If I understand correctly, the have taught Siri nothing. What you see is task list synchronization between the iPhone and RTM.
You talk to Siri -> Siri creates a task -> Task is synced to RTM
You talk to Siri -> Siri creates a task -> Task is synced to RTM
There are myriad things to praise about this community, to be certain, but the only place with a bigger stick up its collective ass is Wikipedia.
But, because of Siri's architecture, telling a forum of hackers that you've "taught it" to do something is a wildly different thing.
Hackers click that headline because they're interested in the possibility space where you can integrate arbitrary third party apps.
And when they discover that your headline is a semantic game --that the implicit promise of the headline is a lie-- I don't know how you could expect anything other than complaints.
But then I thought about it, and isn't this also an example of a hack in it's purest sense?
When I clicked on the link I realized it has not much to do with Siri and is just about synching other iPhone apps.
Last time I checked, there was nothing sticking up my ass, but I do come to HN because it is different from Lifehacker, BusinessInsider or HuffPo. Nevertheless I do have to admit that it is a brilliant marketing move. They even started a heated discussion on HN :-)
So to extend my comment from a hacker perspective I felt tricked.
From the perspective of an online marketer I have to admit it is a brilliant move.
> the have taught Siri nothing.
Not that having some jackass (me) be the arbiter of what's a nice way to say things is any improvement either, but I'm just saying.
Slashdot
That title implies a number of things. Personally, I read it and thought "RTM managed to jailbreak Siri and teach it how to interact with a third-party API!!"
That was a very disappointing click-through because that's one misleading title, dude.
After: Siri sends tasks to RTM.
Seems pretty reasonable to me. Is your quibble with the word "taught"? That seems pretty minor.
They aren't claiming to have taught Siri to add events... They're claiming to have integrated with RTM.
I suspect there might be an issue with having a calendar AND a task list both, though... Like, you can't.
From the article: "we had to teach Siri to add tasks to Remember The Milk [...] and we're super excited to announce that we've done just that!"
If you leave out that bit, then you're correct, they were claiming they taught Siri to add events. But that bit is important.
While technically they haven't "taught" anything, I think you're also blowing it out of proportion.
Its a creative hack, clean to setup, and useful for their users.