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Apple 'Working With' True Knowledge to Address Concerns Over Evi's Similarities to Siri

Siri Evi

Dragon Naturally speaking way back had a way of training it to your voice and if mistakes were made you would type it in and from then on it would remember and recognize that item. Can't it be the same with these two-Evi recognizes regularly asked for call items and Siri goes into the web for more involved things-with trained recognition of voice and questions. Also how about having a real voice respond instead of computer voices to basic questions-there are only so many commonly used words so how hard can it be to decipher and put together those on the fly from recorded words with a real voice instead of this canned baloney?
 
rstansby said:
Does Apple now offer an advertising option where they threaten to pull your app to boost sales? I wonder what that costs.
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I would want that.
How much you want to bet that company just became overnight millionaires all because this was put out and everybody is buying a copy to give that mega corp the finger.

Never mind that Apple said they would work with them to straighten this out.
Facts should never get in the way of a good story.
 
wilsonlaidlaw said:
Just purchased EVI and installed. Asked a really difficult question - "who is the british prime minister?" The answer from EVI - sorry do not know who is the british prime minister. One word description of EVI - useless and therefore a waste of money.
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Damn! I really had a major need to find out who is the British Prime Minister!
Now I may never find out.:(
 
Will all of Dragon's Apps be next because THEY are confusing?

This is simply Apple being a bully. If they bothered to adhere to that same rule as listed in the article for the AppStore there would be a ton of various apps not allowed. Calculators, Clocks, Calendars, To Dos, Greeting Cards, email apps.

No - this is clearly about Apple wanting and needing Siri as a differentiator. Because that's really what the 4s "sizzle" was.
 
hchung said:
The short answer: Siri came first.

The long answer:
Both Siri Inc. (the company that Apple bought) and True Knowledge (the company who wrote Evi) were established in 2007. Both companies started out working on technology that would interpret questions posed by users and then attempt to provide answers. Siri's engine was involved in several academic AI projects spanning 2003 and 2008, but I can't seem to find an actual product; only research. True knowledge had an open beta in 2007 and a online search engine product in 2008. Voice recognition wasn't really part of either until Siri (the iPhone app) launched in Early 2009. Evi launched in early 2012.
While Evi as an app is a copy of Siri (as an app), the history of the engines that back both of them were both in development far back enough that they were originally very different systems that shouldn't be considered copies.
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fair enough. It still is first person best dressed though when it comes to implementing your idea on a certain device/platform. Nothing was stopping Evi from putting out their version when siri was not owned by Apple.

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michaelflynn said:
Got it for $100 in almost brand new condition. I was trying to hold out for the 5 but couldn't pass up the deal :D
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wow that is a great deal!
 
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I've asked Evi 39 very easy questions since buying it and it's only managed to answer 1 of them and even that wasn't a particularly good answer.

Most of the time Evi's servers are too busy to respond. If I ask it a question such as "how much is an iPad?" it gives me the cost in US dollars despite knowing my location is in the UK.

It's difficult to moan about something that's only 69p to purchase but to to be honest I feel ripped off. If Apple take this off the App Store they'll be doing everyone a favour.
 
Similar to what?

Evi isn't similar to anything available on my iPhone 4. I don't see what the fuss is all about, Apple! ;)
 
No contest

Evi is not threat to Siri or even to a couple of cans tied by a string. Even the free Evi on Android is getting bashed by reviews as is the App store version. Because it sucks.
 
Analog Kid said:
I haven't found either Siri or Evi to be terribly useful for anything other than parlor tricks... It's not sufficiently voice interactive to use in the car, and if my hands are free it's faster to type.
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I've found it quite useful for some things, not others. Getting in the car and saying, "Show directions to _____" is a lot better than trying to type it, especially if you have to make a sudden route change while in the car. I use it for utility info like unit conversions all the time. On the other hand, I usually just tap on the weather app for weather, because it's faster than asking. I do wish there was an option to have Siri always listen for voice input (e.g. "Siri, …" or "Computer, …") rather than always having to press the home button. This would be a big help while driving. A battery drain I'm sure, but perhaps you could set up geo-fence logic, such as "When I leave this wi-fi spot, always switch on Listen Mode" or "If GPS detects velocity over 5 mph, we're in a vehicle so switch it on".

One problem is that Siri's dataset is still quite limited; over time drilling down to specific information will make it the faster choice. Also, I still miss being able to do things on the pre-Apple Siri app like looking up movie options around town and buying tickets. Apple needs to get more APIs fed into Siri posthaste in order to make it a true Intelligent Agent.
 
Winni said:
One of the many reasons NOT to write software for Apple's iOS platform. On the long run, it's suicidal to tie your own company's fate to a target platform that only has ONE distribution channel and that is run by a company with Apple's arrogant attitude. Apple just doesn't play well with others and is afraid of any competition - but that fear never kept Apple from ripping off other developers' ideas and afterwards selling its rip-offs as "revolutionary" new features. It's both pathetic and disgusting.
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This sentence is extremely insightful: it's suicidal to tie your own company's fate to a target platform that only has ONE distribution channel.

You got a lot of down votes because people here typically don't like to hear the truth.
 
hchung said:
Siri's engine was involved in several academic AI projects spanning 2003 and 2008, but I can't seem to find an actual product; only research.
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The "product" was government military research. The academic AI projects Siri was based on was funded by DARPA, a military technology research arm of the US Dept. of Defense. Not a great beginning, depending on your view of the military, but there you go. I imagine the military would want to use this kind of technology to provide soldiers with a system to get contextual info on the battlefield.
 
nickgri said:
Dragon Naturally speaking way back had a way of training it to your voice and if mistakes were made you would type it in and from then on it would remember and recognize that item. Can't it be the same with these two-Evi recognizes regularly asked for call items and Siri goes into the web for more involved things-with trained recognition of voice and questions.
Click to expand...

The reason it hits the web every time is because Nuance's level-of-accuracy in /most/ dialects of English requires a big server farm. Sure, Apple could've done the "correct-if-wrong" janky thing, but after the bad reception of their previous iDevice voice control ("Play something by The Beatles." … "Okay, calling ex-girlfriend.") I don't think they wanted that route again.

Apple's general design aesthetic is making things like a Disneyland ride -- focus on a few rides and do those very well, provide a slick presentation to keep users from getting frustrated, and keep the user's hands in the cart at all times.
 
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I have been a die hard apple customer for 10 years now but it's ******** like this that is making considering selling every apple product I have and never buying anything apple again.
 
Just purchased.

Good Siri replacement for .99 (for those of us without an iPhone 4GS)

Get it before its gone...
 
Apple are seen as corporate bullies, they deserve it and they know it.

That's why after having clearly implied that they would delete the App, they finally backed up and said that "they are working" with them.

Just buy them already, use you money, that's what its made for
 
feszty said:
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This is just bad. A voice based assistant inherently can't be that different from one another. You talk to it and it talks back. What can be done to reduce this similarity? No much. Maybe Apple will force them to use a funny accent, or something like that.
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what's your take on things like "appstore" vs "app store"?
or suing over "look and feel"? do you agree that the BASIC overall shape of all phones/tablets is rectangular?
 
Flitzy said:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Android-Malware-Grew-3000-Percent-in-2011-Report-575050/

It's called malware ridden because it is.
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Did you read the article?

The Mobile Threat Center at Juniper Networks examined more than 793,631 applications and 28,472 unique malware samples to compile the report. Despite the eye-popping growth numbers, the total number for mobile malware remains minuscule, compared with malware targeting traditional computers.
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