It’s been nearly five years since Scott Forstall stood on stage and introduced Siri to the world. Siri has come a long way since the days of the iPhone 4S, and now Apple’s voice-controlled assistant is on our iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, and even–thanks to macOS Sierra–our Macs.
But by almost any measurement, these are the very earliest days of intelligent-assistant technologies. Five years might as well be a wink of an eye. The next few years will be very important for Siri and its cousins–Cortana, Alexa, and the Google Assistant. Here’s a look at where Siri goes from here.
SiriKit, today and tomorrow
With the release of iOS 10, you can now use Siri to control six different kinds of apps: ride booking, messaging, photo search, payments, VoIP calling, and workouts. At least, you will be able to control your favorite apps in those categories once they’ve been updated to take advantage of this new feature. Some apps in these categories were updated on day one of the iOS 10 release, but several apps I use in these categories are, sadly, not yet updated. Still, this is a case where Siri will be improving rapidly over the next few months. As apps are updated, the capabilities of Siri will continue to grow.
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