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Comment by siglesias | Hacker News Reader

Let's keep in mind here that one of Siri's core strengths, and why it must be a system level service, is that it can delegate queries to apps and 3rd party APIs. As impressive as Google's Voice Search is, it cannot execute tasks for users (reminders, setting appointments, sending messages) and, what's more, it would probably be a huge security to hole to let it access apps, the data of those apps, and execute code. This is the job of the OS. So let's be cautious about trumpeting this as a Siri replacement. At best it's a Nuance or Wolfram Alpha replacement.

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> This is the job of the OS.

No, Apple has made it a job of the OS. There's absolutely nothing fundamental to the problem that makes it a job of the OS.

This is true up to a point. To my understanding, in a sandboxed environment a third party AI can only work if it is incapable of choosing which application should execute the intents. All it can do is determine the intent and pass it along to the OS, which then presents the user with a confirmation or, in the case of multiple apps receiving the intent, a tiebreaking interface.

A possible workaround would be a cumbersome two-way permissions system ("can app X access app Y?" [and, for purposes of apps asking the AI to ask follow-up questions] "can app Y access app X?", ad nauseam), but this is something of an impractical solution, because the AI would need to be granted permission every time the user installs a new app to access that app.

So yes, Apple makes it the job of the OS. This is a design compromise that mitigates the risk that the user is overburdened with confirmation dialogs, choice dialogs, and/or permission dialogs. And for an AI that just works, I would say this is pretty key.

Android has a centralised 'account' system, to access things like twitter, facebook, gmail etc. These can be used for applications to connect to these services. Android also provides permissions for accessing contacts, call logs, calendars and latitude. So in some sense, Google have had to make Android do this as well, but it would be hard to do it with the way iOS currently works.

As others have hinted, Android already enables this via intents. Google Now doesn't even have to be aware of the app you want to use to handle a specific action. For example, it just has to fire off a "schedule an event" intent, and Android will route that to your preferred schedule management app. There is no security hole here - it's simple event firing and consumption, except it happens across apps. Security is handled by allowing the user to select which app they want to consume the event, and annoyance is mitigated by allowing users to specify that the selected app should always be used as the default. It's a marvelous system, and is one of the design decisions that, IMO, makes Android a massively more powerful platform than iOS.

Siri must be system-level because Apple has prevented other apps from being capable of assuming system default roles. It is an effect of iOS's design, not an inherent flaw in mobile OSes.

I responded to a similar objection here, same thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4719725

That's what Intents are for. You can have intents that can talk between different applications in a standard format.

Security is just an excuse for not wanting to try and enable this.

>>Security is just an excuse

Not when it comes to giving Google access to my personal data.

But it _could_ issue reminders, set appointments, and send messages if channeled through google's servers couldn't it? I'm sure there are many iOS users like myself who point the default apps at Google's calendars and mail. If the app calls back to google and says "put x on calendar for authenticated user y" then it would show up in the iOS apps.

From my basic understanding of Android it could just use an intent to at least pre-fill some forms with it.

This is exactly how I feel, there is no comparison, Siri is king of the hill for an Engineer like me. I use it all the time (in very noisy environments think power plant levels of noise) to set appointments, countdown timers/alarms, dictating texts, opening applications (as well as playing songs or other content) and asking it Engineering calculations with the help of Wolfram Alpha integration. Google's attempt can barely understand me at times and is useless in every other sense.

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