Siri — Your Wish is its Command

Siri : Your Wish is its Command

The Big Bang Theory - Meeting Siri

Siri has revolutionized the way users interact with iDevices in their daily lives. A Norwegian name for, "beautiful woman who leads you to victory," represents an iconic message. If victory consists on being your personal assistant then Siri is up for the task, which include but are not limited to the following catch phrases:

• Siri, wake me up. — Set's your alarm.
• Siri, remind me to do something every day. — Writes in your reminders.
• Siri,  do I need a sweater today? — Check's the forecast.
• Siri, find me some coffee. — Searches business establishments near you.
• Siri, send a text to… — Will text on dictation.
• Siri, how do I get to downtown . . . ? — Searches map for directions.
• Siri, play me some Avicii. — Interfaces with your iPod.
• Siri, remind me when I leave here to pick up some bread. — Alerts based on location.
• Siri, solve x +y . . . — Your dog didn't eat your homework.
• Siri, send a Tweet . . . — Integrates with Social Media

These are only some of the plethora of options and level of interactivity Siri offers. Below we share a recorded personal experience with Siri and the ease of use amongst the speech recognition industry. Siri previously was an independent app and corp before being purchased by Apple. Purchased spring of 2010, Apple introduced its integrated features with the release of the iPhone 4S. Siri's speech recognition engine is powered by Nuance technologies, the topic of one of our earlier blog posts, and leader in it's voice recognition algorithms. The power that Siri wields is it's implementation of artificial intelligence coupled with database interfacing.

Forbes magazine has suggested that the seamless integration with data base queries will revolutionize the advertising market and direct competition between Apple, Google, and Microsoft. With Apple's acquisition of Siri, Inc, all development for Android and Blackberry platforms ceased making Siri and exclusive Apple commodity. Various successful ports to older devices have been made using 'Jailbroken' iPhones for the older 3GS and iPhone 4 generations. However these ports typically require more tech savvy users with limited support options.

Contrasting Siri's advanced voice recognition capabilities, we include a video demonstrating a Blackberry's voice recognition prompts, and the difficulty it has distinguishing a simple call prompt. Siri's advanced artificial intelligence coupled with advanced voice recognition technology makes the interface approachable and intuitive. This easy of use is a game changer for Apple and the smartphone industry as a whole.

There is now greater competition than ever within the smartphone industry with the advent of voice recognition tech. Apple has systematically selected queried databases and backend computing that searches the information source a user requests. Recently Apple opted for the default implementation of Bing (Microsoft) as its search engine (direct competitor to Google), and OpenTable as a restaurant reservation link. We note that Siri has brought with it a head-to-head competition with Google and its advertising services. Siri is not purposefully bypassing Google as a search option and using other applications and resources to fulfill user's information needs.

How far Siri can go is yet to be seen. There are still a share of users that own Siri enabled iDevices (also available for iPod Touch and iPad), yet fail to exploit the features to their full potential. Nevertheless, the ubiquitous nature and spunky personality that has been programmed into Siri will keep further penetrating the smartphone market. Many new languages are supported, with a full list including: English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese. Apple claims that Siri will learn user's specific accents and way of speech the more the user interacts with their iDevice. Personification and custom ability are high priority targets in a fast-evolving game where the rest of the big companies seem to playing catchup to Siri.

Lastly, see how Raj from The Big Bang Theory — Dates Siri