Today Marks the 10th Anniversary of Apple Introducing the iPhone 4S With Siri

[MacRumors]

Today marks the 10th anniversary of Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller and former iOS chief Scott Forstall introducing the iPhone 4S with an all-new voice assistant, Siri.

"For decades, technologists have teased us with this dream that you're going to be able to talk to technology and it'll do things for us," said Schiller, at a small press conference at Apple's former Infinite Loop headquarters.

Schiller then invited Forstall on stage to provide a live demo of Siri. The crowd applauded as he demonstrated what are now basic Siri tasks such as checking the weather, setting an alarm, and searching the web, as Siri was the first system-level voice assistant on a smartphone. A decade later, however, it is a commonly held opinion that Siri has fallen behind competitors like Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa.

The Verge's James Vincent wrote about Siri's shortcomings today:

Everyone who uses Siri has their own tales of frustration — times when they've been surprised not by the intelligence but the stupidity of Apple's assistant, when it fails to carry out a simple command or mishears a clear instruction. And while voice interfaces have indeed become widespread, Apple, despite being first to market, no longer leads. Its "humble personal assistant" remains humble indeed: inferior to Google Assistant on mobile and outmaneuvered by Amazon's Alexa in the home.

In 2018, some former Apple employees reflected on Siri's "squandered lead" over Google Assistant and Alexa. In response, Apple said it had made significant advances to Siri's performance, scalability, and reliability, and said it continued to invest deeply in machine learning and artificial intelligence to continually improve Siri's quality of answers.

In hindsight, the iPhone 4S event as a whole had a bit of a somber feeling to it, as Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs passed away the following day. We've embedded a video of the event below, with Schiller introducing Siri around the 19:25 mark.

P.S.: If you say "happy birthday" to Siri today, the voice assistant offers up some fun replies.

Article Link: Today Marks the 10th Anniversary of Apple Introducing the iPhone 4S With Siri

 

[AngerDanger]

10 years old and doesn't act a day over beta… ?

 

[MrGimper]

And has it improved that much in 10 years? Really?

 

[dukebound85]

amazing.....no real functionality improvements over a decade

 

[blacktape242]

and after 10 years its still pretty terrible.

 

[ElectricPotato]

10 years and I still cringe when I hear people trying and failing to use it in public. Discretely googling something is more effective and considerate.

 

[Evader115]

Today marks the 10th anniversary of Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller and former iOS chief Scott Forstall introducing the iPhone 4S with an all-new voice assistant, Siri.

"For decades, technologists have teased us with this dream that you're going to be able to talk to technology and it'll do things for us," said Schiller, at a small press conference at Apple's former Infinite Loop headquarters.

Schiller then invited Forstall on stage to provide a live demo of Siri. The crowd applauded as he demonstrated what are now basic Siri tasks such as checking the weather, setting an alarm, and searching the web, as Siri was the first system-level voice assistant on a smartphone. A decade later, however, it is a commonly held opinion that Siri has fallen behind competitors like Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa.

The Verge's James Vincent wrote about Siri's shortcomings today:In 2018, some former Apple employees reflected on Siri's "squandered lead" over Google Assistant and Alexa. In response, Apple said it had made significant advances to Siri's performance, scalability, and reliability, and said it continued to invest deeply in machine learning and artificial intelligence to continually improve Siri's quality of answers.

In hindsight, the iPhone 4S event as a whole had a bit of a somber feeling to it, as Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs passed away the following day. We've embedded a video of the event below, with Schiller introducing Siri around the 19:25 mark.

Article Link: Today Marks the 10th Anniversary of Apple Introducing the iPhone 4S With Siri

Wow, it's only gone downhill since.

 

[contacos]

Crazy, Siri has not aged a day! and I still remember "hacking" Siri onto my iPhone 4 with Cydia. Good old JB times

 

[MrGimper]

10 years of "set a timer for x minutes" .... how did I cope before?

Meanwhile, Alexa effortlessly controls my Hue lights, Blink Cameras, Hive Heating, Ring doorbell, Tapo plugs, Sonos speakers .....

 

[I7guy]

10 years and I still cringe when I hear people trying and failing to use it in public. Discretely googling something is more effective and considerate.

I know and I agree with this. Doing a web search is much less cringeworthy than using <<insert your favorite voice assistant>> to find the answer.

 

[ghostface147]

And it’s still weak at doing anything besides please set a timer for 10 minutes.

 

[fwmireault]

That means that tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of Steve Jobs death

 

[AngerDanger]

And it’s still weak at doing anything besides please set a timer for 10 minutes.

Not even remotely true.

I wouldn't use any other virtual assistant to sporadically play music while I attempt to dictate a text.

 

[matttarantino]

10 years later and its still garbage. I use it mostly for HomeKit commands than anything else

 

[kemal]

Apple still haven't fixed "Send an email."

 

[FHoff]

I have used Siri since it came out multiple times a day for many tasks on iPhone, HomePods, Apple TV etc
I have had very little issues over the years.

 

[satchmo]

I wish it could contextually understand more than one question without having to say 'Hey Siri' each time.

"Hey Siri, is it going to rain today?"
"Yes, looks like rain."
"How about tomorrow?"
*silence*

 

[AppleTO]

I only really use Siri in the car to change music and send texts. It works okay… most of the time.

 

[Schizoid]

“Hey Siri, have you got better over the past ten years?”
…
”here’s what I found on the web about battering pasties and tin shears”

 

[Steve121178]

Siri is still hopeless and sends me links to webpages instead of any useful audible information. Other times Siri completely misinterprets what is being asked.

Apple have an awful lot of work to do with Siri, but they seemingly can't be bothered. Alexa and Google are lightyears ahead with their voice assistants.

 

[840quadra]

I wish it could contextually understand more than one question without having to say 'Hey Siri' each time.

"Hey Siri, is it going to rain today?"
"Yes, looks like rain."
"How about tomorrow?"
*silence*

I wish the same with my Google home.

 

[brucewayne]

Otherwise known as the day big tech convinced everyone to bug themselves 24/7

 

[Paddle1]

Siri has a few birthday responses:

 

[Aidoneus]

Infinity Blade 2 (and 3) is still the high point of mobile gaming.

 

[jz0309]

I tried it in the early days, didn't work for me back then ... I'm doing just fine without Siri ...