Apple released the iPhone 4S recently and it carries the same design as the iPhone 4. Not a unknown fact with Apple. We have seen the MacBook Pro (unibody) carry the same look, iPods in the past carry the same look and that reflects to us that Apple works hard to create a design. They stand by it for long and work on the software, ecosystem and the actual offering to the consumers rather than the outer shell each time. We won’t get into the debate of whats right or wrong with this approach, but it is interesting to see how Siri is pitched.
In 2007 Apple came up with this phone that had an iPod and Safari in it, all running on the Mac OS X. What stood out was the touch controls. There we no buttons on the screen, an awesome on screen keyboard and best in the class browser. It worked for many and got better over the years. What followed is a transformation of the entire mobile industry. Smartphone makers were challenged and they are now responding. We can see hardware and software challenging the iPhone, but largely still motivated by the apps and full touch-screen controls that Apple took mainstream.
Come 2011, the 5th generation iPhone is revealed. The iPhone 4S comes with a personal voice assistant called ‘Siri’. Coupled with your personal info, location, internet, contacts, calendar and more, Siri delivers decades of research commercialized and sold to Apple. Why not look at this recent TV Ad for Siri by Apple before we talk further.
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Siri is magical, as Jobs would have said is if he was here to describe it. The video shows enough for us to sense what it is capable of. And despite the competition playing it down, Apple again has something that is different and potentially taking the game to the next level. For sometime now I have been thinking what next after an awesome browser, hardware and apps? Where would the next wave of innovation come from? Just larger, brighter screens and more megapixels? That isn’t innovation! .
Siri is potentially an all new way to compute. You can talk to a mobile computer and get things done. The same can be replicated anywhere else, in your home, car, office or even public areas. When Apple introduced multitouch iPhone in 2007, it was futuristic, when Microsoft introduced the Kinect for Xbox, it was futuristic too, I feel the same way for Siri. And for some reason, Apple is in the best position to integrate it across our lives, be it communications or computing.
However, just imagine, if Siri like innovation goes industry wide? If everyone from Redmond to Bangalore had such powerful and educated voice understanding? Well that might not happen with Siri, but others are working. They have an inspiration from what Apple is doing and we can be sure that all those sci-fi movies showing you talking to computers … it might well become real, sooner than we think!