Speaking at the AsiaD conference, Rubin added “I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant” though tasty desserts they totally should be. Right, Rubin? [All Things D via TechRadar via Gizmodo UK]
Speaking at the AsiaD conference, Rubin added “I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant” though tasty desserts they totally should be. Right, Rubin? [All Things D via TechRadar via Gizmodo UK]
BenDTU
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 6:56 AMTranslation: “We don’t have an answer to Siri yet”
5432
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 7:16 AMPretty much. We’ll see what he says when they make one. He’ll probably backflip like a politician.
chris
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 9:23 AMYou obviously have no idea what you are talking about. There are several alternatives to Siri for android phones and have been for a long time before Siri came out. Apple are just marketing geniuses so now everyone is talking about Siri
BenDTU
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 12:16 PMI think it’s safe to say that Siri is way more powerful than any of these ‘alternatives’, including Google’s own which Rubin has strangely forgotten about.
Thorbjørn
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 7:20 AMIf only tech companies (Andy Rubin, Google, Apple… the whole bunch) would spend less time trashtalking other companies, suing the asses out of each other and so on… and spend more time developing a proper product.
About this exact comment: What a pile of crap. Your phone is an assistant already. I personally find Siri a welcome addition. Maybe not quite the gold Apple try to make it out to be, but still, a good addition.
Ash
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 11:48 AMMoreso, if they spent more time advertising their products and the advantages and simplicity of Android, they’d gain a following quicker. Right now its up to carriers and handset manufacturers to advertise and promote Android devices and their functionality, something that they fail at miserably and consistently.
Craig W.
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 7:23 AMI have a widget that displays the weather from the home screen, for today and the next 5 days… All with out asking Siri…
Still seams like the greatest feature i’d never use, i have voice recognition and saying “search (subject)” works very quickly when using the samsung with Vlingo setting. I never use it though. Still Android is about choice, I think it’s the 3rd party developers who need to add this. Vlingo just needs to change their app a bit and bam you can look like a weirdo asking your phone the meaning of life…
Ogre
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 7:31 AMEven though I’m an Android fanboy (and developer), I actually have to disagree here. Rubin seems to have forgotten that these things aren’t phones any more, they are pocket sized computers that have mobile radios. Siri is useful for those situations where your hands aren’t available to type, which oddly enough, is probably going to happen when needing to use your phone, not your laptop or desktop PC, or even a tablet. A smartphone is actually the best place we currently have for this kind of technology. The only better situation I could think of is a computer system like Star Trek’s, where you don’t actually have to be near a terminal to get information and issue commands, which I imagine could be useful in certain industrial settings.
It’s also interesting from a machine intelligence point of view. Computer scientists have been working towards speech recognition that actually works for ages now, and from what I’ve seen in videos, this is pretty close, and thus impressive on that front. However, after recognition, it still seems a bit chatbot-like in it’s responses, not being able to follow context in the “conversation”. Also, can it actually process any of the information it finds? For example, can it get that weather information that everyone talks about, and then suggest what kind of clothing to wear for that day, or is it just a go-for?
I think the next step with this kind of thing is to allow developers to add hooks in their applications that let Siri use them to access the app to control it, and extract information from it too. Has this already been done? I’m not an iOS developer, so I don’t know.
Applications should also be able to push certain notifications to Siri as well. Though that would be more useful if apps actually ran in the background in iOS multitasking, instead of being held in memory doing nothing.
Thanioti
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:04 AMJustify your poor choice of phone and turtle necks as much as you like.
Vlingo = a year of Voice dictation and commands on my Samsung. Siri = the ability to play with yourself like a good Crapple geek only knows how.
When I see 13y.o. Kids dress like Britney Spears I cringe. When I see the the whole flock of sheeple aspire to live an Crapple advertisement I wonder to what extent their options count.
iceleron
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 10:14 AMWow… harsh
MDolley
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 10:30 AMIgnoring your anti-apple bias, I would seriously be interested in knowing
A) Can Vlingo create geolocation based reminders?
B) Can Vlingo set up relationships between yourself and contacts? Such as “Bob is my uncle”
C) Can Vlingo perform maths?
D) Can Vlingo create new appointments as well as alter existing ones. “Move my 5pm meeting to 8pm”?
I find Siri quite impressive, but maybe that’s just because I haven’t heard much about Vlingo
Snoop
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 8:29 AMSiri could be amazing, but it is held back to be a partial advance for Apple like always… This is the Apple way! hold on, innovation in mobile software & hardware will be available for Apple in 2013!!!
MDolley
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 9:59 AMNo idea what the hell Andy is going on about.
A) Siri allows you to use your voice to do stuff that makes smartphones smart. Stuff that Android phones also do.
“What is 15′ in MM?”
“Remind me to buy milk when I leave work”
B) Siri IS a tool for communicating. Pick up the phone “Send a text to my wife saying I will be late.”
Has Andy only seen the funny Siri responses? Because people aren’t having a conversation with Siri, they are using Siri to do stuff. That stuff quite often INCLUDES communicating.
rch
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 3:18 PMSiri makes a smartphone into a true Personal Digital Assistant / PDA. Its like having a robot secretary/assistant in your pocket. And since sending command by speaking is easier, faster and more efficient compared to typing, it makes iPhone to the next level of smartphone.
Richard
Friday, October 21, 2011 at 10:47 PMThe statement baffles me a bit, largely because of Androids features some of the more well rounded components are aspects such as its web browser and navigation software that aren’t really to do with communicating to people. On the other hand their SMS application for a long time has better been replaced with third party options.
Perhaps he could explain why they offer Google Voice for their own platform also?