If it's a missed opportunity for Apple, so be it. Competition is good all around. Imagine how Apple will innovate in response to this incentive. Ha!
I'm not so sure Apple missed anything. Apple has moved so far past the original Siri that I'm not sure that a new AI created by the Siri co-founders would have been workable into their current setup.
"Apple has moved so far past the original Siri"
How so? Perception is that Apple dropped the ball on Siri and is being left way behind in Voice UI / AI
I wonder if Google making a big deal of the pixel line accelerated this Viv purchase? Pixel is Google signalling to Android OEMs that it is hoping to go down the microsoft path of using hardware to sell its services (as opposed to Apple which uses software as to sell its high priced hardware).
So for an Andoid OEM, it would make you nervous. Will Google assistant be less on Samsung devices in the future? Samsung needs its own AI assistant. Panic. Let's buy Viv.
Google is in trouble and it's very real and tangible. They may be fine for the next two fiscal quarters, but as Verizon ramps up the search engine changes, it's going to impact Google's bottom line. And when Samsung releases the S8 with Viv, it's going to hurt them further.
Why would Google waste $5B to buy Yahoo!? How much money will they really lose by not being the default search engine on some Verizon phones? If they pay $1B to Apple to be the default search engine on iOS, they wouldn't lose anywhere near that by missing out on Verizon. Last I saw, Verizon had a 22% share of operator handset sales and let's guess that maybe half of those are iPhones and won't have Yahoo on them so therefore around 11% of operator phones in the US will be affected, ignoring the % of people that will switch over to Google.
And Viv? Would they want to sell to Google, knowing it would literally be shut down the next day? I'm not sure if it's really any more advanced than Assistant is now and Google looks pretty committed to it, unlike many of its other half ideas, so it will keep getting better. I wish it was more capable of learning things if I could teach it, e.g. it can pull up movie times from nearby cinemas but if i ask it for the daily menu of a specific restaurant it'll give me the right link, I just wish I could teach it to show me the actually items on the menu. That will come. But will Samsung do a good enough job of advancing Viv? They've shown time and again that they are even worse than Google at coming up with new services then dropping them when they realise they can't compete with Google/Apple. Then again, I saw a stat that 20% of Google searches are now voice-based so maybe it's even higher on Samsung phones and if they offer at least a half decent experience then perhaps they'll stick with it
And Siri could easily gain the few capabilities it does not yet have.
Viv will soon be Samsung's Beats.
What's wrong with Beats? Number 1 brand in sales for headphones. Best branding in same arena: priceless? The foundation Apple Music was built on.
A few tweaks and changes and Beats is perfectly positioned. They need a comfort pair. They need better noise cancellation tech. They all need Lightning. A setting for to adjust Beats base per users taste. A larger Pill+ option. The brand itself couldn't be better. And it's in stark contrast from the Apple brand which is a great thing: customers are not confused.
And Siri could easily gain the few capabilities it does not yet have.
Viv will soon be Samsung's Beats.
What's wrong with Beats? Number 1 brand in sales for headphones. Best branding in same arena: priceless? The foundation Apple Music was built on.
A few tweaks and changes and Beats is perfectly positioned. They need a comfort pair. They need better noise cancellation tech. They all need Lightning. A setting for to adjust Beats base per users taste. A larger Pill+ option. The brand itself couldn't be better. And it's in stark contrast from the Apple brand which is a great thing: customers are not confused.
Every false accusation that you heard Windows fans throw at Apple for decades until about a few years ago(overpriced, form at the expense of function, etc) is actually true about Beats.
And Siri could easily gain the few capabilities it does not yet have.
Viv will soon be Samsung's Beats.
It took Apple about 5 years for Siri to achieve the same capabilities as the Siri app that they bought.
I see see absolutely no reason to have confidence that Apple can achieve much of anything with Siri.
The Siri guys left Apple because they were frustrated at the slow pace of development there. Hopefully Apple has fixed whatever was going wrong with the Siri team, because the results over the past few years have been far less than admirable. Microsoft was able to leapfrog Siri with the 1.0 version of Cortana. And Google has absolutely crushed it with Google Now. Apple really needs to up its game here (the new Apple Photos looks like a nice start with its offline AI).
From what I can gather, they've broken through a programming barrier. The AI teaches itself to program itself. Or maybe better, it programs itself to teach itself, to learn what to be aware of.
every AI shop always says that because it's the goal. but so far we haven't seen it.
If it's a missed opportunity for Apple, so be it. Competition is good all around. Imagine how Apple will innovate in response to this incentive. Ha!
I'm not so sure Apple missed anything. Apple has moved so far past the original Siri that I'm not sure that a new AI created by the Siri co-founders would have been workable into their current setup.
"Apple has moved so far past the original Siri"
How so? Perception is that Apple dropped the ball on Siri and is being left way behind in Voice UI / AI
perception by rumor sites? tech pundits? if you don't think siri today has become more complex than the siri that launched with the 4s, i don't know what to tell you... apple has their own AI experts working on it, of course it hasn't stayed static in all these years.
If it's a missed opportunity for Apple, so be it. Competition is good all around. Imagine how Apple will innovate in response to this incentive. Ha!
I'm not so sure Apple missed anything. Apple has moved so far past the original Siri that I'm not sure that a new AI created by the Siri co-founders would have been workable into their current setup.
"Apple has moved so far past the original Siri"
How so? Perception is that Apple dropped the ball on Siri and is being left way behind in Voice UI / AI
Exactly! The perception I see from a lot of Apple users is that Siri sucks! It has from the start and they don't see much use for it. Yes, Apple has made gains and is trying to make it more useful, but the perception is still that Siri isn't very good.
That being said...
Part of this too could be that users don't really know what Siri can do, and/or don't know how to use it. This could very well be the biggest issue for those who say it sucks.
Half the articles is about how Motorola and Nexus phones are flops because they don't sell a lot of units. By the same argument, iOS and macOS are flops because they have less than 20% share of the market. Most people that owned any of those phones loves them. They didn't sell a lot because they aren't so readily available but I'm not sure having a mass market product was ever Google's goal
When will the lawsuits start? How many times can the same developers sell the same IP without their prior buyers deciding the code and "methods" are the same and worthy of lawsuits over "patented inventions"?
Comments
And Siri could easily gain the few capabilities it does not yet have.
Viv will soon be Samsung's Beats.
Pixel is Google signalling to Android OEMs that it is hoping to go down the microsoft path of using hardware to sell its services (as opposed to Apple which uses software as to sell its high priced hardware).
So for an Andoid OEM, it would make you nervous. Will Google assistant be less on Samsung devices in the future? Samsung needs its own AI assistant. Panic. Let's buy Viv.
And Viv? Would they want to sell to Google, knowing it would literally be shut down the next day? I'm not sure if it's really any more advanced than Assistant is now and Google looks pretty committed to it, unlike many of its other half ideas, so it will keep getting better. I wish it was more capable of learning things if I could teach it, e.g. it can pull up movie times from nearby cinemas but if i ask it for the daily menu of a specific restaurant it'll give me the right link, I just wish I could teach it to show me the actually items on the menu. That will come. But will Samsung do a good enough job of advancing Viv? They've shown time and again that they are even worse than Google at coming up with new services then dropping them when they realise they can't compete with Google/Apple. Then again, I saw a stat that 20% of Google searches are now voice-based so maybe it's even higher on Samsung phones and if they offer at least a half decent experience then perhaps they'll stick with it
A few tweaks and changes and Beats is perfectly positioned. They need a comfort pair. They need better noise cancellation tech. They all need Lightning. A setting for to adjust Beats base per users taste. A larger Pill+ option. The brand itself couldn't be better. And it's in stark contrast from the Apple brand which is a great thing: customers are not confused.
It took Apple about 5 years for Siri to achieve the same capabilities as the Siri app that they bought.
I see see absolutely no reason to have confidence that Apple can achieve much of anything with Siri.
The Siri guys left Apple because they were frustrated at the slow pace of development there. Hopefully Apple has fixed whatever was going wrong with the Siri team, because the results over the past few years have been far less than admirable. Microsoft was able to leapfrog Siri with the 1.0 version of Cortana. And Google has absolutely crushed it with Google Now. Apple really needs to up its game here (the new Apple Photos looks like a nice start with its offline AI).
Seriously I don't know a single person who uses siri other than having their 4 year olds talk to it for fun. It's a joke.
perception by rumor sites? tech pundits? if you don't think siri today has become more complex than the siri that launched with the 4s, i don't know what to tell you... apple has their own AI experts working on it, of course it hasn't stayed static in all these years.
That being said...
Part of this too could be that users don't really know what Siri can do, and/or don't know how to use it. This could very well be the biggest issue for those who say it sucks.
...just like they integrated batteries!