Leaked Apple document says new Siri device is coming by fall 2021
Leaked documents relating to Siri reveal upgrades to the digital assistant are coming in late 2021, aimed at supporting a new piece of hardware.
A list of Siri upgrades expected to arrive before "fall 2021" includes expected elements for "new hardware support" for a "new device," though a report published on Friday is light on those details. Codenamed "Yukon," the upgrades to Siri will introduce support for Find my Friends to the voice-based service, the documents claim. Siri will also include support for accessing the App Store, though the capabilities relating to that are not advised by a report.
Built-in machine translation could enable language interpreting capabilities within Siri, without needing a cellular or other network connection at all, a feature that could be handy for travelers.
A large section of the internal documents, provided to The Guardian by a former Siri "grader," mentions how Siri could work with other devices in a variety of ways. At its simplest, features to enable Siri to read out message notifications to users wearing AirPods is suggested, while the ability to use Shazam via Siri on Apple Watch is also touted.
A bigger feature could be commanding Siri on one device to perform actions on another. One example given is to "Play Taylor Swift on my HomePod," which could be said on an Apple Watch or iPhone remotely and interpreted to control the user's smart speaker at home.
Arguably the biggest element is the ability to "have a back-and-forth conversation about health problems" with Siri. While this could take the form of Siri providing a basic diagnosis of the user to see if medical treatment is worth attaining, it is also possible that the conversations could form part of HealthKit or ResearchKit, Apple's initiatives in the medical field.
Despite the lack of information relating to what kind of new Siri-equipped devices are on the way, one of the most likely candidates is the HomePod, which is enjoying success in reaching markets like China where rival systems from Google and Amazon aren't available. It is plausible that Apple could produce a "mini" version of the HomePod, offering consumers a cheaper and smaller version in a similar vein to the Google Home Mini and the Amazon Echo Dot.
Apple has been rumored to be working on a new generation of the audio device for some time, with a cheaper variant also predicted by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in April 2018, though such a model has yet to be launched.
Keep up with all the Apple news with your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Say, "Hey, Siri, play AppleInsider Daily," -- or bookmark this link -- and you'll get a fast update direct from the AppleInsider team.
A list of Siri upgrades expected to arrive before "fall 2021" includes expected elements for "new hardware support" for a "new device," though a report published on Friday is light on those details. Codenamed "Yukon," the upgrades to Siri will introduce support for Find my Friends to the voice-based service, the documents claim. Siri will also include support for accessing the App Store, though the capabilities relating to that are not advised by a report.
Built-in machine translation could enable language interpreting capabilities within Siri, without needing a cellular or other network connection at all, a feature that could be handy for travelers.
A large section of the internal documents, provided to The Guardian by a former Siri "grader," mentions how Siri could work with other devices in a variety of ways. At its simplest, features to enable Siri to read out message notifications to users wearing AirPods is suggested, while the ability to use Shazam via Siri on Apple Watch is also touted.
A bigger feature could be commanding Siri on one device to perform actions on another. One example given is to "Play Taylor Swift on my HomePod," which could be said on an Apple Watch or iPhone remotely and interpreted to control the user's smart speaker at home.
Arguably the biggest element is the ability to "have a back-and-forth conversation about health problems" with Siri. While this could take the form of Siri providing a basic diagnosis of the user to see if medical treatment is worth attaining, it is also possible that the conversations could form part of HealthKit or ResearchKit, Apple's initiatives in the medical field.
Despite the lack of information relating to what kind of new Siri-equipped devices are on the way, one of the most likely candidates is the HomePod, which is enjoying success in reaching markets like China where rival systems from Google and Amazon aren't available. It is plausible that Apple could produce a "mini" version of the HomePod, offering consumers a cheaper and smaller version in a similar vein to the Google Home Mini and the Amazon Echo Dot.
Apple has been rumored to be working on a new generation of the audio device for some time, with a cheaper variant also predicted by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo in April 2018, though such a model has yet to be launched.
Keep up with all the Apple news with your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. Say, "Hey, Siri, play AppleInsider Daily," -- or bookmark this link -- and you'll get a fast update direct from the AppleInsider team.
Comments
There is much unknown for a device which yet to be announced and appear in about 2 years.
And I am sure Apple works and tries even more technologies and devices. And we could speculate ton of time about hypothetical devices. And how many of these devices will actually see the day of light?
-Siri training for touchy subjects.
-Sources of the audio recordings include Airpods, Carplay, iPads, and AppleTV in addition to two other unmentioned devices tho the iPhone would be almost certainly be one of those and Homepod the other.
-Siri grading screenshots? The Guardian has them ( "...50 screenshots of Siri requests and their automatically-produced transcripts, including personally identifiable information...") and may or may not be shown as some point, but the ability to publish them certainly limited by the EU's privacy guidelines. I'd lean to heavily redacted if published at all.
- There's more to "Siri Grading" than simply transcribing some Siri recordings. Crafting Siri replies is one of them.
The AI article has the link to the original Guardian report this one was based on (highlighted in blue) but for those who don't see it:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/06/apple-rewrote-siri-to-deflect-questions-about-feminism
3) I can ask Siri on my phone or Apple TV to play music on my HomePod now. It doesn't work on my Mac or Watch. Interestingly, if I ask Siri on Apple TV to play music on my HomePod that music will continue to play while I watch a movie on the same Apple TV. Going back to the Music app on Apple TV will still show whatever is currently playing via the HomePod.
I don't understand why Siri can do things on one device that it can't do another (in most cases, there are some that I understand like asking HomePod to show me photos, for example). Are these artificial limitations imposed by Apple or are there really technical issues that need to be resolved first?
if i ask her to turn on an alarm, she makes a new one rather then activating one I already have so I have to manually go delete all the extra alarms later. When I ask her to add a reminder to a list I never know which list it will end up on. The list goes on. Her voice recognition is quite good. Language interpretation not so much.
Thanks for pointing that out. I read the Guardian article and it's much different than I had expected, based on this article. I found the "touchy subjects" part interesting, though it came off to me as trying to make something out of Apple's desire for Siri's answers to be neutral. Neutral answers from a voice assistant makes sense to me. Not providing neutral answers would certainly open up a can of worms, and not just around "feminism" which the Guardian article mentions.
This is already works on iPhone, it just selects the appropriate output device. E.g. Just say something like "Play this on my HomePod".
The Gaurdian report says that the iOS13 Siri upgrades are code named “Yukon” and that the next set of upcoming Siri upgrades is called “Yukon + 1” and is slated for fall 2021. This gives the impression Apple are planning on skipping a year, no Siri upgrades scheduled for 2020. I don’t believe it.
I think some of the odd details in this information could have been deliberately inserted by Apple’s security people so that they can pinpoint which employees/contractors are leaking stuff to the media.
Software issues on iOS are a pain because most of the time the issue is also in your backup and a lot of times third party apps corrupt your OS and it starts acting like hardware issues like an intermittent unresponsive display, unexpected restart, and short battery life. Updating the OS doesn’t help either because most of the time it doesn’t fix the problem.
You can erase all settings, but then you have to set up all your settings again along with your background picture and for some that’s a big pain.
This is is an all-too-common lack of appreciation for just how much work is involved in researching, developing, designing, tweaking, refining, and releasing products to the marketplace.
What we are going to see in 4 days was not started one year ago, it was started 2, 3, or 4 years ago, in some form. Apple plays the long game. We only see the finished products when they are released.