Apple Working on Amazon Echo Competitor, Opening Siri Up to Developers

[MillieWales]

It's so annoying that once you buy an Apple product it becomes the law and you have to buy everything they make from then on. I mean, that doesn't happen wih Sony, MS, Samsung or anyone, it's just Apple who say you can't ever buy something you like and you must buy and love everything they produce. It's so unfair, why can't we be free?

It would be great if the next product I don't like I could just shrug my shoulders and get on with my life. But no, law says I have to buy it so I must, I can't go and buy something else or just ignore it completely. And of course then there's the part about having to tell everyone how I feel on forums. Why can't I be allowed to just keep my thoughts to myself? Why do I have to share them, repeat the same lines that others have said so I can pretend I'm cool and know what I'm talking about, I have to say these things when really is just love to be able to get on with my life.

The Apple Law is terrible.....

Is Viv even for sale?

Everything is for sale, it just depends on how much money you have.

I certainly wouldn't describe Apple as trustworthy these days. For them, privacy and security are simply another marketing ploy. Look behind the marketing hype and their image, and they are an extremely untrustworthy and unpleasant company. Some of their behaviour borders on that of white collar crime (their tax evasion strategies are a good example of this). Other areas include their false claims about their products, some of which border on fraud (they claimed, for example that iOS 9 would speed up phones, when it had the opposite effect).

If Apple were actually serious about security, they would bring in universal client side encryption ON EVERYTHING they produce. The fact they haven't done this speaks for itself. Apple aren't any better than than the alternatives at all, they just pretend to be, like they pretend to make better hardware and software, and they pretend to be innovative. The very nature of their entire business is a huge lie.

Apple, once you get behind the image, has a lot in common with criminal organisations who portray a respectable image in order to be able to continue with business as usual.

What has their tax payments got to do with privacy or security? And if they are so terrible why do you use their products and even more interestingly why bother posting here?

I agree with the poster who says so many on here moaning are new here and likely paid to post.

 

[eyeseeyou]

Apple TV already has Siri. I don't see how this would make it any better.

Always on Siri.

 

[Xanthan]

Here comes all the Apple haters because they're afraid their Amazon Echo or the future Google product(whatever it's called) will have a real competition.

Really enjoying that SD camera on my MacBook Pro. It's almost mid-2016. A whole 480. lol "Innovation". "Real competition".

 

[recoil80]

They really ought to introduce some Siri APIs
At the moment I'm not interested in a personal assistant similar to the one Amazon and Google are selling, but I want my apps to be able to interact with Siri on the iPhone and iPad.

 

[palmerc]

I bootcamp windows 10 and its much smoother and faster than osx.
Apple maps is actually beyond horrible here, unusable. The street we live on is not even on it. Google is still way ahead. Like the article says, it's used because its integrated.

By definition all maps are wrong and only correct problems over time, never getting it right. Taking a single street on any mapping system and saying, it isn't there, therefore the service sucks, is ridiculous. Its more to do with the overall quality, and I contend it is a mixed bag. Users will use Apple Maps as long as it is good enough, but if it was unusable they would seek out other alternatives, as you have. For most users, that just isn't necessary, because it works just fine for them.

FYI - If your street isn't on the map you should provide feedback to the Maps team, I've found that in the last year it has become extremely responsive and on par with Googles responsiveness. The ability to handle business listings is actually better within MapsConnect than it is on Google, so again its a mixed bag.

 

[Glassed Silver]

I disagree about the dumbing down of the interface. What you use to be able to do intuitively you must now search the internet to find out if you can still do it and how. And you have to be specific about what OS you are using when you search, because if you use instructions from just 2 or 3 years ago things may have changed so drastically that those instructions are worthless.

Oh, that's very much a problem as well and quite frankly a bigger one than what I had on mind for most I guess.
I was thinking about things like iTunes' latest Get Info.
What a POS...

[doublepost=1464165104][/doublepost]

But you didn't answer his question.

That's true and I didn't mean to, because I meant to focus on what's the usual follow up to "not first" → "... but better".

Glassed Silver:ios

 

[orbital~debris]

Perfect. Just what we need. Another product nobody wants or would ever use.

I want this product (especially from Apple). I would use this product.
"Stick that in your pipe and smoke it", as they say!

 

[Sandstorm]

"Hey Siri, request an Uber X" Uber.
"Hey Siri, translate "Good evening" to Japanese" Microsoft Translate.
"Hey Siri, order my favourite pizza" Dominos.

"Hey Siri, request an Uber X" - OK, playing Umbrella by Rihanna
"Hey Siri, translate "Good evening" to Japanese" - Sorry, I can't transfer "Hood meeting" to Cheese
"Hey Siri, order my favourite pizza" - here's a list of cemeteries near you!

 

[aleksander]

I like the premise of a personal assistant and undoubtedly it's the future BUT Apple needs to boost Siri's AI 1000% and make it sound less like a synthesiser from the 80s. It really hurts when competition with less resources makes Apple look like a headless chicken. Apple Maps still suck after all these years.

 

[Ed217]

While I welcome a API release for Siri, its at least a few years late. Time will show how well it works.

Having owned an Echo for some time, its been quite useful, totally worth the $, and having it around. It runs circles around Siri in reliability, ease of use, and flexibility. Coupled with IFTTT it becomes quite powerful in doing things on your phone and PC systems as well.

Being an owner/supporter/developer for watch and iPhone, Siri is just weak. About the only time I use Siri is for texting from the watch, as the send-as-audio option never has spelling problems...

 

[kodos]

LOL. Watching my wife's iPhone's attempt to decipher voice commands on Siri compared to my phone's (Ok, Google) is a hoot. I look forward to all the mischief that will come from Siri @home. Siri is kind of like the Newton's handwriting recognition.

 

[maflynn]

apple has become a "ME TOO" company. They are so boring lately.

That's actually their MO that produced some great products, like the iPod, iPhone and the iPad.

 

[nope7308]

Siri is the one feature I wish I could remove from all of my Apple devices. It's a functionally useless gimmick. For ***** and giggles, I demonstrated to my coworker just how terrible it is -- 0/17 at interpreting the question "Has Ozzy Osbourne been found yet?"

You can't make this stuff up.

 

[maflynn]

Among its competitors, Siri is shown to be the weakest. I can only imagine that this will be lacking compared to Amazon's, or even Google's unreleased home assistant.

 

[Mums]

I can unambiguously say Apple is the ONLY manufacturer of such a product that I would trust to listen to everything going on in my home 24/7. The others are simply not trustworthy.

That's just plain gullible.

 

[Julien]

I wish Apple would offer a 2 choice option on privacy. You could choose to keep Siri (and the ecosystem) locked down for privacy like it is now or you could allow more open APIs. Google Assistant is going to be POWERFUL and will likely improve exponentially over Siri because of all the growing search and usage info it has to work with. Siri is going to fall farther behind because Apple simply doesn't have access to the info needed to keep improving.

Now imagine Apple opening up and allowing Google to integrate into Siri (if you select). This would make a powerful product and would even help Apple sell more iPhones by offering Android users a way to keep their system while migrating to Apple.

It would be a win-win situation for everyone except Apple's pride.

 

[Tech198]

apple has become a "ME TOO" company. They are so boring lately.

Hey, it works the other way too.. Don't forget the ultra-thin laptops.... Now every manufacture has a trackpads that "works* most of the time

Good for Apple i guess to be doing this cylinder style.. but why Siri ? Even if u open it up to developers that still won't get it smarter..... I would actually like to see Viv on this thing.

 

[Julien]

Just to add to my post (#242)

Another problem with Apple's system is Siri doesn't know Siri. We need a singularity. As is Siri on your iPhone doesn't know Siri on your iPad or TV or the new speaker. They need to integrate into one seamless Siri info system in order to be truly useful.

For instance you should be able to say to your iPhone: What movie did I watch on May 15th (on my TV) and Siri should know this. Also when you say 'Hey Siri' only one iDevice should respond and understand the request across all iDevices/platforms.

 

[NT1440]

Siri is the one feature I wish I could remove from all of my Apple devices. It's a functionally useless gimmick. For ***** and giggles, I demonstrated to my coworker just how terrible it is -- 0/17 at interpreting the question "Has Ozzy Osbourne been found yet?"

You can't make this stuff up.

So....turn it off?

There's even a big ole' on off switch for you.

 

[Tiger8]

The article said Apple's been working on it since before the Echo was even released. As usual, Apple takes the time to get the product right and then releases it. When I tried an Echo, I was unimpressed. I hope to be impressed by another Apple product.

Just like Samsung claimed that they worked on the Galaxy before iPhone was released.

Amazon started this category, fair and square. I didn't expect it to take off, but it did.

Amazon is underrated, they had some firsts (Echo, Kindle), some hits such as Fire TV and Fire (Fire was the first tablet to break the $200 price mark, and sold millions), and of course they had a massive miss (Fire Phone).

 

[maflynn]

Amazon started this category, fair and square. I didn't expect it to take off, but it did.

Amazon caught everyone flat footed with the Echo. I'm not surprised that Apple was on the sidelines for this one, but Google - now that's surprising. They have the back end, the R&D and putting Google Now out there on other platforms - now that was surprising.

 

[Tech198]

Siri is the one feature I wish I could remove from all of my Apple devices. It's a functionally useless gimmick. For ***** and giggles, I demonstrated to my coworker just how terrible it is -- 0/17 at interpreting the question "Has Ozzy Osbourne been found yet?"

You can't make this stuff up.

And in other cases the stuff Siri "can't" say, it returns from Bing results....... I just tried this and it worked, so i dunno where u were coming from. I would not fault siri, just because it automated something I would have otherwise needed to open a browser on the web to see an extract.

 

[PlainviewX]

All this time I assumed Siri was available to developers. I guess I never really thought of it as I only use it to read/write texts when hands are occupied. That's pretty stupid that it isn't. How could one of the most touted core features, so much so there have been multiple commercials about it, not be open to developers?

 

[duffman9000]

You clearly don't like Apple Maps, but Google Maps has just as many issues as Apple's mapping product. I have spent quite a bit of time comparing and contrasting the two and editing issues - in both. The satellite imagery can go either way, the POIs can go either way, and in fact adding and improving Apple Maps is actually easier with mapsconnect.apple.com, Yelp, and the feedback system which incidentally now gets you email responses (takes roughly a week) from the maps team. Google's system for updating mistakes or deficiencies is actually much harder and in the case of businesses requires a postcard be mailed to your address which is problematic if your business moved more than a year earlier and they have you on the other side of town.

Just as many issues? Are you using the same products? Apple Maps can't find a city 30 miles away from me in southern California. It takes me to a different continent. Of course Google Maps can find the same city.

I can ask Google Maps to find me a UPS on a certain street without using the full address. Using the same search query Apple Maps takes me to a different state.

I corrected a business listing on Google Maps on a Sunday. I received a notification either Sunday night or sometime Monday. It was less than a 24 hour turn around.

 

[bruinsrme]

I use my echo for streaming music from the web or phone, ordering things from amazon, news, sports, ordering food, weather, a variety of updates and control lighting throughout the house. The echo has come a long way since its release.
It will b interesting to see what apple does with their product