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Apple to Expand Siri to Work With More Types of Third-Party Apps

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At its Worldwide Developers Conference next week, Apple is expected to expand Siri's functionality, allowing the voice assistant built into the iPhone and iPad to work with a wider variety of apps, reports Reuters.

Apple first started allowing third-party apps to interface with Siri with iOS 10, but Siri integration is limited to apps in the following categories: ride booking, messaging, photo search, payments, VoIP calling, and fitness. In iOS 11, that's expected to expand to additional categories, but it is unclear which categories will be added.

Uber-Siri-800x710.jpg
Apple Inc is expected to announce plans next week to make its Siri voice assistant work with a larger variety of apps, as the technology company looks to counter the runaway success of Amazon.com Inc's competing Alexa service.

But the Cupertino, California company is likely to stick to its tested method of focusing on a small amount of features and trying to perfect them, rather than casting as wide a net as possible, according to engineers and artificial intelligence industry insiders.
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Expanded third-party app access to Siri is one of the few tidbits we've heard about Apple's plans for iOS 11, which is also expected to feature new design elements and a revamped Apple Music app. Rumors suggest Apple has been working on significant improvements to Siri, so other Siri features could also be included.

Part of the reason behind bolstering Siri's capability is likely Apple's work on a Siri-based smart speaker designed to compete with the Amazon Echo and the Google Home. It's not yet clear what the speaker will be capable of, and it isn't included in today's Reuters report beyond a brief mention, but to be competitive, the speaker will need to interface with third-party apps much like iOS.

Rumors suggest there is a chance Apple plans to introduce the Siri speaker at WWDC to allow developers time to create integrations and features for the device ahead of a fall launch, but whether that will happen remains to be seen.

Apple's Siri and speaker plans will be unveiled on Monday, June 5 at 10:00 a.m., which is when the WWDC keynote event kicks off.

Article Link: Apple to Expand Siri to Work With More Types of Third-Party Apps
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/06/02/siri-third-party-app-expansion-wwdc/
The problem is not with the number of apps Siri works with, the problem is how badly Siri works. It's an absolute, utter piece of crap. Dumbest, most hopeless product ever maintained by Apple. My heart bleeds for the fact that Samsung smartly acquired Viv, also built by the father of Siri.
 
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Until Siri gets the brain transplant it badly needs—the rumored AI chip—it will continue to perform like an incompetent secretary on drugs. If I were a developer, I’d pass on implementing Siri until then. Otherwise, it will damage your app’s reputation.
 
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Without Spotify or Google Music integration Siri will continue to be worthless.

Google has two music platforms (YouTube Red/Play Music) of their own to keep up revenue and subscribers. Yet they still allow for multiple music platforms to integrate into Google Assistant.

Is Apple really that scared of competition on their devices that they have to limit Siri to their own music service?
 
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Still don't understand why Siri can't handle simple requests offline. Especially since voice control could do them no problem.
 
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Well this was obvious. But I think I want an (albeit limited) offline Siri more. Infuriating that simple commands can't be used when I have no/poor reception
 
jacjustjac said:
I'm still waiting for Spotify and Siri to play along. While they're at it, let me scrub in control center and stop playing Apple Music whenever I plug into or end a call in my car.
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Pretty sure the scrubbing thing is Spotify's fault. I use PocketCasts constantly and I can scrub in Control Center, so unless there's some strange limitation on just music apps Spotify needs to get it together.
 
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jacjustjac said:
I'm still waiting for Spotify and Siri to play along. While they're at it, let me scrub in control center and stop playing Apple Music whenever I plug into or end a call in my car.
Click to expand...

Yeah why can't we scrub from control/lock screen. I'm tired of feeling punished for straying from Apple land but still on an Apple device.
 
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samcan said:
I wish they would expand Siri to work half as well as the competitors.
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They should get Siri working on the ATV4 in New Zealand.
It works on my iPhone, it works on my iPad, it works on my laptop, but not on the ATV4.

Its probably too late for me, I have started replacing my ATVs with Android/Kodi boxes, why not, they cost less than 1/4 the price and are far more flexible.

Next will be my Mac mini, Apple does not allow it to upgrade to the latest OSX server, so thats going to get repurposed as a Linux box.
 
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samcan said:
I wish they would expand Siri to work half as well as the competitors.
Click to expand...

Siri needs some work, no doubt, but the suggestion that the competitors work so much better is just wrong. Google Assistant gets a ton of things wrong too, particularly with on-device tasks. Alexa is severely limited in its language capabilities and is essentially a gussied-up version of Voice Control: it doesn't actually process requests "intelligently" but matches your words with pre-set commands. All the "intelligent" assistants suck right now...hopefully Apple will announce some "siri-ous" improvements next week (sorry, couldn't resist).
 
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Quote from the original post: But the Cupertino, California company is likely to stick to its tested method of focusing on a small amount of features and trying to perfect them, rather than casting as wide a net as possible, according to engineers and artificial intelligence industry insiders. Emphasis mine.

They've been trying and largely missing the mark with Siri for years. Every year, I keep hoping it'll be the year Siri becomes a game-changer, and every year, I've been disappointed. I hate to say it, but I don't expect this year to be any different.
 
I can think of a few new capabilities... Event or Data querying, launching to a specific section of an app, performing actions to return something from input, increased "remind me" capability, and maybe a "daily briefing" feature similar to Alexa
 
jarman92 said:
Siri needs some work, no doubt, but the suggestion that the competitors work so much better is just wrong. Google Assistant gets a ton of things wrong too, particularly with on-device tasks. Alexa is severely limited in its language capabilities and is essentially a gussied-up version of Voice Control: it doesn't actually process requests "intelligently" but matches your words with pre-set commands. All the "intelligent" assistants suck right now...hopefully Apple will announce some "siri-ous" improvements next week (sorry, couldn't resist).
Click to expand...

Siri sucks the most of any of the major assistants.
 
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This will be a positive step in improving Siri...much needed
 
This won't improve siri. The problem is Apple has ignored it for so long and basic functionality has fallen behind. I wish Apple would just give up and let us use google now.

But since Tim is trying to make Apple great again, I guess we can get another half ass effort from him.
 
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With the amount you can do with Alexa recipes there is no excuse for Apple to not completely open up Siri this time.

Which honestly wouldn't surprise me. Apple tend to debut or open something up a little bit one year and then blow the api wide open the next year e.g. Apple Pay debuted one year and is opened further the next year. I've always assumed the first year to be the test bed to work out any glitches in the system. When they know they have the bedrock sorted then they can open it completely, relatively assured that the underlying code works well allowing easier diagnosis of the issue; whether it's the api or whether it's a developer issue.

I might be completely wrong here, but it follows a pattern.
 
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