Implementarea Siri in iPhone 4S a generat o schimbare fundamentala a modului in care producatorii de smartphone-uri is gandesc terminalele mobile, includerea unui asistent personal fiind acum un must-have pentru orice telefon destept. Desi putin dintre voi stiu acest lucru, Siri a inceput ca un proiect al DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency condusa de armata SUA, insa norvegianul Dag Kittlaus a vazut potentialul sistemului si impreuna cu cativa ingineri a decis sa creeze o companie care sa dezvolte Siri.
In February 2010, three weeks after Siri debuted as an independently developed iPhone app, Kittlaus received a call from a mystery number — one he nearly missed thanks to a glitchy, unresponsive iPhone screen. It was Steve Jobs and he wanted to meet. The next day. Siri’s co-founders spent three hours with Jobs at his Palo Alto home discussing the future of do engines and how people could converse with machines (Jobs loved Siri’s snark). Apple quickly followed up with an interest in acquiring the young company.
Inteligenta arfiticiala din spatele Siri are ca sursa de inspiratie robotul HAL din filmul A Space Odyssey, iar acest lucru l-a convins pe Steve Jobs sa achizitioneze compania care a dezvoltat Siri. Initial Siri a fost lansat in App Store ca o aplicatie terta, ea a atras initial interesul celor de la Verizon care au incheiat un acord cu dezvoltatorii aplicatiei pentru a o include in terminalele Android care urmau sa fie lansate in anul 2010, insa Steve Jobs avea alte planuri si urma sa si le indeplineasca.
“The way that Steve described it, speech recognition — and how to use it to create a speech interface for something like the iPhone — was an area of interest to him and Scott Forstall [then head of Apple’s mobile software] for some time,” recalls Kittlaus. “The story that I’m told is that he thought we’d cracked that paradigm with our simple, conversational interface.” In the fall of 2009, several months before Apple approached Siri, Verizon had signed a deal with the startup to make Siri a default app on all Android phones set to launch in the new year. When Apple swooped in to buy Siri, it insisted on making the assistant exclusive to Apple devices, and nixed the Verizon deal. In the process, it narrowly avoided seeing Siri become a selling point for smartphones powered by its biggest rival, Google. (Somewhere in the vaults of the wireless giant, there are unreleased commercials touting Siri as an Android add-on.)
Vazand potentialul companiei, Steve Jobs i-a contactat pe dezvoltatorii Siri, a discutat cu ei despre modul in care poate evolua sistemul, si a decis sa plateasca, cateva sute de milioane de dolari pentru a achizitiona tehnologia. Desigur ca Apple dorea ca Siri sa fie disponibil exclusiv pe iDevice-uri si a anulat contractul cu Verizon, aceasta fiind probabil una dintre cele mai bune decizii luate de Steve Jobs in ultimii sai ani de viata. Siri a fost implementat in iOS in decursul unui an de zile, a fost lansat impreuna cu iPhone 4S, insa doi dintre co-fondatorii companiei au plecat la scurt timp dupa lansare, semn ca lucrurile n-au mers in directia dorita de ei.
Aceasta este povestea achizitionarii Siri, si daca Steve Jobs nu ar fi vazut potentialul aplicatiei, atunci Siri n-ar fi fost acum la fel de cunoscut la nivel global.
