When was Siri introduced by Apple?
26086272#13
Siri was originally released as a stand-alone application for the iOS operating system in February 2010, and at the time, the developers were also intending to release Siri for Android and BlackBerry devices. Two months later, Apple acquired Siri. On October 4, 2011, Apple introduced the iPhone 4S with a beta version of Siri. After the announcement, Apple removed the existing standalone Siri app from App Store. "TechCrunch" wrote that, despite the Siri app's support for iPhone 4, its removal from App Store might also have had a financial aspect for the company, in providing an incentive for customers to upgrade devices. Third-party developer Steven Troughton-Smith, however, managed to port Siri to iPhone 4, though without being able to communicate with Apple's servers. A few days later, Troughton-Smith, working with an anonymous person nicknamed "Chpwn", managed to fully hack Siri, enabling its full functionalities on iPhone 4 and iPod Touch devices. Additionally, developers were also able to successfully create and distribute legal ports of Siri to any device capable of running iOS 5, though a proxy server was required for Apple server interaction.
Over the years, Apple has expanded the line of officially supported products, including newer iPhone models, as well as iPad support in June 2012, iPod Touch support in September 2012, Apple TV support, and the stand-alone Siri Remote, in September 2015, Mac and AirPods support in September 2016, and HomePod support in February 2018.
Siri
481262#26
In December 2007, SRI launched a spin-off company, Siri Inc., which Apple acquired in April 2010. In October 2011, Apple announced the Siri personal assistant as an integrated feature of the Apple iPhone 4S. Siri's technology was born from SRI's work on the DARPA-funded CALO project, described by SRI as the largest artificial intelligence project ever launched. Siri was co-founded in December 2007 by Dag Kittlaus (CEO), Adam Cheyer (vice president, engineering), and Tom Gruber (CTO/vice president, design), together with Norman Winarsky (vice president of SRI Ventures). Investors included Menlo Ventures and Morgenthaler Ventures.
SRI International
9333997#12
The Siri intelligent personal voice assistant that Forstall introduced in September 2011 has received a mixed reception with some observers regarding it as a "flop". Forstall was vigorously criticized after the new Maps app, introduced in iOS 6, received criticism for inaccuracies that were not up to Apple standards. According to Adam Lashinsky of "Fortune", when Apple issued a formal apology for the errors in Maps, Forstall refused to sign it. Under long-standing practice at Apple, Forstall was the "directly responsible individual" for Maps, and his refusal to sign the apology convinced Cook that Forstall had to go.
Scott Forstall
6963544#52
The Remote App was updated on September 13, 2016, to take advantage of all the features of the Apple TV 4. This includes Siri, Touchpad, and Home Buttons, along with a now playing screen.
On September 9, 2015, Apple announced the new Siri Remote for the 4th generation Apple TV (although in some territories, Apple have kept the name Apple TV Remote, due to Siri functionality not being enabled on it in that territory). It is a completely redesigned remote that features dual microphones for Siri support and a glass touch surface for navigation around the interface by swiping or tapping and scrubbing to fast forward or rewind. Also, it has a menu and home button, a Siri button to invoke Siri, a Play/Pause button, and a Volume Up/Down button to control the volume on the TV. The Siri Remote will communicate with the Apple TV via Bluetooth rather than infrared, removing the requirement of a line-of-sight with the device. This new remote is only supported by the 4th generation Apple TV and later and will not work with earlier generations.
Apple TV
2892101#9
The Siri Remote was launched with the 4th Generation Apple TV in 2015. It uses both IR and Bluetooth to communicate with the Apple TV. The remote has a glass trackpad, dual microphones, 5 buttons for Menu, Home, Siri and Play/Pause, Volume up and down as 1 button and is the size of 2 buttons. Additionally it has an accelerometer (IMU) and a gyroscope which allows the remote to be used as a gaming controller for tvOS apps and games. The remote (unlike previous generations) uses a built-in rechargeable Lithium Polymer Battery that is charged through the lightning port at the bottom of the remote. The Siri Remote is known as the Apple TV Remote in places that don't support Siri.
Apple Remote
55968271#5
Voice assistants are interfaces that allow a user to complete an action simply by speaking a command. Introduced in October 2011, Apple’s Siri was one of the first voice assistants widely adopted. Siri allowed users of iPhone to get information and complete actions on their device simply by asking Siri.
Further development has continued since Siri’s introduction to include home based devices such as Google Home or Amazon Echo (powered by Alexa) that allow users to “connect” their homes through a series of smart devices to further the options of tangible actions they can complete. Users can now turn off the lights, set reminders and call their friends all with a verbal queue.
Conversational user interfaces
26086272#1
Siri is a spin-off from a project originally developed by the SRI International Artificial Intelligence Center. Its speech recognition engine was provided by Nuance Communications, and Siri uses advanced machine learning technologies to function. Its original American, British, and Australian voice actors recorded their respective voices around 2005, unaware of the recordings' eventual usage in Siri. The voice assistant was released as an app for iOS in February 2010, and it was acquired by Apple two months later. Siri was then players said the game could into iPhone 4S at its release in October 2011. At that time, the separate app was also removed from the iOS App Store. Siri has since become an integral part of Apple's products, having been adapted into other hardware devices over the years, including newer iPhone models, as well as iPad, iPod Touch, Mac, AirPods, Apple TV, and HomePod.
Siri
26086272#8
The original American voice of Siri was provided in July 2005 by Susan Bennett, unaware that it would eventually be used for the voice assistant. A report from "The Verge" in September 2013 about voice actors, their work, and machine learning developments, made hints that Allison Dufty was the voice behind Siri, though this was disproven when Dufty wrote on her website that she was "absolutely, positively "not" the voice of Siri." Citing growing pressure, Bennett revealed her role as Siri in October, and her claim was proven by Ed Primeau, an American audio forensics expert. Apple has never confirmed the information.
Siri
26086272#32
In June 2017, "The Wall Street Journal" published an extensive report on the lack of innovation with Siri following competitors' advancement in the field of voice assistants. Noting that Apple workers' anxiety levels "went up a notch" on the announcement of Amazon's Alexa, the "Journal" wrote: "Today, Apple is playing catch-up in a product category it invented, increasing worries about whether the technology giant has lost some of its innovation edge." The report cites the primary causes as being Apple's prioritization of user privacy, including randomly-tagged six-month Siri searches, whereas Google and Amazon keep data until actively discarded by the user, and executive power struggles with some employees leaving. Apple declined to comment on the report, while Eddy Cue said: "Apple often uses generic data rather than user data to train its systems and has the ability to improve Siri's performance for individual users with information kept on their iPhones."
Siri
26086272#31
In June 2016, "The Verge"s Sean O'Kane wrote about the then-upcoming major iOS 10 updates, with a headline stating "Siri's big upgrades won't matter if it can't understand its users": "What Apple didn't talk about was solving Siri's biggest, most basic flaws: it's still not very good at voice recognition, and when it gets it right, the results are often clunky. And these problems look even worse when you consider that Apple now has full-fledged competitors in this space: Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's Assistant." Also writing for "The Verge", Walt Mossberg had previously questioned Apple's efforts in cloud-based services, writing:
"[...] perhaps the biggest disappointment among Apple's cloud-based services is the one it needs most today, right now: Siri. Before Apple bought it, Siri was on the road to being a robust digital assistant that could do many things, and integrate with many services – even though it was being built by a startup with limited funds and people. After Apple bought Siri, the giant company seemed to treat it as a backwater, restricting it to doing only a few, slowly increasing number of tasks, like telling you the weather, sports scores, movie and restaurant listings, and controlling the device's functions. Its unhappy founders have left Apple to build a new AI service called Viv. And, on too many occasions, Siri either gets things wrong, doesn't know the answer, or can't verbalize it. Instead, it shows you a web search result, even when you're not in a position to read it."
In October 2016, "Bloomberg" reported that Apple had plans to unify the teams behind its various cloud-based services, including a single campus and reorganized cloud computing resources aimed at improving the processing of Siri's queries, although another report from "The Verge", in June 2017, once again called Siri's voice recognition "bad."
Siri