Siri is a Great One Liner

When it comes to 2-way communication, Siri is quite limited. Before I go further on this allegation, let me make myself clear that I think Siri's natural language parsing is by no means a small achievement.

Seeing it in action

I spent a little time with Siri today and made this video to share:

Overall, Siri is very good at understanding natural English, to the point that you have nearly no need to learn any syntax to operate it. However, there are still some rules you need to be aware of. By and large, your day-to-day plain English, like "what are the Indian restaurants around here", or "find me an Indian restaurant", or any other ways of expressing this idea, can be handled quite comfortably by Siri, most of the time. Sometimes, you need to repeat yourself. Not a big problem.

But when it comes to a series of back-and-forth between you and the device, Siri can get a little stubborn. As you can see in the video, I asked "When is Christmas" and Siri answered perfectly. Impressive. But when I followed up with the request to "set an appointment on that day", Siri failed to associate Christmas with "that day" as a human being would.

In my test, had I say "set up an appointment on Christmas day" instead of "that day", Siri would have understood me perfectly. We human beings work mostly with implicit meanings in conversations; otherwise we would be a verbose bunch. With Siri, that assumption falls apart. To avoid yelling at Siri for being stupid, you need to start practicing forming complete, self-containing sentences today. Yikes! To some, that's more daunting that typing in an appointment.

Fair assessment

Having tried Siri, I must say, as long as you make your statement clear, you can say it however you want and Siri can understand you perfectly. Using Nuance technology, the voice to text conversion is mostly flawless too.

Where Scott Forstall tried to sell the idea of Siri "following along the conversation just like a human being does", I think it is mostly not true. To be fair, that type of conversation is NOT the intended use of Siri anyway, as that capability represents true AI that we human has yet to grasp. Looking at Siri's behavior now, it is safe to say that we have a long way to go before Siri can talk to us like Jarvis to Tony Stark.

The "One More Thing" thing

Comes tomorrow, Apple will be unveiling the new iPhone (whatever that comes after iPhone 4), iOS5, and maybe more.

In many ways, tomorrow's event and its aftermath will be very uncertain; exhilarating, but uncertain.

The Post Steve Jobs Apple

It baffles me that we still see no shortage of pundits flirting with the idea of receiving yet another dose of epinephrine-inducing encore called "One More Thing" from Apple. Worse, some pundits, like Darrell Etherington from GigaOM writing for Businessweek, suggests that none other than Steve Jobs will be delivering it on stage.

Okay, to be fare, if tomorrow's event will indeed be closed-out with the famed climax, it's got to be done by Steve. The reason is simple: no one can do it like Mr. Jobs, it's just one of his things, like the black turtleneck. Anyone thinking he can pull off the trick like Steve is just begging for mockery, and mockery is what the Apple PR is trying to thwart off in every step of their war game. Among what we can expect at tomorrow's event, "One More Thing" is not one of them. The trick is trite, it's time to move on.

Not only will we not see this encore stunt, we won't even see Steve running the show. I still think there is a chance of Steve being present in the room, even being on stage just to say Hi, but don't expect anything more from him. It is also likely that Steve Woz would be appearing alongside Jobs in the audience front row, signifying the passing-on from the founder's era while leaving us with the last bit of warm fuzzy feelings like a good ending in a Hollywood feel-good flick. Not to mention, the official biography of Steve Jobs will be published in a few more weeks. Personally and processionally for Steve, anything mentioned about him from now on will be about his legacy, not another blockbuster.

The key here is passing on. Beneath the Apple fanfare is the cold hard reality of running a business. The biggest brand of Apple is Apple itself. That brand stood on many legs, one of them the public persona of Steve. As I'll argue below, the event tomorrow will make it clear that Apple will be Apple sans Steve from now on, and that's alright.

iPhone 5

As always, we have seen too many rumors about what the next iPhone will be like. Forgetting the oddball speculations, I think a few things will materialize:

• A5 processor, if not A6
• Even better graphics processing power, think games & Airplay,
• same retina display, with improvements,
• iOS 5, of course,
• unibody back, just like the iPad2,

Apple has always let the new products do the talking. We will see how true this is in tomorrow's event, now that Steve won't be distorting our sense of reality no more. The invitation lays out very clearly: Let's Talk iPhone. Pundits are tripping over themselves to read between the lines and pixels, making up stories on the symbolisms on the invitation graphics, to which I say: DON'T. The appearance of iPhone 5 will be enough to generate oohs and aahs, followed by a few app demos by some lucky but trembling developers to show off iCloud integration and some closely guarded secrets of the new model, cumulating to the net effect of everyone including yours truly wanting to get rid of their suddenly stinking iPhone 4. We already know that iOS 5 has reestablished parity with Andriod and outdone the competitors in a few places; iPhone 5 will complete the picture on the hardware front and the OS implementation front.

Uncharted territories

We will most likely see a few more product announcements to complete the picture of iCloud. Also, there have been enough rumbling in the TV space that we can expect to see some iCloud magic there as well.

In the iPod days, product announcements were simple and clean; Apple enjoyed a lot more creative freedom in the product design when it comes to something as simple as an MP3 player. That freedom gave rise to the strategy of multi-tier product lineup with iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, and iPod Classic that completely took the oxygen away from the competitors. Nowadays, Apple is all about tie-ins, platforms, and ecosystems. No wonder that we see Apple slow down on hardware designs compared to the iPod days, not least because a phone's form factor is a lot more rigid to work around with.

The trend is going to continue even after tomorrow's product announcements. It points to two directions that old Apple fans may not take too well:

• Apple's strategy is becoming more convoluted, and
• Apple is becoming predictable.

To be fair, Apple is still the best company to play this game it has written for the industry; no other company is as coherent, nimble, bold, yet huge and powerful; most are just one or another, or neither. To Apple and the shareholders, it means that Apple from now on will either concur the uncharted territories (something Apple has done repeatedly) or go down hill (something Apple has also done to an epic scale before). Going downhill is easy without even making big mistakes; sitting still in Steve Jobs's remaining halo is enough to do it. You can bet that Apple doesn't have that future in mind. Apple's current success also falls squarely in its ability to outmaneuver the competitors, a skill set that come with the current executive team with Tim Cook being the poster child in this department. What we don't know is whether someone, or someones, will fill in the crucial role of great leadership vacuum left by Steve, the role of all roles that attract the best and competing minds to work towards the same goals.

Apple is many things - good things - to different people. To the financiers, it's a money making machine. To the marketers, engineers, and designers, it's a house of superstar products forming an tight and impenetrable superstar team in the tech and media world. To the competitors, it points to new directions and make new markets possible. To consumers, it constantly generates wants and keep them excited. To b-schoolers and professional managers, it's the mecca of strategic and tactical management, from supply chain management all the way to retail management. To the media and journalists, it's a constant source of stories. All these things and more still remain valid at least for a little longer after Steve's retirement.

I do not expect to see the full potential of the new Apple sans Steve in tomorrow's event, but I am still looking forward to seeing signs that can give me more clues to the future. If I have to coin a tone for tomorrow's event, it will be "cautiously optimistic".

Case For and Against Buying the iPad on Launch Date

The clock is ticking down as I type this post. It's less than 24 hours to iPad's launch. The who's-who from Good Morning America to David Letterman have been recruited to the Apple's hype machinery in the last hours, and yes the hype is rebuilding since the product announcement back in January 2010.

But Apple has also given everyone 60 days and a few videos to consider over buying this "magical" device. I will stroll down to the Apple Store regardless of my decision to purchase or not, but let's first take a very brief look at cases for and against buying one at launch date.

Cases for buying one

1. Back in August 2008 I said that a paperback size tablet with all the iPod Touch functions plus a ebook reader and a simple office suite would be enough. And yes, being able to use the iWorks suite on the iPad is a huge drawing factor for me.


2. Just like the iPhone, this gadget does not need to be powered down. When I need to do something on it, the screen comes up instantly. When I am done it goes to standby mode right away and save power.


3. Everytime I dock it to the computer, iTunes performs a full system backup. There is no fear of losing data, and no need to device a method to do backup as in the case of using, say, a netbook.


4. I have long believed that direct object manipulation, a.k.a. touch technologies, will supersede less direct object manipulation methods, like using a mouse. The time has come with the introduction of iPad.

Cases against buying one

1. I am thinking of a valuable use case on the iPad, something I do when being production, and it sounds like this: I am going through tons of research papers (usually in PDF format) and save relevant ones in a bucket. I will most likely jump back and forth between note taking and paper searching. This means allowing multiple apps to run at the same time, something Apple has yet to implement fully.


2. No Flash. I don't care about the war against Flash by Apple, but the fact remains that many sites still use Flash. So unless Apple's campaign can be so successful that Flash will die on the Internet, or it finally allows Flash to run, I am bound to run into websites that do not load because of Flash. That is very annoying.

The above are but a few major factors that affect my buying decision, but I have made up my mind: NO.

That said, any attempt to make a definitive judgment is way too premature. The iPad will not be out till tomorrow 9am anyway. It will be interesting to see how the use cases of iPad expand as more and more great apps show up in the App Store and take full advantage of the big color touch screen. Perhaps it will be compelling enough for me to get one even before iPad 2.0 comes out, which I believe will finally do full multitasking. I only hope that the day will come sooner.

Wishful thinking: Mac Tablet

The Apple rumor mill is once again running in full throttle, this time clamoring that Apple will be unveiling the next generation iPod some time in September 2008. Some believe (or hope) that Apple will also refresh the Macbook product line. Speculate away! What's fun about Apple if it isn't worthy of speculation anymore? But honestly, each time when the tech community gets jittery about possible product launch from the fruit company, it is also the time to go over the wish-list of future Apple products. I'll go right to the bottom of the list: Mac Tablet.

The tablet patents

Bearing in mind that patent application is a weak indicator of future product development, the tech community has nonetheless given attention to a few Apple patents concerning tablet computer. One of them was filed in 2005. A more interesting one was some kind of docking system that allows the user to slot the tablet into a dock with full-size screen and use it as a desktop computer.

How a Mac tablet should be like

But wait a minute, you say, there is already a third-party tablet mod call the Modbook. True, but I am more interested in something smaller, easier to carry, like a paperback book. The iPod Touch is nice, but the screen size is too small for reading or note-taking. The key is to have something small and light that one can easily tuck it into the bag, while large enough to do some meaningful reading and writing. It seems that ZDNet holds this same idea too. I contend that a paperback size tablet with all the iPod Touch functions plus a ebook reader and a simple office suite is enough.

A docking station for a portable computer is not totally unthinkable. We have been using the HP notebook docking station in the office for some time. However, you will need to supply your own monitor, keyboard and mouse to use a docking station like this. I would like to see a docking station that looks like that patent above, completed with a full-size screen, a hard drive that acts as a storage expansion and backup of the tablet, and even extra memory to do some memory-intensive tasks that you only do at the desk, like gaming. Apple can sell the whole thing as a package, or sell the tablet separately and demand a premium on the docking station, I don't care, I really want a paperback-size tablet!

A Mac tablet that lures PC users

I hypothesize that a Mac tablet can reach the mass of PC users and let them taste the Mac experience like never before. This is how it should work: you connect the tablet to the PC using some simple docking unit, which then brings up iTunes (as expected). Now imagine iTunes acting as an environment where a PC user can operate the tablet like a generic Mac desktop. Why not? It's called remote desktop, a function that comes in every copy of Leopard. There will certainly be some ohh's and ahh's, and a upward tick in the Mac market share.

With the iPhone and Leopard, Apple has acquired enough skills to make a compelling packaging of a tablet mac like that one in my shameless speculation. Let's see what Apple has under its belt: multi-touch, multi-lingual writing recognition, remote desktop (for iTunes to sand-box the table), Time Machine, a highly scalable OS, really small computer parts used in Air, and sheer genius in product design. Cupertino, what are you waiting for?