

Steve Jobs’ best is yet to come - orhanturkoglu
http://gerger.co/yalimslodge/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-best-is-yet-to-come/

======
melvinram
Siri will likely have a much larger impact on the future of technology than
any other thing if it is indeed as efficient as it has been portrayed to be...
but I'm not sure if the credit really belongs to Steve. The core tech was
built else where, integrated with iOS by others, bought by Steve and added
deeper into iOS by others. I'm a big Steve Jobs fan but this article might be
"reaching" in it's premise. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
yalimgerger
I am aware of Siri's history. Tablets, phones, personal computers are other
peoples creation as well. Steve Jobs did...whatever he did to them. The same
will happen with A.I. Sadly, he won't be with us when it all happens. But you
should see the YouTube video where Mossberg and Jobs talk about Siri. Mossberg
keeps saying that Siri is search. Steve keeps correcting him. No, Siri is A.I.
Siri is A.I. You should see the look on his face.

~~~
melvinram
Siri is not analogous to tablets, phones, etc.

For example, cellphones existed before Steve pushed to build the iPhone but
something like the iPhone didn't exist.

Siri existed in near the same form pre iPhone 4S. It's the same Siri, just
with deeper integration and the Apple finish.

~~~
yalimkgerger
The Apple finish being the operative words here...Or the Apple start should I
say...

------
yalimkgerger
Hi. Author here. I am aware that Siri is not started at Apple. However, the
point is that it will be finished by Apple. Steve Jobs did not invent cell
phones, tablets or PC's for that matter, either. But he made them better. The
same will happen to Siri.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Considering that Siri has been available on the App Store for a while, and no
one really cared, I doubt it.

~~~
mrich
The key point here is integration though. Just putting a speech recognition
app on a phone isn't doing much. But making sure the most common cases you are
going to be using it for, e.g. appointments/reminders, searching for specific
things, finding a nearby hotel etc. work reliably no matter in what way you
phrase it, is the part that makes it really useful. Also consider how you can
make sure this works as expected by using all the context available onm a
modern smartphone (location/movement, weather, calendar, emergency
information, congestion) If Apple does the polishing work for that to work it
will be a huge success. They probably aren't there yet though, otherwise their
presentation would have put much more emphasis on it.

I tested the current state of voice recognition on Android and was mostly
disappointed (bad recognition, and nowhere the "intelligence" you would
expect).

~~~
foobarbazetc
The point is, you could already integrate with Maps/Calendar/Address Book etc
from the app.

Yes, the integrated Siri is going to be better, but is it going to blow your
mind and revolutionise the world? No. Get back to me when it can understand a
non-Germanic language.

------
alexholehouse
I think something that's been somewhat overlooked in the Siri discussion is
the expectation of usability. Our expectation relating to standard touch
screen/keyboard/mouse usability has been fairly standardized by devices over
the last ten to fifteen years. With Siri this expectation is not yet present,
meaning we may have unrealistic expectations for the timeframe between command
and action, and we will have far less tolerance for misunderstanding, mis-
communication or failures with Siri than we might with traditional user
interfaces.

The bottom line is that Siri better be basically perfect - if it's unreliable,
even within what in engineering terms would be totally acceptable standards
for such an advanced bit of software, people will just not bother and revert
back to standard UI mechanisms. This is always the danger with any new user
interface, but, I think, especially relevant here. After all, people tend to
get pretty annoyed when you don't listen to them.

~~~
yalimgerger
I think you are spot on. I think this is the problem Siri has solved or will
solve. People tend to underestimate Siri as a voice recognition system. Siri
is A.I. . Given Apple's recent history I wager that they would never released
Siri if they didn't believe that they are onto something. This is not some
knock off voice recognition nonsense. This is A.I.

This goes far beyond searching for restaurants or wheather. Screw that noise.
I am sure all of you can imagine the doors this opens in scientific research
and analysis of data.

This will open a new era just like the Internet.

------
NameNickHN
What a load of crap.

"Siri [...] will be remembered as his latest and greatest gift to mankind."

Seriously?

~~~
yalimgerger
Yes, seriously. Siri is not voice recognition. Siri is not restaurant
recommendation. Siri is A.I. I speculate that Apple is on the verge of making
A.I. commonly available. I am sure you can imagine the possibilities. I
speculate that this will change our lives as much as Internet has. In a not so
distant future, we will look at the day Siri was announced as the moment in
history it all began.

~~~
NameNickHN
You mean there is only one company on the planet that has mastered A.I. and
the only thing they're using it for is voice controlling a telephone?

~~~
yalimkgerger
Clearly, some other company can beat Apple in this game. But what I am
speculating is that A.I. is going to be the next big thing. Siri is the first
mainstream use of A.I. Even if another company might be the winner in the A.I.
race which just began, Siri's public introduction will be remembered much like
Apple II's or the first Mac's.

------
Tycho
To be honest... my expectations aren't quite so high. I was just hoping it
could be as good as Google Voice, which is already available.

It did cross my mind though that one of these days we'll have a product that
is the tipping point for AI (for everyday users).

~~~
yalimgerger
I speculate that this is the tipping point. This is going to be as big
as...Internet.

