.
But the real low-end is to get away from the expensive plan. And now that there are Android phones that are $250 off contract that are actually quite good, I think this true low-end becomes a viable option for a lot of people, esp. that portion of the market that hasn't yet converted to smart phones.
Could certainly be wrong.
Do we really need a bunch of people walking around talking to their phones without even having someone on the other end?
[Edit: I just tried it on my lunch break. Felt very awkward. Different strokes, I guess.]
I would feel less awkward saying "Hey Siri, what's the weather going to be like tomorrow?" into my phone than "WEATHER. TOMORROW."
If I'm at home, I feel less silly giving commands like "WEATHER. TOMORROW." I guess because I don't want to feel like I'm talking to something that's not human as if it's human? I'm not sure.
If I'm out and about, I want to use natural conversation so I don't look like an idiot, but would still feel internally strange, I guess for the reason above.
It may just be a matter of socializing the behavior enough for it to be acceptable. Maybe I won't feel as weird if everyone does it all the time.
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.
I'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.
It's not unlike the line between what Google does and what Wolfram Alpha does.
but yeah, the reminders stuff in particular is a cool new realm for voice control.
Also, I'd like to give a shoutout to the folks developing Tecla ( 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
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!
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.
"Computer, make me a coffee." See? It's okay.
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.
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".
Especially so if you happen to be Scottish and stuck in an elevator: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ
Also, kids are much less set in their ways, and would grow up thinking talking to computers is completely normal and not give a second thought.
[1] Try this: The next time you're standing somewhere with nothing in your hands (maybe in line, or waiting for a bus), just stand up straight, feet parallel, arms hanging by your side. I started doing this and it felt so strange; I badly wanted to put my hands in my pockets, or cross my arms, or shift onto one foot. I have no idea why. But after a day or two of it, now it feels normal, and, in fact, better than it felt to stand with hands in pockets before.
[2] Or try this: If you order something from Starbucks or McDonald's or whatever, mix up your standard phrase. I used to always order, "Can I get a..." and now say "I would like ... please". That, too, was very strange to me, but now feels normal.
So basically, little things can feel awkward, but that goes away with remarkably little experience pushing through the awkwardness.
And even for ordinary writing, the keyboard is the most efficient thought-to-written-language medium invented. Especially when paired with even the most basic text editing features of a computer. Speaking is far more tiring, especially when you're sick, and makes it far less convenient to edit and rewrite than traditional text editing does.
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
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.
If not are there alternatives to Siri that app developers can use that behaves the same but open for hacking?
How much quicker is it ask those questions, rather than navigate to the App, input the info? Lots!
Let's compare the iPhone 4's 5MP camera to the "8MP!!!" Androids.
I imagine Apple will be approximately the same.