Siri...another game changer from Steve?

[Vegastouch]

No one says Apple invented artificial intelligence, they're just the ones who will make it mainstream. They did the same with thin laptops, touch screen smart phones and tablets. None of those three items were being designed or built by anyone until Apple created them.

I disagree with you in how much Siri will be used, I believe it will be used greatly. And, in 6-8 months every phone that's launched will have a similar feature. Two years ago people thought the iPad and MacBook Airs were a joke, look at them now...best selling devices in the world (and everyone's trying to copy them).

The Macbook Air is not the best selling in the world. The iPhone in Japan is a old crappy device that they dont even think much of.

And again, i like all Apples devices so dont get me wrong. Ive worked on their campus in Cupertino before back in 2000 and seen what they do, talked to many of the people there, seen their new stuff when it was coming out , etc.. As far as the phones i just like Android better. I also wont be upgrading to a newer iPod because music plays just fine on my phone and i use it all the time....So sue me!

 

[F123D]

I do see Siri being useful in certain situations but I don't think it'll be used as much as people think it will. Time will tell.

 

[therationalist]

Has anyone here used dragon naturally speaking on their
PC? Its nuance's flagship product.

It is pretty good but it is not even close to 100% in the real world and therein lies the problem. Once you have to start correcting stuff, it is game over and people stop using it.

I am LOLing at people who think they can text with siri in their car while driving. the background noise will be crazy. Odds are that your phone will be on a car holder feets away from your mouth. No way in hell are you gonna get accuracy to make it practical.

My issue isnt about how good siri is as a piece of software/ Even before we go there, you have the issue of voice to text which is nowhere near good enough to be practical to use in a phone in the real world.

I think a lot of you have bought into the apple coolaid and are setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

[nuckinfutz]

I do see Siri being useful in certain situations but I don't think it'll be used as much as people think it will. Time will tell.

That's going to depend on how many of those "certain situations" come up on a daily or even hourly basis.

Has anyone here used dragon naturally speaking on their
PC? Its nuance's flagship product.

It is pretty good but it is not even close to 100% in the real world and therein lies the problem. Once you have to start correcting stuff, it is game over and people stop using it.

I am LOLing at people who think they can text with siri in their car while driving. the background noise will be crazy. Odds are that your phone will be on a car holder feets away from your mouth. No way in hell are you gonna get accuracy to make it practical.

My issue isnt about how good siri is as a piece of software/ Even before we go there, you have the issue of voice to text which is nowhere near good enough to be practical to use in a phone in the real world.

I think a lot of you have bought into the apple coolaid and are setting yourself up for disappointment.

LOL...do you always "cut and past" responses from other threads? What exactly do you know about Dragon NaturallySpeaking? Have you used it? Have you trained in it?

 

[kmanmx]

I think it is important to stress that it has the potential to revolutionise how phones are used. I say potential, because no one has used it in a real world scenario.

I propose a few potential issues:

1) It's fair to say the Internet/Wi-Fi on Apples campus is going to be one heck of a quick connection. 100mbps minimum. If part of the processing really is done on some of Apples servers, this connection speed is going to help

2) An extension of point one, if Apples servers are doing some of the work, then it will be a lot quicker for those journalists who got to try it out when there are perhaps only 100 IP4S's in use in the world. Things may slow down when there are tens of millions of them.

3) There are a whole lot of different english accents around, it has to work with all of them, and all the other languages, perfectly to stand a chance at revolutionising things.

4) Background noise. How well it copes with background noise is a potential issue.

5) Accuracy. It has to be at least 99% accurate. That sounds a lot, right ? it's not. If it were even 98%, that would mean it would get 1/50 words incorrect. You probably use 10 words every statement. Therefore one in every 5 statements would be misinterpreted. And unfortunately, humans are not patient and forgiving - if it doesn't work well it won't be used at all.


Don't get me wrong people, I am very excited about Siri. I hope it works as well as Apple showed, and if it does, I believe very strongly it will revolutionise things.


Bring on October 14th.

 

[Nrwrit3r]

About the same time that Apple acquired Siri Google purchased a smaller company that did a few things similarly named Aardvark (www.vark.com)

Sadly Aardvark was cancelled along with other projects

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2393447,00.asp

Products like Siri represent a threat to Google's search dominance because they abstract the user from a basic search engine and they don't provide adds (at least in Apple's version) thus Google can be stripped from the whole equation.

Look for Microsoft to get into this market and use Bing as a backend and figure out a way to monetize it through adds or some other way.

Look for Siri to remain clutter free and become more and more functional.

Interesting...this is going to pressure Google to rely more on sponsored search results in their actual searches, not on the side or above them.

 

[Vegastouch]

Facts can be proven by taking scientific steps. You've proffered no facts merely opinion.

FaceTime and Siri and two different technologies. One is a technology that must have another human on the other side with a similar hardware/software configure and the other (Siri) is a tool aimed at how a single person utilizes their phone for a multitude of tasks. The comparison between the two on a usage and impact level is tenuous at best and IMO poor argumentation.

No one here said Apple invented the technology but the crux of your rebuttals seem to be based on a foundation of willful ignorance regarding the technological differences between what we have today and what we have coming with Siri.

Have fun with that Android

This is just a rubbish reply. If this isnt an opinion then what is? There are no facts here as well and why do we need that? Facetime is something Android has as well that doesnt require wifi only. You can use it with your network data. Siri is something that has been an App in iTunes for almost two years. There are apps in the Android market that do things that Apple doesnt. Like Google Goggles Layer but they are apps i dont use, but somebody else may use all the time...but it is available.

Bottom line is who cares? You may use Siri everyday, the guy next to you with an iPhone may never use it and it is a 2 year old App that Apple decided to intragrate in their phone when many already, like me had it on their iPhone as an App like the 300,000 other Apps there are.

Take that app out and the iPhone is a device that is still lagging behind so enjoy your iPhone. I dont care if you prefer an iPhone or not, I dont, and im all that matters to me.

 

[b166er]

I used the siri app quite a bit. I'm eager to see how well the new Siri works.

We have to remember, this is still beta. I am sure there will be a whole page of threads about how much Siri sucks next week because it couldn't open a 3rd party app or it didn't understand an accent. But we have to remember that this is out of the box and untweaked, it will get better with time.

Voice recognition has surely been around for a while, but I think Siri takes it to the next level. I mean seriously, you can ask it if you'll need an umbrella and it gives you an answer. Anyone who isn't impressed by that is just numb to technology. I don't think that the 4s with Siri is going to revolutionize or anything, but it's the first step in what could easily be a new generation of devices that interact with us instead of us interacting with them.

I think it's pretty cool and I'm sure I'll have some fun using it. I might not rely on it or use it every day just yet but I'm keeping my open about it. It can only get better with time.

 

[h00ligan]

Steve was a visionary. Siri is nothing new, nor is voice command.

 

[boss.king]

Siri isn't a game changer. It's well thought out and implemented well in the OS, but it's just the next logical progression for voice commands. It doesn't do a whole lot more than Androids voice commands that existed for ages, it just makes it more open to natural speech. When I can leave it in my pocket to pick up important things and make appointments from my conversations, then it'll be a game changer.

 

[greytmom]

You've got to start somewhere. We live in amazing times - in X years, we may be having regular conversations with our TVs, our fridges, ovens, hell... our homes in general.

That time always seemed so far away - but this makes it seem like it could be a lot closer than we think, and that's just pretty damn cool.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Siri isn't a game changer. It's well thought out and implemented well in the OS, but it's just the next logical progression for voice commands. It doesn't do a whole lot more than Androids voice commands that existed for ages, it just makes it more open to natural speech. When I can leave it in my pocket to pick up important things and make appointments from my conversations, then it'll be a game changer.

Following that logic though flying cars are not game changers but just the next logical step or interstellar travel.

We can easily diminish any technology down to just an evolutionary step. Will Siri, and similar technologies, have the potential to radically change how we interact with phones. I believe that answer is yes. After all just 5 years ago the ability to surf the internet on a phone was a difficult task that we now take for granted. The ability to watch a video or read a book was improbable back then.

Changing the game is often about making minute changes or offering abilities that change the view of the end user or how they interact with said technology and Siri and whatever else comes down the pipe are poised to make us reminisce about the days when we "had" to have a keyboard on our phones to input text and search.

 

[boss.king]

Following that logic though flying cars are not game changers but just the next logical step or interstellar travel.

We can easily diminish any technology down to just an evolutionary step. Will Siri, and similar technologies, have the potential to radically change how we interact with phones. I believe that answer is yes. After all just 5 years ago the ability to surf the internet on a phone was a difficult task that we now take for granted. The ability to watch a video or read a book was improbable back then.

Changing the game is often about making minute changes or offering abilities that change the view of the end user or how they interact with said technology and Siri and whatever else comes down the pipe are poised to make us reminisce about the days when we "had" to have a keyboard on our phones to input text and search.

I disagree. Flying cars and interstellar travel are very different from cars. I've stated what I feel would be a game changer for voice controls. As it is, Siri is still something you have to talk through everything, tell it everything, and check everything afterwards.

 

[Jordan921]

Just like facetime, its something that wont be used that often. IOt doesnt matter to me, im noit getting an iPhone for many reasons. Im waiting for the Nexus Prime.
Fact is Apple is catching up. Siri good or not is something that has been out for 1.5 years. I had it on my 2G. Steve or whoever did a good thing using it better with the iPhone but there are similar things out there. Apple didnt invent it.

Im not against the iPhone at all, i have Apple products and like them but the fanboys always think what they have is always some sort of groundbreaking thing when they are, for the most part now, catching up to a system that didnt exist til 2 years after the iPhone came out.

Just because you don't use Facetime doesn't mean that other people don't use it.

 

[xav8tor]

I say, it's not hard to "predict" the future in cases like this. IE. Flying cars. Will they be a reality some day? Sure. Am I a prophet for mentioning it 20-30 years before it happens? You tell me.

No. The flying car was invented around 50 years ago and there have been a few different versions since then. The reality is, it will never catch on unless automatically piloted. Most people don't have the "right stuff" to fly anything. As a professional pilot turned aircraft accident investigator, you can trust me on that one.

The genius of Jobs is that he took arcane concepts, improved them, and applied them in useful ways for the masses...repeatedly.

 

[Vegastouch]

Just because you don't use Facetime doesn't mean that other people don't use it.

There was already in thread in here a while ago that asked how many used it and it wasnt very many. Your just late to the party.

 

[Jordan921]

This is just a rubbish reply. If this isnt an opinion then what is? There are no facts here as well and why do we need that? Facetime is something Android has as well that doesnt require wifi only. You can use it with your network data. Siri is something that has been an App in iTunes for almost two years. There are apps in the Android market that do things that Apple doesnt. Like Google Goggles Layer but they are apps i dont use, but somebody else may use all the time...but it is available.

Bottom line is who cares? You may use Siri everyday, the guy next to you with an iPhone may never use it and it is a 2 year old App that Apple decided to intragrate in their phone when many already, like me had it on their iPhone as an App like the 300,000 other Apps there are.

Take that app out and the iPhone is a device that is still lagging behind so enjoy your iPhone. I dont care if you prefer an iPhone or not, I dont, and im all that matters to me.

If you don't care why even bother responding in an iPhone forum?

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There was already in thread in here a while ago that asked how many used it and it wasnt very many. Your just late to the party.

Because that thread represents all the millions of people that have iPhones in the world that aren't on this forum right? You speak for yourself and try to represent for everyone else.

 

[fertilized-egg]

Im not against the iPhone at all, i have Apple products and like them but the fanboys always think what they have is always some sort of groundbreaking thing when they are

Your anti-Apple-Fanboyism is clouding your judgement. Siri is some sort of groundbreaking thing because none of other natural interface available on the mass market devices do the context aware AI thing integrated in the OS. Siri was available before but its usefulness before being bought by Apple was somewhat limited due to it not being integrated within the OS.

There are no facts here as well and why do we need that? Facetime is something Android has as well that doesnt require wifi only.

No.Android didn't even have Skype video calling, let alone anything as good as FaceTime, until very recently. And Skype video calling isn't even available in all Android phones either.

If you want to discuss facts, video conferencing has been one of the weaknesses of Android because iPhone/iOS has basically everything Android has including Tango AND they have FaceTime, not to mention FaceTime tends to run better than others.

 

[damant]

No one says Apple invented artificial intelligence, they're just the ones who will make it mainstream. They did the same with thin laptops, touch screen smart phones and tablets. None of those three items were being designed or built by anyone until Apple created them.

I disagree with you in how much Siri will be used, I believe it will be used greatly. And, in 6-8 months every phone that's launched will have a similar feature. Two years ago people thought the iPad and MacBook Airs were a joke, look at them now...best selling devices in the world (and everyone's trying to copy them).

+1 exactly.
Nothing new here ...but just more usuable and popular/fun.
Touch screen phone : iPhone
Touch screen computer : iPad
Video chat : FaceTime
Voice control: apple Siri ...

Correct me please : when was the last time voice control got so much attention?
Wait until this fri when the 4s is out.... !
We gonna see & hear about it on the news & radio again...

Honestly, I have nothing against androids or pc ...i grew up with windows and palm cell phones... But come on.... Be real! What ever Apple or Steve Job done so far is just amazing and ground breaking. They take the risk of being different. not getting pressured by the conpetitors to deviate from their own vision : skipping on the specs race (ie bigger screen ) and gone after user experience.
...and people agreed ! Look at the pre-sales $ ... Nothing less of amazing.

I for one couldn't believe that neither; I thought an 4s would be a fail!
But I'm wrong miserably along with a whole bunch of others ;-)

 

[Stealthipad]

All this talk is great but how Siri really works is to be seen in the weeks and month to come. If it does work, it will come in VERY handy and used by many! It WILL change things for sure!

If it does not work well . . . well time will tell.

 

[Vegastouch]

Your anti-Apple-Fanboyism is clouding your judgement. Siri is some sort of groundbreaking thing because none of other natural interface available on the mass market devices do the context aware AI thing integrated in the OS. Siri was available before but its usefulness before being bought by Apple was somewhat limited due to it not being integrated within the OS.



No.Android didn't even have Skype video calling, let alone anything as good as FaceTime, until very recently. And Skype video calling isn't even available in all Android phones either.

If you want to discuss facts, video conferencing has been one of the weaknesses of Android because iPhone/iOS has basically everything Android has including Tango AND they have FaceTime, not to mention FaceTime tends to run better than others.

Skype has been in the Market for a while now. How long exactly i do not know since i dont use it so yes not every Android phone has a FFC but the MyTouch 4G which has been out for a year has facetime using the network data so you are wrong that is has been very recent. And that is just 1 phone.
Your "facts" are not correct so please stop trying to make it sound like it is. I dont have anti fanboyism but you are clearly a fanboy and the fanboys just dont know their facts. They only know that they love Apple and nobody else can do anything better.

 

[fertilized-egg]

Skype has been in the Market for a while now. How long exactly i do not know

Nope. Skype has been in the market for a while now but it's been a very short time since it got video calling.

phone has a FFC but the MyTouch 4G which has been out for a year has facetime using the network data so you are wrong that is has been very recent. And that is just 1 phone.

I don't think you understand my point: iPhone has other apps that do video conferencing such as Skype, Fring, and Tango, and more importantly iPhone had Skype with video calling much earlier than Android did.

On iPhone, you get the choice between the built-in Facetime and other assorted 3rd party apps. On Android, the 3rd party apps are harder to get, and there's nothing that's integrated well like FaceTime.

Your "facts" are not correct so please stop trying to make it sound like it is.

You sound like you never actually looked into video calling on Android and iOS, and trying to repeat what iOS naysayers claim "FaceTime needs WiFi, booo!" without looking into the situation. Also in my experience FaceTime and Skype are usually better than Fring and Tango by far.

 

[acfusion29]

Siri is a game changer, wanna know why?

it's the way it's implemented into the OS. we know it's been around for a while, so stop sounding like a broken record people, WE KNOW.

 

[arunim]

Nothing ground breaking about Siri technically. It is not even a brand new invention.
What's really good about it is, how well it is integrated into the os and the ease of accessibility to it from wherever. That is why it is going to be revolutionary.

I understand there are skeptics and that is ok, as it is not even out yet and not been used in the real world in this format. But, if it works the way they demoed it, then it is an absolute game changer.

As an analogy, when the iPhone first came out with all screen and no keyboard, some people though it was gonna flop because they thought that a physical keyboard is absolutely necessary. Yet here we are a few years later, where iPhone has been the basis of other multitouch competing phones (which are argubly better). iPhone was by no means the first all screen device and by no means the first multi touch device. Both these technologies existed much before. However, the way Steve visited it and brought it all together in the iPhone made it a such a success and inspired other companies to do similar and do better.

So, in conclusion, Siri might not be the best thing out there, but it's OS integrated implementation is pure genius, and this implementation will soon be seen on all other competing devices ( which no doubt will try and be better). But they all can credit that to Siri, and Steve's vision.

 

[dccorona]

I'd love to use text with Siri. The most impressive part about Siri isn't its voice recognition but how it parses the natural phrases, understands the context and perform system tasks integrated with the OS , those things do not require voice control at all.

So instead of going into an app or trying to speak to the computer, I can simply type "I'm going to the dentist at 3 tomorrow" in a text box without having to think about it, which takes no deliberate thought process.

Bring it to Mac with text box! Oh and iPad too.

wait...is typing your requests in an option? If so, that makes it even more usable!

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The Macbook Air is not the best selling in the world. The iPhone in Japan is a old crappy device that they dont even think much of.

I don't know where you get your information...but I have a good friend who lives in japan, and what he tells me is quite the opposite of what you're saying. Not to mention that I've seen the phones they use over there, and while "spec wise" they may be more advanced than what we use in some cases, they're big, clunky, poorly designed, and have awful software.