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Google to Launch Siri Rival Soon?

TimUSCA said:
And every Android fan who said Siri was just a gimmick will think this is the greatest thing in the world.
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Every Apple fan says the same thing! Come on man you're really not that blind are you? Both sides say the same thing. Point is whatever your platform of choice does, you take what they come up with as the holy grail.


Ps. I love my iPhone, and I think Siri is a pretty much a gimmick (haven't played with it a lot tho), but it's a push in the right direction towards a 'real' AI (sort of how google describes it). Baby Steps right?
 
Really?

fletch33 said:
i find it interesting that Android has something Siri like for years and Apple replicates it and adds a few upgrades and it is now a miraculous invention LOL
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The old west had horses and buggies for years then Henry Ford replicated it and added a few upgrades called it a car and it was a miraculous invention.

Do you see how ridiculous your statement is in hindsight? You must give credit where it is due. Allow Google and Apple to battle it out in fierce competition. You and I can sit back as consumers and reap the benefits of their labor. But, please, wether its Apple, Google or Microsoft.....don't trivialize great advancements.
 
tundrabuggy said:
The old west had horses and buggies for years then Henry Ford replicated it and added a few upgrades called it a car and it was a miraculous invention.

Do you see how ridiculous your statement is in hindsight? You must give credit where it is due. Allow Google and Apple to battle it out in fierce competition. You and I can sit back as consumers and reap the benefits of their labor. But, please, wether its Apple, Google or Microsoft.....don't trivialize great advancements.
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To be honest, that's a little silly
The jump from a wooden carriage drawn by horses to the motorcar, is a bit of a larger leap from one type of voice recognition to another type of voice recognition.
 
Roessnakhan said:
Aren't Android's voice input capabilities already capable of a majority of what Siri does?
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Implementations are totally different. Apple worked in the human element and actually made the whole concept relevant.

Having done this, consumer expectations moving forward will now include a fleshed-out, colloquially-aware, conversational personal assistant as a basic element of a smartphone platform, and, once again thanks to Apple, quite possibly as part of consumer tech platforms at large (notebooks, tablets, TVs, and other devices.)

The basics were already there - imperfect, half-assed, bolted on as an afterthought - as with a lot of tech before Apple gets their hands on it.

You can build a shack that's just thrown together, because it's good enough. It leaks here and there, gets mouldy. It's adequate. Whatever (which is the attitude of a lot of players in tech: "whatever, it's adequate.")

But once you get someone with vision and guts in there, they actually make it beautiful and livable, and you can't imagine going back to the way things were before.
 
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This is Great News

As a Mac user for over 20 years (and a proud owner of a Droid X and a XOOM), this is great news!

...if Majel outshines Siri in some fashion, that will only keep Apple on their toes - and then Apple will come up with something better. Then Google will do the same. Back and forth, back and forth.

Competition: as long as it's around, users win.
 
Deadman64 said:
Ps. I love my iPhone, and I think Siri is a pretty much a gimmick (haven't played with it a lot tho), but it's a push in the right direction towards a 'real' AI (sort of how google describes it). Baby Steps right?
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You are kidding, right? I love Siri. I thought it was a 'gimmick' first, but after she went offline for 3 days for me, I realized how much I use it.

I never set a reminder myself, so much easier to do with Siri. Same goes for weather, nearby POI, and other stuff... I travel quite a bit and those things are very useful. I am not going to start how much I use Siri in my car (via bluetooth, of course, safetly first), it is like my is a smart car.

In fact, I think it would be awsome if you can 'teach' Siri; I live near NYC and it would great if I can tell her of the subway lines and path train I use, where to get this info (it is on the web), so that I can ask her things like "When is the next 5 train from Union Square". One can dream 🙂
 
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Some of you guys are so lame. It really does give those of us who just subjectively like iOS more a bad name. It's not copying when you make a logical step in improving something you already have. Sure Google will make improvements in their voice control to better compete with ios. They'd be dumb not to. I'm just amazed at how tech is moving so fast. We just got smartphones and now it's a race to artificial intelligence.
 
I honestly think that anyone who believes Siri is just a gimmick, simply hasn't spent any time using it. I love it and think it's great. It's like saying texting is just a gimmick. I was a fan of Siri before it became fully integrated and was just an App (that I could use on my iPhone 4) 🙁
 
Sigh

Given that Google Voice's speech to text conversion is the worst I've ever experienced I'm not overly concerned about them becoming a market leader overnight but it's certainly something to watch and see their implementation.
 
FSMBP said:
I believe it's such a gimmick too. I mean, when I'm doing yardwork & I receive a text, it's so gimmicky to ask Siri to read me my text as opposed to reaching in my pocket with my dirty hands & possibly damage my iPhone. 🙄

/sarcasm

It does have gimmicky aspects but at the end of the day, it's a powerful feature.
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You still ave to reach your dirty hands into your pocket and touch your phone to activate Siri. 😉

Yes, it's a gimmick.
Powerful... hardly. Useful... I'll give you that.
Annoying is more like it.
Bad enough people talk loud when they're on the phone in public, now you have morons barking orders to their phone (repeatedly in many cases) when pushing a few buttons will do the same thing without annoying everyone around you.
 
I appreciate the competition and hope this will push Apple to innovate further and faster. On the other side, Google is very good at starting things but not at finishing them. That's just the facts.

Siri is a great step forward and a very useful product and I hope it becomes more ubiquitous as we are forced by nanny-states to go "hands free" (as an excuse for fines which are really just taxes). I am looking forward to expanded capabilities and even more accurate hearing and interpretation of what I say (though I gotta say it is BY FAR the best voice recognition in a phone I have ever had. Ever.)
 
urbanslaughter said:
I honestly think that anyone who believes Siri is just a gimmick, simply hasn't spent any time using it. I love it and think it's great. It's like saying texting is just a gimmick. I was a fan of Siri before it became fully integrated and was just an App (that I could use on my iPhone 4) 🙁
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I believe Siri is a gimmick and I've spent time using it.
 
allmIne said:
Upranking / downranking is for those unable to convey opinions effectively, so I'll take the time to say "well played, sir!"

Let's sit back and watch the fanboys - for with a MBP, iPad 2, SGS2 and the rare ability to make my own decisions, I consider myself unbiased - conveniently forget that the Android OS has had voice integration for a long time now, and that its evolution was always going to happen, regardless of Siri.

The pulldown notifications is an interesting point; I can only imagine the furore should that have been the other way around.

Still strange that people get so worked about phones, though. Perhaps if I'd less to worry about.
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Ahh a fellow unbiased MacRumors user. Nice to meet you. I'm here with an iPad 1, MBA, MP, iTouch, HP Touchpad (running Android) and ZTE Blade (Android).

Its a tit for tat situation. People dont get that they copied each other. On the Apple fansites its "Android stucks, it stole from iOS" and on the Android fansites it "iOS sucks, it stole from Android".

Silly people...cant we all just get along, we seem to have one of these threads weekly now!

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paul4339 said:
What I'd like to know is what Google's plans are to monetize on this.



.
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Google dont always make apps to monazite, they make them to keep up to date.

If they never released new bits and pieces they would become stagnent...
 
notjustjay said:
They're talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the computer was as much a character as anybody else in the show. You could command it to do things, and have conversations with it. One episode in particular I remember was "Remember Me" where Dr. Crusher thinks that everyone else on board the ship is slowly disappearing one by one, until finally she's all alone with nobody but the computer to talk to.

It was voiced by Majel Barrett-Roddenberry. Of course this carried through to the other series too, like DS9 and Voyager.

There was no talking computer in TOS at all?
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TOS had talking computers and Majel was a few of them as well.

Siri is a service to sell hardware. I would rather just pay for better hardware. There is nothing stopping anyone from just making a platform agnostic service and selling a subscription to it.

I am concerned what Google knows about me but they provide services that are based inside my browser. As I have said before, "if my toaster has a decent web browser, I will be using my toaster".
 
Eidorian said:
TOS had talking computers and Majel was a few of them as well.

Siri is a service to sell hardware. I would rather just pay for better hardware. There is nothing stopping anyone from just making a platform agnostic service and selling a subscription to it.

I am concerned what Google knows about me but they provide services that are based inside my browser. As I have said before, "if my toaster has a decent web browser, I will be using my toaster".
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Why aren't you concerned about what Apple knows about you then, and just Google?
 
rjohnstone said:
You still ave to reach your dirty hands into your pocket and touch your phone to activate Siri. 😉

Yes, it's a gimmick.
Powerful... hardly. Useful... I'll give you that.
Annoying is more like it.
Bad enough people talk loud when they're on the phone in public, now you have morons barking orders to their phone (repeatedly in many cases) when pushing a few buttons will do the same thing without annoying everyone around you.
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Nope, you don't. You can use the Apple headphones (that have remote & mic). I'd rather get a pair of $30 headphones dirty than a $599 phone - but that's just me.

I wasn't giving you a made-up scenario. Also, it's useful while driving instead of fumbling around with a touchscreen.
 
Man you guys are catty. So what if Google did this as a response to siri. You dont think Apple has ever made things as a response to android? Pull down notification?


Still sticking with the iphone for now though.
 
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