Why Apple Is Smart to Double Down on Siri
Photo: AP
One area he was pressed on by Walt Mossberg was Siri, Apple’s voice-automated personal assistant that comes as part of the new iPhone 4S.
“When it works, it works really well,” said Mossberg. “But a lot of times, it doesn’t work.”
Mossberg isn’t the only one to criticize Siri. Henry Blodget of Business Insider has said ”Steve Jobswould have killed Siri months ago” and that ”Frankly, it’s concerning that Apple is still advertising a product as flawed as Siri.” Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky saidthat some ex-Apple insiders believe Apple employees are embarrassed by Siri.
Tim Cook’s response, which is here, was that:
- “Customers love it.”
- “There’s more that it can do. We have a lot of people working on this. I think you’re going to be pleased with what we’re doing in the next few months.”
- “Siri’s proved to us that people want to relate to the phone in a new way.”
- Cook implied that voice recognition wasn’t what makes Siri special. What makes Siri special is the Artificial Intelligence. ”It’s not voice recognition. It’s the understanding.”
- “I’d put it on the profound list.”
- “This is something that people dreamed of for years. And, it’s here.”
- “We’re doubling down on it.”
I’ve been a big believer in Siri since its introduction last October. This Forbes article, “Why Siri is a Google Killer,” explains my thinking.
If you took one thing from Cook’s entire talk on Tuesday, it’s that this guy’s a good poker player. He’s very…. controlled. Every word – as well as every detail in Apple’s supply chain – is measured.
You get the sense that nothing happens by chance at Apple. Every move is well-planned.
That’s why I think Blodget and others were supremely arrogant by stating that Steve Jobs wouldn’t have approved of Siri’s release. Jobs was of course still around and involved in green-lighting Siri before last October’s release.
More importantly, these critics fail to understand the long-term potential of Siri and what’s needed to get there from here.
As Cook said, what makes Siri special is her personality, which is to say the AI.
To get to where Apple (and more importantly its customers) want Siri to be, it needs to improve the AI and for that it needs data. So, Blodget and others are fundamentally off base by thinking Steve Jobs’ answer to Siri’s current shortcomings would be to pull it and let the guys tinker with it for another year or two back in Apple’s labs.
You can’t get it any better with some tinkering by a few guys. Siri wouldn’t improve at all with another year of tinkering. You need massive amounts of data. They’re getting that given how popular the 4S is and the Siri usage they’re currently getting.
Apple said it was in “beta” to let the world knows this is a little different from any kind of product release they’d done before. But the long-term gain of doing this exercise is going to more than compensate for the short-term pain.
And that’s the reason for all the Siri ads we’ve had since it launched last Fall. And now Apple’s doubling down on those too. Why? It’s driving more usage and more data.
It sounds like Siri will be profoundly better before its first birthday 6 months from now. Just imagine was it will be like at age 2 — or age 7.
So, let the critics howl. Apple was always about doing something for the benefit of the mainstream. Siri is no different.
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