Apple Job Listing Suggests Siri Coming in 9 More Languages

[carlemil]

Originally Posted by apolkowski

It sound like a joke. Danish, Finnish, Norwegian. Why not Polish and Russian? If you count all Danish, Finns, Swedes and Norwegians, you will have them as much as or less than Poles.How can you count on boosting markets if you ignore them? Releasing products without major functions causes consumers to turn back and look for alternatives.
Dear Apple, there IS a world outside of old EU, US or China. And this world is full of potential customers. Do not ignore them!

Because the nordic countries are much richer, and the apple adoption rate is insane compared to the rest of europe.

Really looking forward to a danish siri! :-)

[Doctor Q]

Originally Posted by apolkowski

It sound like a joke. Danish, Finnish, Norwegian. Why not Polish and Russian? If you count all Danish, Finns, Swedes and Norwegians, you will have them as much as or less than Poles.How can you count on boosting markets if you ignore them? Releasing products without major functions causes consumers to turn back and look for alternatives.
Dear Apple, there IS a world outside of old EU, US or China. And this world is full of potential customers. Do not ignore them!

You've made the assumption that Apple doesn't already have any in-house language expertise. The languages for which they are posting a job listing may not cover their entire list of targeted languages.

[Ballis]

Originally Posted by carlemil

Really looking forward to a danish siri! :-)

Well danish sounds like a joke. U can hardly teach the natives the language, much less a computer.

The Danish Language

[mjtomlin]

Originally Posted by ps45

Ah that explains why Siri works no better than a college project. It's been knocked together by a motley crew of temporary interns who are just passing through while hoping to be snapped up by Google or someone, and given a proper job. Stop these joke internships... job creators my ass.

Ignorance.

Interns are usually students looking to gain some experience before graduating. More than likely most of the good ones will be offered to work at Apple once they graduate. Internships are extremely invaluable to these inexperienced people as a way to prove themselves. These people also tend to be more inclined to work much harder and have fresh points-of-view, then say someone just looking for a paycheck.

By the way, Siri came out of a DARPA project at the Stanford Research Institute. And apparently all that is involved with the technology is way over your head if you think it's "no better than a college project".

Siri is a comprehension system that is being built to understand language, communication, and interaction (conversation). It's not simply voice commands, dictation, and voice search, which has been around for decades now.

[Mactendo]

Originally Posted by BeachChair

Probably more Apple customers in Scandinavia than in either Russia or Poland.

Highly doubtful there're more Apple customers in 5 mln Finland than in 140 mln Russia. Plus Russia is the second fastest growing market (after Japan) in terms of App Store revenue.

[carlemil]

Originally Posted by Ballis

Well danish sounds like a joke. U can hardly teach the natives the language, much less a computer.

The Danish Language

Are you serious?

[Ballis]

its a joke. Did you not watch the video? Im sorry if I offended you.

[SamGabbay]

"Must work well with people"

Boom! Jab at Forstall

[carlemil]

Originally Posted by Ballis

its a joke. Did you not watch the video? Im sorry if I offended you.

Yeah, okay. had to view the video first

Quick to react, pretty slow to perceive

[mjtomlin]

Originally Posted by mazz0

I think Siri would be better improved by handling more processing locally, on the device. It could still send it off over the Internet, but only bother waiting for the response if it can't process it locally.

The databases required for storing data based on language comprehension is probably massive. There are so many different intonations, inflections, enunciations, accents, use of slang, context, etc.

In human communication, even if we don't hear a word correctly, we can still make an intelligent guess what it was by the context in which it was said. Not only that, we can take a fairly vague statement and turn into something meaningful within the context of the conversation.

Before Siri, iOS had "Voice Commands" that was a local system - more than likely a port of OS X's PlainTalk to iOS. However it was extremely limited in what it could do and required a specific syntax to work properly.

[mytakeontech]

Siri is as useless as it gets. I think Google app voice recognition works way better.

I remember those were days when people bought iPhone 4S for that b.s. Siri hype
..including me!!

[ps45]

Originally Posted by mjtomlin

Ignorance.

Interns are usually students looking to gain some experience before graduating. More than likely most of the good ones will be offered to work at Apple once they graduate. Internships are extremely invaluable to these inexperienced people as a way to prove themselves. These people also tend to be more inclined to work much harder and have fresh points-of-view, then say someone just looking for a paycheck.

By the way, Siri came out of a DARPA project at the Stanford Research Institute. And apparently all that is involved with the technology is way over your head if you think it's "no better than a college project".

Siri is a comprehension system that is being built to understand language, communication, and interaction (conversation). It's not simply voice commands, dictation, and voice search, which has been around for decades now.

I'm afraid you're jumping to conclusions if you think that's ignorance. I've been there (interning) and done that. I have also been in situations since where I have 'hired' interns, and it prays on my conscience. So I know as well as most what the deal is in the use of interns, and how the balance of benefits is skewed way towards the employer.

Interning only occurs in industries that are oversubscribed, and it represents an abuse of that demand. Apple are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, and there is no reason why large employers can't hire people rather than roadtesting them for free (or cheaply). People may work harder when the possibility of a real job is dangled in front of them, but that doesn't make it right to extract this extra labor in this way.

Oh and did I say that "all that is involved with the technology" is no better than a college project? No, I didn't. I said it works no better than a college project. It is unsatisfactory for a prime time product from a company of this stature, it's more akin to a spun-off college project. And it could be based on alien artifacts for all I care; the product that Apple has constructed from those prior arts is unimpressive.

[Karma*Police]

Originally Posted by mazz0

I think Siri would be better improved by handling more processing locally, on the device. It could still send it off over the Internet, but only bother waiting for the response if it can't process it locally.

Google does that now, but speech recognition is nowhere as good if I turn WiFi off so it's just easier doing stuff manually.

However, I think it would be a good idea to have an "offline" Siri feature for folks with disabilities, and users who prefer to have a gimped Siri than no Siri can turn that feature on.

[PaulKemp]

Digg! Endelig norsk!

[Rocketman]

Most predictable news leak ever. New guy is on the job.

[balk]

Am I the only one who thinks this set of qualifications is pretty unique? Or are they looking for more than one person? Native or fluent in four different scripts? respect (and good luck finding a single person one earth speaking all these languages)

[xjosh]

Originally Posted by apolkowski

It sound like a joke. Danish, Finnish, Norwegian. Why not Polish and Russian? If you count all Danish, Finns, Swedes and Norwegians, you will have them as much as or less than Poles.How can you count on boosting markets if you ignore them? Releasing products without major functions causes consumers to turn back and look for alternatives.
Dear Apple, there IS a world outside of old EU, US or China. And this world is full of potential customers. Do not ignore them!

Poland is poor so nobody can afford iPhones.

[shartypants]

I asked Siri: "What are you doing for Christmas?" She said: "Learning some new languages."

[MultiMediaWill]

Originally Posted by apolkowski

It sound like a joke. Danish, Finnish, Norwegian. Why not Polish and Russian? If you count all Danish, Finns, Swedes and Norwegians, you will have them as much as or less than Poles.How can you count on boosting markets if you ignore them? Releasing products without major functions causes consumers to turn back and look for alternatives.
Dear Apple, there IS a world outside of old EU, US or China. And this world is full of potential customers. Do not ignore them!

Simple. Learn english and move to america or EU.

[AppleScruff1]

Originally Posted by studio¹³¹

make it work in English.

Siri's reply, " Did you say make a pork dish?"

[Mr. McMac]

Siri can't get it right in English. Can only imagine how much of a disaster it will be in other languages...

[chaosbringer]

What about Portuguese? and I'm not talking about brazilian portuguese or anything like that, I mean the main mother language!

[carlemil]

Originally Posted by AppleScruff1

Siri's reply, " Did you say make a pork dish?"

Which she then did, which was quite neat if you just ate pork.

[olowott]

No Love for Africa

[pedrotaquelim]

Portuguese (Portugal, Brazil) please. It's the 5th most spoken language in the world. It's humiliating to Apple not to address this. Even now, with so many years of OS X development, the included dictionary does not come in Portuguese. Really shameless.