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Are Siri’s new IOS 12 features enough to close the gap to Google and Amazon?
We find out what 2019 means for Siri and whether it can close the gap on Google and Amazon
When it comes to digital personal assistants,
Siri lags behind the competition somewhat.
When the service came to light with the iphone 4S, Siri was fairly revolutionary, providing a hands-free link between you and your smartphone. But within a year Google had its own version, Google Now, and Amazon’s Alexa wasn’t far behind either. In terms of features and popularity, Google and Amazon rule the roost in the digital personal assistant space, utilising their own vast ecosystems perfectly to create a rewarding user experience. Siri, in comparison, is behind the 8-ball.
To put it loosely, Siri falls down in three major areas. Firstly it is too stringently tied to its own ecosystem and its subsequent lack of third-party interaction. Google and Amazon’s devices are smart enough to handle a myriad of requests from thirdparty services. Yes, Siri can, but not nearly as well. Siri is fragmented across devices too, using different versions of the service depending on whether you own an iphone, Apple Watch, Mac, Apple TV or Homepod. Homepod, for example, using a pretty basic version. It may sound highend, but its lack of Siri features puts it behind mass-market rivals like Home and Echo. And finally, an update once a year isn’t enough to make Siri better. Siri needs constant attention, just like Google and Amazon do with their digital assistants. As improvements in the technology happen, Apple users should get to reap the immediate benefits.
Behind the stats
In a TV interview in January 2019 with Jim Cramer on CNBC, Apple CEO
Tim Cook was asked if his company’s bottomless pit of money meant that they could invest in Siri so much that the competition would be blown out of the water. Cook’s response was telling, focusing more on Siri’s wide reach than its feature set. After all, the Siri stats are impressive – 500 million devices using
Siri over 10 billion times a month, in 21 different languages and over 30 countries. Cook went on to say: “So we’ve tried to create a global product. We’re not in every country yet. We want to be. And if you
want something that
is something that has been created in your device, Siri is the best place to do that.” But his excitement for improving Siri’s quality was a bit underwhelming. “I get more and more great things every day,” he said. “The quality is is going up. You know voice is a never-ending journey. We all speak a bit differently. I have a southern dialect, not as southern as I used to. But there’s a lot of stuff to do there. But I’m highly confident in our ability to keep innovating like crazy there.”
Apple knows it isn’t the current market leader, and that’s why it’s pushing the littleknown Siri Shortcuts feature in IOS 12 as a winner. For those of you running IOS
12, you will have seen the shortcuts living on your lock screen when you swipe right onto the Search screen. By default these appear under your Calendar appointments for the day and in their basic form simply show you your most used apps and offer a quick way to open them straight from your Lock screen. But if you are a heavy Siri user, then Apple’s digital assistant will learn about the things you do every day. Say, for example, you use the same app every day to buy the same coffee, Siri will understand that and subsequently offer you a shortcut when it comes to your morning caffeine hit. You can create your own custom shortcuts in Siri’s Settings app too (see page 50).
Third-party shortcuts
Apple is now boosting third-party use of Siri Shortcuts, announcing a wealth of new compatible apps. Performance and training apps like Nike Run Club, Snoww and Homecourt have had the functionality included, as well as health and monitoring apps like smart blood pressure monitor Qardioarm. With apps like Streaks, Waterminder and Yazio, users can track daily habits and see how long they can keep them going by asking Siri to log almost any type of activity, such as hydration, exercise, flossing, sugar and caffeine intake, even walking the dog.
These shortcuts are a start and hopefully it’s a sign of things to come, but as we head towards Siri’s tenth anniversary, 2019 really needs to be a landmark year for Apple’s digital personal assistant. We certainly hope it will be.