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­NetEase Technology News on July 14, foreign media USA Today wrote that Apple's voice assistant Siri, which had a lot of problems at the beginning of its launch, has made significant improvements, but it is still disappointing because users cannot use it in many applications. Although the company began opening Siri to outside developers last year, developers did not flock to Siri in large numbers.

­the following are the main contents of the article:

Hey, Siri, why can't you be used in more applications?

­Apple has been busy promoting its latest move to strengthen Siri last summer. Apple says developers will be able to use Siri through our favorite apps for the first time. The move heralds a brighter future for the voice computing tool for iPhone, iPad and Mac computers.

But today, very few application developers are willing to participate.

­there are very few popular applications that provide support

It has been observed that only a small number of the top 50 apps downloaded from Apple's App Store App Store fully support Siri. They are two popular ride-hailing apps, Uber and Lyft, WhatsApp, Pinterest, Twitter and Yelp.

­popular applications that do not support Siri include: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Google Maps, Spotify, Netflix, and so on.

In addition, according to Apple, among the apps other than 50 downloads, Siri is compatible with LinkedIn, Skype, PayPal,

What on earth is going on? Bret Kinsella, the publisher of Voicebot.ai, which covers artificial intelligence and voice computing, points out that many developers choose not to sign up for a software tool called SiriKit to integrate Siri into apps because Apple only allows Siri to be used in six categories (which was later adjusted to nine), which "kicks almost everyone out."it's too restrictive."

­for example, developers can code Siri-compatible applications that support phone calls, taxi hailing and visual search. Say to Siri, "Hey, Siri, call me a Uber (or Lyft)," and it will ask you what kind of ride-sharing service you want (such as ride-sharing and cheap ride service), when you want the driver to pick you up, and if you are sure you want to call a taxi.

By contrast, competitors of photo apps such as Instagram, shopping apps, navigation apps and Apple music apps are not involved. Although Apple claims that Siri is compatible with YouTube, the results are disappointing: ask Siri to play a specific YouTube playlist, and it will tell you that you can't find that playlist in your Apple Music. Ask Siri to play video clips from the TV series "Seinfeld" (Seinfeld) (which is everywhere on YouTube), and it will take you to the Hulu registration interface. So what can Siri do? Say to him, "Hey, Siri, find me some dog videos." It will say, "I found these on the Internet," and display thumbnails on the iPhone home screen.

Steven Sinofsky, board partner at Andreessen Horowitz, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, says Siri doesn't get a lot of support from developers because its overall reputation is not good. "it may also be because voice control is still unreliable, especially when your phone is on you." He recently wrote on Medium.

­Apple declined to comment on this article.

­Amazon has more "skills"

­Siri has been hit by Amazon's fast-growing Alexa and Google's ambitious Google Assistant on Android phones and Google Home speakers, but slow support for app developers has put Siri at risk of further damage to its reputation. Although Siri has a first-mover advantage (it was launched in 2011 and became the first widely used digital assistant) and is ubiquitous (covering more than 1 billion iPhone), it has long been ridiculed for failing to improve to the level that users had expected.

­its competitors are already getting closer and closer, robbing users of some of their time and attention.

­Siri had an average of 41.4 million monthly active users in the US in May, according to a survey of 20, 000 people covered by Verto Analytics, a consumer behavior monitoring agency. The figure is down 15 per cent from 48 million a year ago, according to Verto Analytics estimates.

At the same time, Amazon Alexa, with a much lower user base, grew by as much as 225 per cent, with monthly active users rising from 800000 to 2.6 million.

­thanks to the popularity of iPhone, Siri still has a big lead over its competitors. It also enjoys the advantage of user loyalty: SurveyMonkey Audience conducted a survey on who is the most indispensable voice assistant for users, and the results showed that Siri won easily. Apple said Siri currently has 375 million monthly active users worldwide and handles about 2 billion voice requests a week.

However, Siri is not as intelligent as other voice assistants. In the contest of responsiveness of Google, Amazon Alexa and Siri, Google is far better than Apple and Amazon in answering users' questions with voice. This also confirms the advantage of Google's database scale.

­Apple's competitors are also supported by a lot of developers that Apple has failed to attract. For example, the number of "skills" of Amazon Alexa assistants has just exceeded 15000. From playing Jeopardy and getting recipes from the food channel (Food Network) to basic functions such as broadcasting and blogging on demand, Alexa's "skills" are rich and varied.

­on Apple's Siri page, the company lists 100 possibilities for using Siri, from setting calendar conventions to searching for pictures on Pinterest to using Lyft to take a taxi. (Siri will also usher in some new features on the next generation of mobile operating system iOS 11, which will be launched in September: translating phrases in five languages, identifying QR codes and checking bank account balances. )

Amazon is also aggressively pushing the Alexa beyond the Echo speakers-- this year it has launched new televisions, refrigerators and even Internet routers.

­Siri enters the living room

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­Apple Smart Speaker HomePod

­Siri will also enter the living room later this year: built into Apple's HomePod high-end speakers.

­Apple does not open its voice assistants to as many devices as Amazon and Google do, suggesting that it wants to do well in a few areas and is unwilling to dabble in more.

­"Siri will not get better, will not catch up with Alexa... unless it is allowed to fail." Kinsella pointed out, "so HomePod is the main hardware."

­Siri has made a lot of improvements compared to the early days of its launch, you know, it had a lot of problems, a lot of things can not be done well. However, many consumers don't use it after a few times of dissatisfaction, so they miss out on the subsequent improvements to Siri.

­Today, this involves the management of expectations. Siri is an excellent tool for setting calendar appointments, making hands-free calls, and locating restaurant addresses.

­Noah Rosenberg (Noah Rosenberg), former CEO of Pikazo photo app, points out that Apple has user education problems. Pikazo is one of the few apps that integrated Siri last fall.

­"one of Apple's problems is that it pays too much attention to detail in how to integrate Siri. It has quite specific keywords to open Siri. If you say exactly those keywords, you can use Siri, but how do you know those keywords?"

­he adds that for many users, after not using Siri because they don't have the right keywords, "you get frustrated, so you still have to type it manually at the end of the day."

Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research, a market research firm, said Apple might say it was unfair when it comes to the comparison between smart speakers and smartphone assistants, but by the time the HomePod launches on the market at the end of the year, Apple needs to make sure that the Siri is refreshed and significantly improved.

­"compared to Siri on iPhone, people have very high expectations for Siri on HomePod, and they hope it will perform much better." He said.

­as of June, the number of iOS developers reached 16 million, an increase of 3 million over the same period last year. Kinsella has no doubt that many developers will eventually choose to support Siri. "this integration of voice and artificial intelligence is the most important trend in the consumer market. The competition in this field is very open, and consumers love voice assistants."

Hey, Siri, did you hear that? (Le Bang)

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