WEBVTT - The Siri Story: Joining Apple 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.240 --> 0:00:15.040 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:18.080 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.120 --> 0:00:20.920 and I love all things tech, and today we are 0:00:21.000 --> 0:00:27.760 continuing our exploration of Apple's Virtual Assistant SIRIE, which originally 0:00:27.840 --> 0:00:31.840 debuted as an official Apple feature on October four, two 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:36.520 th eleven. If you haven't listened to the previous episode, 0:00:36.560 --> 0:00:39.080 I recommend you do that, as I covered a lot 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:41.760 of the backstory to SIRI, as well as some of 0:00:41.760 --> 0:00:45.640 the technical challenges engineers faced as they built on the 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:48.960 underlying technologies that you know makes SIRIE a possibility in 0:00:49.000 --> 0:00:53.160 the first place. However, I will do a super quick 0:00:53.240 --> 0:00:57.320 summary of the important points just in case. So SIRIE 0:00:57.400 --> 0:01:00.880 really started off as an offshoot of a Department of 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:05.520 Defense funded project to create a virtual assistant that military 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:09.759 commanders would be able to rely upon. S r I International, 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:15.959 a nonprofit scientific research organization, landed the contract and ultimately 0:01:16.000 --> 0:01:19.800 would spin off a company called SIRI s I r 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:23.840 I that would explore how to take a subset of 0:01:23.880 --> 0:01:27.679 the technologies that were developed for this Department of Defense 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:31.200 project and then use it in the consumer market with 0:01:31.360 --> 0:01:34.559 an eye on mobile devices. Now, that was in two 0:01:34.560 --> 0:01:38.600 thousand seven, just as consumer smartphones were becoming a thing, 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:43.080 primarily with of course, the Apple iPhone. By the company 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:45.959 had a working app that they submitted to the Apple 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:50.600 App Store, and a few weeks later, Apple CEO Steve 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:55.200 Jobs called up Dog Kittlause, the head of Sirie, to 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:59.680 talk about the app and ultimately to make an acquisition offer, 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:04.600 which the company ultimately accepted. A year later, and one 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:08.959 day before Steve Jobs's death, Apple would unveil Siri as 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:12.440 an Apple product, though as we know, the bulk of 0:02:12.480 --> 0:02:16.080 the work on Siri had been done elsewhere. Now that's 0:02:16.120 --> 0:02:21.200 the super fast summary of the actually really interesting backstory 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.280 on Sirie. You can listen to the previous episode to 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:26.840 get the full thing. But we've got a few other 0:02:26.880 --> 0:02:29.480 things to clear up before we can continue down the 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:35.240 path of series development. As I mentioned in the previous episode, Sirie, 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:40.720 the company before Apple's acquisition, had arranged a deal with 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:44.920 the cell phone carrier company Verizon, and the deal was 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:48.239 that Siri was going to create an Android app version 0:02:48.440 --> 0:02:52.320 of its service that would be a flagship feature on 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:56.040 Verizon Android phones. And this is a good time to 0:02:56.080 --> 0:02:59.760 point out one of the major differences between Apple and Android. 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:03.960 Apple only allows iOS, you know, the operating system of 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:06.720 the iPhone and the iPad and stuff like that. They 0:03:06.720 --> 0:03:10.079 only allow that to run on Apple products. So if 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:14.440 you want an iPhone or something running the iPhone operating system, 0:03:14.639 --> 0:03:17.119 you have to go through Apple. I mean, you could 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:21.000 try to make some other device run iOS on top 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:23.480 of that device, but my point is that if you 0:03:23.480 --> 0:03:25.600 want the real thing, you have to go to Apple. 0:03:25.639 --> 0:03:29.840 There's nowhere else to go. Google when a totally different route. 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:33.560 They built out Android, and they made it available for 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:37.440 installation on all different types of handsets from different companies, 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:40.600 and so you had a lot of flavors of Android. 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:43.560 And I'm not just referring to the fact that Google 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:48.280 uses dessert names for various versions of Android. What I 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:52.120 actually mean is that you could find one handset manufacturer 0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:56.800 that would preinstall a certain suite of apps on their phones, 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:00.200 or a cell phone service provider like Verizon might do 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:03.400 the same thing. So while you could shop around with 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:07.400 different handsets and providers for an Android phone, the versions 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:10.600 might look a little different and have different flagship apps 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:14.480 on the home page. In some cases, you might come 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:17.680 across a lot of bloatwear. Now those are apps that 0:04:17.720 --> 0:04:21.240 you don't really want or maybe you never even use them, 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:25.760 but they're pre installed and sometimes they're impossible to remove 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:30.880 from the phone without going to some pretty big effort. Anyway, 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.440 Verizon wanted Sirie to be an intrinsic app on the 0:04:34.520 --> 0:04:40.480 Android smartphones moving forward, essentially making siri uh an Android 0:04:40.520 --> 0:04:42.800 feature the way it would turn out to be an 0:04:42.800 --> 0:04:47.479 iPhone feature. So Verizon and Sirie began making arrangements in 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:51.320 the fall of two thousand nine, but Verizon did not 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:56.039 actually acquire Sirie the company. If it had, our story 0:04:56.080 --> 0:05:00.279 would be very different. Verizon reportedly planned to make Srie 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:03.800 exclusive to Android, but the companies were doing this through 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:08.440 a planned partnership, and during the meanwhile, there just was 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:12.279 no exclusivity in place, so Sirie the company continued to 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:16.040 develop Sirie the app for the iPhone. The app debut 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:19.919 a few months after the Verizon deal, and that you 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:22.480 know was that A couple of weeks later, Steve Jobs 0:05:22.480 --> 0:05:25.559 was calling up kit Loss to talk about bringing SyRI 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:29.880 on board Apple as an acquisition. And Apple doesn't typically 0:05:29.920 --> 0:05:31.960 acquire that many companies, so this was kind of a 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:35.680 big deal. That acquisition would take a few months to complete, 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:41.279 and business journals reported on it around April. The financial 0:05:41.320 --> 0:05:45.240 details of the deal were not made public. Business insider 0:05:45.320 --> 0:05:48.320 analysts estimated that the deal may have fallen somewhere in 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:51.719 the one hundred to two hundred million dollar range, which 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:55.640 is a princely sum. Indeed, they based that off the 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.480 fact that Siri had successfully raised twenty four million dollars 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:02.480 and invest monts up to that point. Now, one of 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:06.880 the conditions of this acquisition was that Sirie was going 0:06:06.920 --> 0:06:10.520 to be an Apple exclusive feature. It would be baked 0:06:10.520 --> 0:06:14.599 into the basic functionality of iOS moving forward, and a 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:18.479 consequence of this is that the Verizon deal that Siri 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:22.080 had made would be null and void and Siri would 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:24.920 go dark for more than a year as Apple would 0:06:24.920 --> 0:06:28.400 bring the serie team over to Cupertino at Apple HQ 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:31.719 and then began making some pretty big changes to the 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:35.000 app in order to integrate it more closely with iOS. 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.840 Not all of those tweaks were additions. For example, the 0:06:39.920 --> 0:06:43.719 original Sirie app, the one that could still make some 0:06:43.880 --> 0:06:49.000 pretty sassy responses to requests, could make restaurant reservations on 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:52.720 behalf of the user. When Apple would debut Siri as 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:57.680 an integral iOS feature, it would not have that capability, 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.920 though the service would eventually get the feature back by 0:07:01.040 --> 0:07:04.599 two thousand twelve. My point being that some of the 0:07:04.680 --> 0:07:08.880 changes that Apple was making was to remove functionality from Siri. 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:12.320 The serie team had worked to secure agreements with various 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:16.960 other services which allowed Sirie the app to interoperate with 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:21.600 those services. But those agreements were, you know, with a 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:27.560 much smaller, nimble and private company, right, Siri was this tiny, entiteam. 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:31.840 Once Apple entered the picture, all of that changed. Apple 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:36.720 is Well, let's say that Apple is particular in how 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:40.640 its technology can interact with stuff that is made by 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:45.760 other companies. Not all of those earlier relationships that Sirie 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:49.480 had made when it was an independent company would survive 0:07:49.560 --> 0:07:52.960 the transition over winds SII became part of Apple. On 0:07:53.080 --> 0:07:57.040 top of that, Apple's focus was much more broad than 0:07:57.400 --> 0:08:01.240 series focus had been. I mentioned in the previous episode 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:05.280 that the discipline of natural language processing, that is, trying 0:08:05.320 --> 0:08:09.800 to make systems that can handle the way we typically 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.840 speak or communicate with one another, as opposed to us 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:16.000 having to learn how to speak in a way that 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:19.800 a computer can, you know, follow what we're saying. Well, anyway, 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:22.960 it's particularly tricky because we humans have different ways to 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.840 express things, and none of them tend to be in 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:28.800 the way that machines process information. And one of the 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:32.720 big complicating factors that I mentioned in our previous episode 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:36.840 is that there are thousands of languages and it's hard 0:08:36.840 --> 0:08:40.960 to develop programs that have good natural language processing for 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:45.520 a single language like English, but it becomes exponentially more 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:49.480 difficult as you try to support additional languages, each with 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:54.239 their own peculiarities. Apple, a global company, was selling iPhones 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:57.600 in more than seventy countries at that point. For Siri 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:02.360 to be a flagship feature would be across all those phones. 0:09:02.480 --> 0:09:04.280 It would need to be able to respond to a 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:07.760 lot of different languages. Now, upon its initial release as 0:09:07.800 --> 0:09:12.160 an Apple feature, Siri would just be limited to English, French, 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:16.280 and German, but it had the goal of expanding those 0:09:16.320 --> 0:09:20.599 capabilities to other languages as well. Building in that capability 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:23.560 would take a lot of effort and time, and so 0:09:23.800 --> 0:09:26.200 while the serie team might have been able to go 0:09:26.240 --> 0:09:30.280 on deeper dives and you know, give Sirie more incredible abilities, 0:09:30.679 --> 0:09:33.839 a lot of their work had to shift towards localization. 0:09:34.120 --> 0:09:36.520 And this is not meant to be a knock against 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:40.840 Sirie or Apple. It's just an acknowledgement that the job 0:09:40.880 --> 0:09:45.400 of the designers was really challenging and there were only 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:47.640 so many hours in a day to make it all work. 0:09:48.320 --> 0:09:52.320 So the acquisition happened. In April twenty ten, the Verizon 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:57.600 deal died as a result. The serie team moved to Cupertino, California, 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:00.120 and a lot of work was being done behind in 0:10:00.240 --> 0:10:04.120 the scenes now At the same time, Steve Jobs's health 0:10:04.520 --> 0:10:08.240 was on the decline. He had been diagnosed with pancreatic 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:11.520 cancer back in two thousand four. In two thousand nine, 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:15.360 he had temporarily stepped down as CEO to recover from 0:10:15.400 --> 0:10:19.760 what he originally reported as a hormone imbalance, though it 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:23.880 was later revealed he had undergone a liver transplant. Tim Cook, 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:27.400 Apple's chief operating officer at the time, would take over 0:10:27.480 --> 0:10:31.160 as sort of an interim CEO, and then Jobs returned 0:10:31.160 --> 0:10:34.120 to work six months later. Jobs was leading the company 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:36.839 when he made the move to acquire Sirie, but he 0:10:36.880 --> 0:10:41.960 would subsequently suffer more health setbacks. In January eleven, Jobs 0:10:42.000 --> 0:10:46.400 would again take medical leave from Apple, but he would 0:10:46.400 --> 0:10:50.840 continue to Services CEO. During his leave, Cook would take 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:54.480 over the day to day operations of the company. Jobs 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:57.719 would then take the stage one final time during the 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:01.439 two thousand eleven Worldwide Developed First Conference or w w 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:06.320 d C that took place from June six to June tenth, 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:09.680 two thousand eleven. He received a standing ovation from the 0:11:09.720 --> 0:11:13.040 crowd before going into the introduction for the week's events, 0:11:13.120 --> 0:11:15.880 and at that event, he talked about the new versions 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.760 of the Apple Mac operating system as well as the 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:24.680 latest build of iOS, but SIRIE was not quite ready 0:11:24.800 --> 0:11:27.640 to debut, and so there was no mention of the 0:11:27.679 --> 0:11:31.360 innovative service that was going to be reserved for October. 0:11:32.040 --> 0:11:36.000 While the serie team prepared for the official debut of 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:39.480 SIRIE as an Apple feature, Jobs had to make a 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:44.040 tough call. On August twenty four, two thousand eleven, Steve 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:48.640 Jobs resigned as Chief executive Officer of Apple. Tim Cook 0:11:48.679 --> 0:11:53.000 would become the new CEO of the company. Jobs's health 0:11:53.080 --> 0:11:55.280 had declined to a point where he felt he could 0:11:55.360 --> 0:11:58.120 no longer devote energy to running the company that he 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:01.319 had co founded back in the ninetees seventies, and there 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:04.920 was a lot of speculation at the time that Apple 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:08.640 might fall apart without him. After all, when Jobs had 0:12:08.760 --> 0:12:12.120 left Apple in the mid nineteen eighties, the company went 0:12:12.160 --> 0:12:15.920 on to make some pretty awful mistakes that would lead 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:19.720 it to the brink of bankruptcy. And when Jobs returned 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:23.480 to Apple in the late nineteen nineties, he would lead 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:26.280 the company to turn things around and then reach a 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:29.960 dominant position that no other company had really seen before 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:34.560 in the consumer marketplace. Steve Jobs seemed integral to the 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:38.040 corporate identity of Apple, kind of the same way that 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:42.920 you know, Walt Disney seems inseparable from the Disney Company. 0:12:43.160 --> 0:12:45.679 So people would still say, you know, what would Walt 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:47.520 do well? A lot of people would say at Apple, 0:12:47.559 --> 0:12:51.319 what would Steve Jobs do well. In October four, two 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:53.800 thousand and eleven, Apple would hold a press conference to 0:12:53.960 --> 0:12:59.160 launch the iPhone for S. This was technically the fifth iPhone, 0:12:59.600 --> 0:13:02.800 following the original iPhone. Then we had the three G 0:13:03.240 --> 0:13:07.199 so the iPhone two was the three g UM. There's 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:10.920 reasons for all these numbers and why they are kind 0:13:10.920 --> 0:13:13.360 of confusing, but I won't go into all of them. Anyway. 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:16.000 After the three G we got the three G S. 0:13:16.520 --> 0:13:19.920 Then we got the iPhone four and that's all because 0:13:20.000 --> 0:13:22.480 numbers are hard. But to be more fair to Apple, 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:26.320 the iPhone four S would end up bridging a gap 0:13:26.640 --> 0:13:30.960 between the older iPhone four and the future iPhone five. 0:13:31.440 --> 0:13:34.720 The iPhone four S looked a lot like the iPhone four, 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:38.239 but it did have several hardware improvements, including a faster processor, 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:42.160 and it also had something that Apple said justified adding 0:13:42.200 --> 0:13:46.640 the letter S to the phone it had, Siri. At 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:51.000 the October fourth event, which was just called a special event, 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:54.120 Tim Cook took the stage for the first time as 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:58.400 CEO to announce a product launch. He handed the presentation 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:01.200 over to Phil Schiller, who had frequently stood in for 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:05.239 Steve Jobs at various keynotes during jobs as leaves of absence, 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.080 and Schiller, in turn would bring up Scott Forstall, head 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:14.720 of iOS. Shortly after announcing Sirie and Forestall would give 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.719 the audience an overview of series capabilities a demo of them, 0:14:18.720 --> 0:14:22.080 as well as well as stress multiple times that Siri 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.840 was in beta mode and just in case you don't 0:14:25.840 --> 0:14:29.640 know what that means, a beta build is a stage 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:33.680 in development where you're trying to refine a product before 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.120 you get to the point where you you know you 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:39.600 you release it. And so if you have an alpha build, 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:42.680 that's really more of a work in progress, and it's 0:14:42.720 --> 0:14:46.520 one that could have potentially enormous changes made to the 0:14:46.560 --> 0:14:49.560 product before it ever goes to production. So really you're 0:14:49.560 --> 0:14:52.960 just trying to make stuff work in alpha. A beta 0:14:53.040 --> 0:14:55.520 build is meant to be one that's fairly close to 0:14:55.560 --> 0:14:58.960 what a company plans to release, but it may still 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:01.400 need some tweak to make it work just right. So 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:03.360 you can think of a beta build as being like 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:08.400 almost ready. And Apple doesn't typically allow people to get 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:11.720 a look at stuff that's in beta. The company has 0:15:11.720 --> 0:15:15.920 a history of locking things down pretty tightly before showing 0:15:15.960 --> 0:15:18.920 it off. So perhaps the fact that this was an 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:23.600 exception points at how Series integration into iOS didn't go 0:15:23.720 --> 0:15:28.440 without some setbacks. Now, all that being said, the demo 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.600 at this special event went off without a hitch. Siri 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:36.880 didn't make any embarrassing mistakes and interpreted Forstall's requests correctly. 0:15:37.520 --> 0:15:40.520 It retrieved relevant information, it didn't have to ask for 0:15:40.680 --> 0:15:44.240 Stall to repeat anything, and it also didn't sass back 0:15:44.640 --> 0:15:49.320 the personal assistant with an attitude had been toned down significantly. 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.840 Siri was ready for its journey with Apple. I've got 0:15:53.880 --> 0:15:55.880 a lot more to say about Sirie, but before I 0:15:55.960 --> 0:16:06.520 get to that, let's take a quick break. At the 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:09.680 special event, Scott Forstall would walk through some of the 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:13.560 initial capabilities Siri would have with the launch of the 0:16:13.640 --> 0:16:18.240 new iPhone for s That included looking up information on Wikipedia, 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:23.640 or providing directions to a landmark, or looking up restaurant 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:26.360 options that are near you, and that kind of thing, 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:31.720 including a really neat geo fencing feature. Geo fencing involves 0:16:31.840 --> 0:16:36.400 location data. Essentially, you create an instruction that's dependent upon 0:16:36.560 --> 0:16:41.120 your physical location on the planet. So you might say, 0:16:41.520 --> 0:16:44.120 remind me when I leave the house to swing by 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:47.680 the post office to your virtual assistant. Now that command 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:52.000 would then have to be interpreted by the assistants system. 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:55.440 So if it were Sirie, Siri would monitor your phone's 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:59.720 location and if your phone indicated that it was leaving 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:04.160 the area generally known as being home, Siri would then 0:17:04.240 --> 0:17:07.639 send a push notification to the phone to remind you 0:17:07.720 --> 0:17:10.480 that you need to go to the post office. Geo 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:12.760 fencing is one of those features I think is really neat, 0:17:13.480 --> 0:17:16.720 and yet I don't actually make that much use out 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:19.000 of it. But maybe I'm the odd one out do 0:17:19.040 --> 0:17:21.479 you guys use a lot of geo fencing features. I 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:24.680 remember I looked at them as the possibility of setting 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:26.639 them up so when I was in the office, I 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:30.480 would get fewer notifications, for example, But I never really 0:17:30.520 --> 0:17:33.439 got to do what I was hoping it would do. 0:17:33.680 --> 0:17:35.280 And I don't know if that was a failure on 0:17:35.320 --> 0:17:38.600 the part of the technology or more likely user failure. 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:40.359 So if you guys have a lot of, you know, 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:42.960 experience doing geo fencing type stuff, I'd be curious to 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:47.879 hear your thoughts. Anyway, the presentation went pretty well. People 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:50.920 seemed interested in SIRIE. However, I would say this wasn't 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.240 the sort of reaction that really makes it into clip 0:17:53.320 --> 0:17:56.520 montages or anything. You didn't see, you know, people losing 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:01.399 their minds over the the implications of SIRIE. But it 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:06.480 was definitely positive. It wasn't like a clunker or anything. 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:09.720 I'm just not sure how many people grasped how complicated 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:13.480 the accomplishment actually was. It didn't really get how hard 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:17.840 these problems were to solve in the back end. Now, 0:18:17.880 --> 0:18:20.920 one other thing they likely did not grasp is that 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:23.880 Siri didn't actually start out as an Apple product, which 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.000 we know because of the episodes I've just done. But 0:18:27.880 --> 0:18:31.920 during that presentation there really wasn't an indication that it 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.480 was from some other developer. You would walk away thinking 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:39.880 that Apple developed the whole thing in full at Apple HQ, 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.240 although that wasn't the case now. As I mentioned, this 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:46.479 event happened on October four, two thousand eleven, and the 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:52.240 following day, on October five, Steve Jobs passed away. Understandably, 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:57.000 that piece of news eclipsed all other Apple news that week. 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:00.240 Heck it it eclipse pretty much all tech news that week. 0:19:00.880 --> 0:19:03.399 Jobs had been a pivotal figure in the world of 0:19:03.400 --> 0:19:08.320 technology in general and Silicon Valley in particular. Under his leadership, 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:11.639 Apple had gone from teetering on bankruptcy to a company 0:19:11.680 --> 0:19:14.960 that was defining the next generation of hardware with products 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:18.800 like the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. His loss 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:22.679 was felt around the world, and Sirie perhaps got a 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:26.760 little less attention as a result. The iPhone Forest would 0:19:26.760 --> 0:19:30.480 go on sale the following week, on October four. Within 0:19:30.520 --> 0:19:33.680 the first weekend of sales, Apple would sell more than 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:37.119 four million units, which meant that the iPhone Forest broke 0:19:37.200 --> 0:19:41.080 previous records of the fastest selling product ever at that point. 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:45.399 And about a week after that, Kit Loss Dog kit Loss, 0:19:45.440 --> 0:19:49.280 one of the co founders of Sirie the Company, would 0:19:49.359 --> 0:19:53.080 leave Apple Now. According to reports, the parting was on 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:55.919 good terms, it was amicable, and it was one that 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:59.280 Dog had been preparing for over the second half of 0:19:59.359 --> 0:20:01.720 two thousand all eleven. He said he wanted to spend 0:20:01.720 --> 0:20:03.879 more time with his family, and they were living in 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.720 Chicago than For those of you who are not familiar 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:10.600 with US geography, Chicago, Illinois is about two thousand, one 0:20:11.040 --> 0:20:14.879 fifty miles or three thousand, four hundred sixty kilometers away 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:20.160 from Cupertino, California. It is not close. He also wanted 0:20:20.280 --> 0:20:25.159 to pursue new entrepreneurial opportunities, so his initial motivation was 0:20:25.200 --> 0:20:28.119 to get Sirie the Company up and running, and that 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:30.040 had turned out to be a huge success, so he 0:20:30.080 --> 0:20:32.720 was ready to move on to a new challenge. One 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:36.119 thing I haven't really talked about in these episodes, however, 0:20:36.280 --> 0:20:38.639 is series voice, and I feel like I should at 0:20:38.680 --> 0:20:42.280 least touch on that. So the original voices for Sirie 0:20:42.400 --> 0:20:45.400 came from clips of audio that were recorded by a 0:20:45.480 --> 0:20:48.880 voice actor named Susan Bennett. And when I say original voice, 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:53.440 I mean the American English voice of Sirie and Bennett 0:20:54.040 --> 0:20:56.159 actually lived in Atlanta at the time. I have no 0:20:56.200 --> 0:20:58.639 idea if she still does. But when she made the 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:01.760 recordings she did, and here's the kicker, she didn't even 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:04.840 know she was going to be the voice of Syrie. 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:08.680 She landed a gig through a voice acting service called 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:12.200 GM Voices kind of like a talent agency for voice 0:21:12.240 --> 0:21:16.280 over actors, and they specialize in finding voice talent to 0:21:16.320 --> 0:21:21.560 provide audio clips for various automated services. Typically a company 0:21:21.600 --> 0:21:25.040 called scan Soft wanted a voice actor to say a 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:29.080 ton of phrases, mostly nonsense stuff that made you know, 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:34.520 no real connective tissue sense or anything. And they wanted 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:36.600 to make all these different words sounds to build out 0:21:36.640 --> 0:21:41.679 a computerized speech database, essentially to build out the building 0:21:41.720 --> 0:21:44.800 blocks for American English speech, all the little phonemes that 0:21:44.960 --> 0:21:48.159 make up the sounds that then in turn makeup the 0:21:48.240 --> 0:21:53.000 spoken word. Scan Soft took the recorded audio and broke 0:21:53.040 --> 0:21:56.639 it down into those different based phonemes of English, and 0:21:56.680 --> 0:22:01.880 through a process called concatenation, which is simply means that 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:06.359 that you're stringing together units to make a whole, they 0:22:06.440 --> 0:22:09.640 could construct speech that way, taking all the little basic 0:22:09.760 --> 0:22:14.840 sounds and making up words and sentences that way. During development, 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:18.359 the serie team turned to a company called Nuance for 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:22.720 technologies related to voice generation and speech recognition. Nuance had 0:22:22.800 --> 0:22:27.040 merged with scan Soft, and so Bennett's voice, which she 0:22:27.080 --> 0:22:30.560 had recorded way back in two thousand five, was in 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:35.520 nuances speech database tool set, and someone on the project, 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:38.600 either at Sirie or at Nuance, chose Bennett's voice for 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:41.360 the Sirie app and that would make the leap over 0:22:41.400 --> 0:22:44.760 to Apple when Sirie the company was acquired, and so 0:22:44.800 --> 0:22:48.840 in October two thousand eleven, six years after she had 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:52.919 made the original recordings, she would unknowingly become the voice 0:22:53.080 --> 0:22:56.880 of Sirie. Over in the UK, John Briggs would become 0:22:56.880 --> 0:23:00.560 the first British male voice for Sirie, and down under 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:05.480 Karen Jacobson would become the Ausee Serie and series voice. 0:23:05.720 --> 0:23:08.679 Or voices I guess I should say would change a 0:23:08.720 --> 0:23:12.879 few times, once in with the introduction of iOS seven, 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:16.639 and it changed again in twenty nineteen with the introduction 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:19.879 of iOS thirteen, but in each case the goal was 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:23.160 to move towards a more natural tone and delivery. As 0:23:23.200 --> 0:23:26.080 the state of the art in voice generation improved and 0:23:26.119 --> 0:23:30.480 became less robotic. If you listen to those early examples 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:34.080 of Siri, it does get a little robotic in places. 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:37.600 Back in eleven series, speech was pretty good, but it 0:23:37.680 --> 0:23:41.520 wasn't perfect, and occasionally Siri would mispronounce something as it 0:23:41.560 --> 0:23:44.840 would use one set of phone emes instead of another. 0:23:45.440 --> 0:23:48.439 And it actually makes me think of a joke in 0:23:48.520 --> 0:23:52.080 the show The Play that Goes Wrong Uh, in which 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:55.160 the characters of the show are putting on a play 0:23:55.200 --> 0:24:00.320 and one of the actors has a tendency to mispronounce words, 0:24:00.400 --> 0:24:05.679 so in one example, he pronounces the word philanthropist as philanthropist, 0:24:06.480 --> 0:24:08.840 And that sort of thing could happen with Syria on 0:24:08.880 --> 0:24:12.119 occasion where there would just be a string of sounds 0:24:12.520 --> 0:24:15.120 to represent a word, but it would be slightly wrong, 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:19.680 and it would often just be funny. Upon the features 0:24:19.720 --> 0:24:23.560 debut with the iPhone for US, Sirie received some fairly 0:24:23.760 --> 0:24:28.359 positive reviews. Over at Wired, Brian x Chen wrote, quote 0:24:28.680 --> 0:24:33.240 the fifth generation iPhones, superb camera and speedy dual core 0:24:33.320 --> 0:24:37.680 processor are classy additions, but Siri is the reason people 0:24:37.680 --> 0:24:42.080 should buy this phone end quote. Chen praised the apps utility, 0:24:42.320 --> 0:24:44.520 pointing out that it took less time for him to 0:24:44.520 --> 0:24:48.480 do certain tasks using Siri than it would have if 0:24:48.520 --> 0:24:51.600 he had to use his phone and type things in manually. 0:24:51.920 --> 0:24:54.600 He also praised the versatility of the app, including its 0:24:54.600 --> 0:24:58.159 ability to interpret a fairly wide range of commands and 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:02.960 return with relevant responses, and the positive comments didn't stop there. 0:25:02.960 --> 0:25:05.280 Others praise the app for having what appeared to be 0:25:05.440 --> 0:25:09.280 a wry sense of humor. Hailey Suka Yama. The Washington 0:25:09.359 --> 0:25:12.520 Post actually collected a few examples of people attempting to 0:25:12.520 --> 0:25:15.640 be a little cheeky with Siri and how the assistant 0:25:15.680 --> 0:25:18.920 would often respond in kind, though not with the sort 0:25:18.920 --> 0:25:21.800