“Siri is a promise. A promise of a new computing environment, enormously empowering to the ordinary user, a new paradigm in our evolving relationship with machines,” Kontra writes for Counternotions. “Siri could change Apple's fortunes like iTunes and App Store...or end up being like the useful-but-inessential FaceTime or the essential-but-difficult Maps or the desirable-but-dead Ping. After spending hundreds of millions on acquiring and improving it, what does Apple expect to gain from Siri, at once the butt of late-night TV jokes but also the wonder of teary-eyed TV commercials?”
“Siri's opportunity here to win the hearts and minds of users is to change the rules of the game from relatively rigid, linear and largely decontextualized CLI search towards a much more humane approach where the user declares his intent but doesn't have to tell Siri how do it every step of the way,” Kontra writes. “The user starts a spoken conversation with Siri, and Siri puts an impressive array of services together in the background.”
Kontra writes, “Google has spent enormous amounts of money on an army of PhDs, algorithm design, servers, data centers and constant refinements to create a global search platform. The ROI on search in terms of advertising revenue has been unparalleled in internet history. Apple's investment in Siri has a much shorter history and far smaller visible footprint. While it'd be suicidal for Apple to attack Google Search in the realm of finding things, can Apple sustainably grow Siri to its fruition nevertheless? Very few projects at Apple that don't manage to at least provide for their own upkeep tend to survive. Given Apple's tenuous relationship with direct advertising, is there another business model for Siri?”
Much more in the full article – very highly recommended – here.
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