SIRI
RISING
HUFFINGTON
01.27.13
rival, Google. (Somewhere in the
vaults of the wireless giant, there
are unreleased commercials touting Siri as an Android add-on.)
Its first and only app had
barely been available for two full
months. And now Siri — and its
future — belonged to Apple.
“It was a storybook ending
— or beginning, you can call it,”
Kittlaus says.
RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
‘AN ARTIFICIALLYINTELLIGENT ORPHAN’
With Siri and its entire 24-person
team installed at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, the tech giant
at once got down to tinkering with
its new acquisition.
Even as Apple amped up some
features, it removed many of Siri’s
powers by disconnecting the assistant from most of the outside
services that had powered its
digital brain. The restaurant reservation function, one of the key
features of the original Siri app in
2010, would be denied to iPhone
users until 2012.
Industry insiders say Apple’s
size has hindered its ability to
forge deals with the dozens of services that once synced with Siri.
Whereas partnering with a startup
in its embryonic stages was a sim-
pler affair, brokering a deal with
the world’s most influential tech
company, a high-stakes undertaking by any measure, required many
lawyers, meetings and spreadsheets of cost-benefit analyses.
Though Apple has the technology
to pair Siri with a multitude of
sites and services — and could use
it soon — it may not yet have persuaded those potential partners to
embrace a bigger Siri.
Apple also seems keen to ensure
Siri will be decent for many users,
rather than genius for a few. Progress has been slowed by Apple’s
Paul Saffo, a
technology
forecaster
and associate
professor
at Stanford
University.
“We moving
more and
more towards
an interface
like the
interface we
have with
each other,”
Saffo said.