It did seem a bit odd to see quite so much new construction of data centers, beyond what seemed reasonably needed for iCloud alone. Now I think I see where all that's headed...
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Apple Hires Former AltaVista and Amazon Search Exec to Run Siri Unit
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It's past time to kick Google to the curb as the default iOS search engine. Sorry guys, but it's insanity to rely on a competitor for such a critical component of your platform.
LOL at Google fanboy deriding fanboyism.
LOL at Google fanboy deriding fanboyism.
Sorry, somethings gone wrong- can you try that again?
How does this hire, fix Siri's communication issues?
Oh, and kind of looks like Castanza, no?
How does this hire, fix Siri's communication issues?
Oh, and kind of looks like Castanza, no?
No. It's not "poor" in what it does. It's just limited in what it does. For now...
I ask it the weather all the time. I had it make lunch reservations for me the other day (flawlessly). I was driving down the road last night, asking for sports scores and getting them. Launching apps or getting facts from the web using Siri is a timesaver for me. Turn-by-turn using Siri has worked spectacularly for me, notwithstanding issues others may have experienced. While not specifically Siri based, the ability to dictate into virtually any dialog on my iOS devices has become invaluable.
For anyone with a hint of vision, Siri is an exciting and useful glimpse into how we will all interface with our devices in the fairly near future. And I find value in it now.
Well for one - since Apple isn't in the search business (yet) - they aren't a competitor in that space. And if you're talking OSes - then Apple could easily switch to Yahoo. Now why do you think they don't do that?
I find that it does work pretty well in real world situations.
I wake up, summon Siri to ask her:
"Read my messages" - Siri says: "You have a message from XXXXX: blablabla" Reply?
"Is it cold outside?" - Siri says: "It's about 9 degrees. I don't find that particularly cold"
"Do I need an umbrella?" - Siri says: "It doesn't look like it's going to rain today"
"What's my day look like?" - Siri says: "You have 3 appointments today xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
Since I have no appointments in the morning, I tell Siri:
"Wake me up in another hour" - Siri says: "Your alarm is set for 10AM.
Before I go back to bed, I tell Siri:
"Book lunch with Amy at noon" - Siri books it.
"Remind me to take Amy's book with me when I leave" - Siri creates a reminder with a geo-fence.
I think that works remarkably well. Also, if I have facts that I'm looking for, I no longer Google them, I ask Siri. Yesterday when Felix was doing the Stratos jump, I wondered what the speed of sound was. I asked Siri and got a straightforward answer in a Wolfram Alpha card with lots of useful info.
I even deleted my Unit Conversion app and Wiki app because it's just so much easier to ask and get an answer.
Where Siri needs an important improvement is on results speed. It can sometimes take more than 5 to 10 seconds which leaves an awkward pause while you wait for your results. People are impatient these days.
The iPhone 5 has as much processing power as a G5 Mac tower. I think it's time to move speech recognition locally while they can leave question processing and result returns on Apple's servers. This would speed things up considerably.
Depending on connection it is dramatically poor at what it does. Just this morning, walking through downtown Seattle, I have my headphones on and phone in pocket. I push the button on headphone to activate siri to ask the time (so as to not have to dig phone out of pocket). It pauses for a minute or so (silence) and then denies my request, apparently out of inability to connect to some such server somewhere. Announcing the time should not be that much of a challenge.
mostly amazed that there's going to be this big 3-way battle for EVERYTHING over the next 10 years.
Microsoft vs Apple vs Google
Operating systems, hardware, office, music, TV, search, maps, cloud, and so on, they're all competing against each other at every single thing.
Microsoft vs Apple vs Google
Operating systems, hardware, office, music, TV, search, maps, cloud, and so on, they're all competing against each other at every single thing.
As I have posted many times, client-server is back! I have used AltaVista extensively and when Google drops the ball that is my go to backup search engine.
Siri could use some updates.
Rocketman
Siri could use some updates.
Rocketman
9 degrees?!?? OK, that's most likely C given your location (though I'd call 48F still pretty chilly
)Totally with you in the second item quoted, I've been saying since Siri was released that the architecture being reliant totally on external servers/services seems odd. You've got quite a few local services that should be able to be invoked without a network connection.
FWIW, we used Siri in conjunction with maps on a recent trip and it was pretty neat.
Youre in favor of less choice and less competition? You do realize that if your dreams of only Apple being existent became true, your products would become stagnant and overpriced, right?
That takes me back to the days of real search engine competition with Excite, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Lycos etc. and when seemingly every site in the results was hosted by fortunecity and tripod. And they all looked horrific.
Taking down Google as a search engine is silly. Especially when you consider the fact that if Siri can't resolve what you're looking for, it goes to your web search engine of choice.
If Apple decides to make their own "Bing!" It's not tough to alter the prefs on the device you bought to your liking as opposed to only Apple's offering.
If Apple decides to make their own "Bing!" It's not tough to alter the prefs on the device you bought to your liking as opposed to only Apple's offering.
Yeah, it's insanity to partner with other companies who have services which excel and any chance of competing with and/or matching services results in screwing the users for years until you possible catchup or ping on your ass.
Whatever next? Other companies finding a sensible way to work together instead of becoming overzealous control freaks? How can that possibly work? Inconceivable!
How Siri will become a dominant search engine
If you look at Google search trends, you'll be surprised to find that a lot of questions are very mundane and could be directly answered by a reliable source instead of displaying all the websites in the world that mention the search term.
Google of course displays pages because that's how it makes money: on advertising. The longer the time a users spends on Google, the more opportunities for ad revenue and click throughs. Apple handles this differently. They just want to give the user the quickest answer to their question. Surprise! That's what users want too.
Siri already has very reliable answers on facts, scientific, math and historical courtesy of Wolfram Alpha. This covers a lot of ground on the types of questions people search on Google today. Sports and movies? Also covered impressively well.
Another big search category are questions related to ongoing news events. The answer: Twitter.
Let's try an exercise right now: Replace Google Search entirely with Twitter. Instead of Searching Google for a current event, let's say the Red Bull Stratos jump, search for it in Twitter. The results? You get a ton of people talking about Felix's jump with the top retweets being reputable sources who often have links in their tweets to articles. That's exactly what people expect from Google. They would search Google for Redbull Stratos during the jump to find articles talking about it and/or the official website. Bake Twitter into Siri and together with the existing types of questions you can ask, you'd have a near replacement for Google search.
What's left? A list of the world's websites? An Internet index? The entire web is changing every second of the day. Google has to renew itself every day to stay ahead, just like its rivals. An equally powerful company can keep an uptodate index of the world's websites. Siri's comprehension processing can sort the relevant results like Google's algorithm does.
Google doesn't have a monopoly on web crawlers. Google has a well oiled search algorithm but the reason why Google is at the top of the search engine game and its advantage over Bing or Yahoo! is that it has mastered the art of making money with search through AdSense. Apple doesn't care about that, it's not trying to make money on search. It just wants to stop sending important user information to its biggest rival. When that happens, losing all of iOS and OSX users is going to be a severe blow to Google no matter how you put it.
Rollout for Siri based Apple search engine:
Build Twitter into Siri search results.
Build a webpage index into Siri.
Do not replace Google search in Safari.
When you ask Siri to search the web, it'll give you Apple's search results including top Tweets if your question is trending on Twitter. Right now it throws you over to Google in Safari if it doesn't have an answer to your question.
Continue to offer Google in Siri. If you want to Google something, ask Siri to Google something.
This is enough of a subtlety that nobody is going to cry fowl for Apple replacing Google with something inferior like they did with Maps and leave users hanging.
When Apple feels its search engine is good enough, make it the default on Safari but continue to offer the option of Google, Bing, and Yahoo! as they do today.
If you look at Google search trends, you'll be surprised to find that a lot of questions are very mundane and could be directly answered by a reliable source instead of displaying all the websites in the world that mention the search term.
Google of course displays pages because that's how it makes money: on advertising. The longer the time a users spends on Google, the more opportunities for ad revenue and click throughs. Apple handles this differently. They just want to give the user the quickest answer to their question. Surprise! That's what users want too.
Siri already has very reliable answers on facts, scientific, math and historical courtesy of Wolfram Alpha. This covers a lot of ground on the types of questions people search on Google today. Sports and movies? Also covered impressively well.
Another big search category are questions related to ongoing news events. The answer: Twitter.
Let's try an exercise right now: Replace Google Search entirely with Twitter. Instead of Searching Google for a current event, let's say the Red Bull Stratos jump, search for it in Twitter. The results? You get a ton of people talking about Felix's jump with the top retweets being reputable sources who often have links in their tweets to articles. That's exactly what people expect from Google. They would search Google for Redbull Stratos during the jump to find articles talking about it and/or the official website. Bake Twitter into Siri and together with the existing types of questions you can ask, you'd have a near replacement for Google search.
What's left? A list of the world's websites? An Internet index? The entire web is changing every second of the day. Google has to renew itself every day to stay ahead, just like its rivals. An equally powerful company can keep an uptodate index of the world's websites. Siri's comprehension processing can sort the relevant results like Google's algorithm does.
Google doesn't have a monopoly on web crawlers. Google has a well oiled search algorithm but the reason why Google is at the top of the search engine game and its advantage over Bing or Yahoo! is that it has mastered the art of making money with search through AdSense. Apple doesn't care about that, it's not trying to make money on search. It just wants to stop sending important user information to its biggest rival. When that happens, losing all of iOS and OSX users is going to be a severe blow to Google no matter how you put it.
Rollout for Siri based Apple search engine:
Build Twitter into Siri search results.
Build a webpage index into Siri.
Do not replace Google search in Safari.
When you ask Siri to search the web, it'll give you Apple's search results including top Tweets if your question is trending on Twitter. Right now it throws you over to Google in Safari if it doesn't have an answer to your question.
Continue to offer Google in Siri. If you want to Google something, ask Siri to Google something.
This is enough of a subtlety that nobody is going to cry fowl for Apple replacing Google with something inferior like they did with Maps and leave users hanging.
When Apple feels its search engine is good enough, make it the default on Safari but continue to offer the option of Google, Bing, and Yahoo! as they do today.
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While I have been critical of SIRI as in "it is not working" and therefore I didn't want to bother using it, I have to say it does a few things okay.
So, maybe there is hope