back to article Yosemite Siri? Apple might plonk chatty assistant on your desktop - report

A newly granted patent has revealed Apple's plans to free its mobile assistant Siri from the iPhone and unleash it upon desktops. In a lengthy patent entitled "Intelligent digital assistant in a desktop environment", the fruity firm outlined its plans to get fanbois talking to their computers. To activate the desktop Siri, …

  1. Josh Cain

    Does anyone remember the stupid Office paperclip assistant? And how successful that was?

    1. FartingHippo
      Megaphone

      Why no, I don't.

      I fail to see why anyone reading an IT site would have any knowledge of an intensely irritating app which was omnipresent on the Windows desktop for the best part of decade.

      [It looks like you're having a bad day. Would you like help?]

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No, no, no... It's OK. This is only for Apple OS's. Anyone with a real operating system won't see it so it's all right.

      1. Tim Bates
        Joke

        "Anyone with a real operating system won't see it so it's all right."

        Anyone with a real OS didn't see the Office assistant back when it was around either, because WINE didn't run MS Office back then....

      2. Tom 35

        real OS

        So good thing windows is not a real OS.

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/12/cortana_in_windows_threshold/

        1. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

          Re: real OS

          Windows 8 sure isn't...

  2. Ben Holmes

    Disability Access

    If it's not hobbled, I could see this being useful as a tool for those with disabilities to interact with their computers.

    IF it's not hobbled.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Disability Access

      "If it's not hobbled, I could see this being useful as a tool for those with disabilities to interact with their computers."

      What, a bit like Dragon Naturally Speaking, just fifteen years late?

      1. AMBxx Silver badge

        Re: Disability Access

        I don't see anything new here. Same old Apple - new wine in old bottles.

      2. Frankee Llonnygog

        Re: Disability Access

        So, does Dragon understand that a query like "how many baseball players in the US" should be transparently redirected to Wolfram? Or is it somewhat dumber than that?

      3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

        Re: Dragon Naturally Speaking

        In all honesty, Dragon Naturally Speaking on a mobile would be something rather impressive - even at PC levels of understanding.

      4. Fluffy Bunny
        Angel

        Re: Disability Access

        Can anybody spell "prior art"?

  3. Anonymous Cowherder

    It doesn't like my northern English

    I have siri on an iPad which I occasionally use in the kitchen to display recipes and play music whilst cooking. I have tried to use siri here as I can press the home button with a knuckle whilst I have all manner of chicken innards or other kitchen things on my hands and ask it to set timers or reminders with varying degrees of success.

    If I try to use it for anything more complex it really struggles with my Mancunian accent which gets very frustrating and ends up with my just insulting siri, repeatedly.

    Google now on the other hand is more than able to cope and understands me most if not all of the time. I'd much rather have a desktop google now (I'm a neckbeard so the latest google updates don't really work on my linux desktops.) than a desktop siri on my machines.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It doesn't like my northern English

      The fact that Siri doesn't work well with a Northern accent supports the rumour that Apple has decided not to market it's products in post-independence Scotland.

      After all ... who'd deal with Jocks voluntarily.

      1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

        Re: It doesn't like my northern English

        I thought that was obvious..

        After all, in Star Trek IV, the Mac ignored Scotty when he tried to use voice to control it.

  4. Dan Paul

    Or like original Star Trek?

    Just curious but don't the various scenes in the original version of Star Trek of people speaking to the computer(s) and food processing machines constitutes prior art? Especially on desktop computers? Not to mention the earlier comments on Dragon Naturally Speaking and others.

    Does the Roddenberry Foundation care to comment? http://roddenberryfoundation.org/

    Seems to be in their mission statement to foster technology that would aid the disabled. I would think they have the most rights here as their conceptions predate all of the current technologies.

    1. 142

      Re: Or like original Star Trek?

      The patent's not for using speech recognition to give the computer orders, etc.

      It's specifically for invoking it with a gestures:

      The claim is that it's "A method for invoking a digital assistant service, comprising: at a user device comprising one or more processors and memory: detecting an input gesture from a user according to a predetermined motion pattern on a touch-sensitive surface of the user device; and in response to detecting the input gesture, activating a digital assistant on the user device. "

      1. Fluffy Bunny
        Devil

        Re: Or like original Star Trek?

        But windows gestures are a decade old. Touch sensitive regions nearly as old (trackpads on laptops that autoscroll the current document). You can't say, "just like everybody else does, but works with my special...."

        There needs to be some sort of intellectual value in a patent and this doesn't seem to have any.

        1. Tim Bates

          Re: Or like original Star Trek?

          "But windows gestures are a decade old."

          But none of them invoked a digital assistant. There was a gesture usually given during the closing of the Office Assistant, but that's as close as it's been in the Windows world.

          Although I do wonder if double clicking on the system tray icon for something like Virtuagirl would count as prior art... That's a gesture. And it technically is an assistant... A single purpose assistant, but the patent didn't mention how many purposes it needed.

    2. Frankee Llonnygog

      Re: Or like original Star Trek?

      Fantasy doesn't constitute prior art - hence my daydreams of killing irritating commentards by the power of thought will never make me rich

      1. Ted Treen
        Thumb Up

        @Frankee Llonnygog

        "...my daydreams of killing irritating commentards by the power of thought will never make me rich..."

        No, but it will make you dream of being immensely satisfied...

  5. Longrod_von_Hugendong
    Devil

    Here is how it will work...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8

    1. tony2heads

      Re: Here is how it will work...

      Eleven!

  6. Identity
    Gimp

    Some years ago...

    Apple had a speech command system (which remains today as the Speech preference pane), which put up an avatar that would execute certain canned commands when addressed by name. They based their avatar on TV personality Connie Chung and called her Connie. You'd have to say something like, "Connie, open Word."

    When they were initially trialling it at the Boston Apple Center, it didn't quite work. One tester could not get a response and asked an Applenaut, "Is Connie turned on?"

    To which, that worthy replied, "That's an awfully personal question!"

  7. dogged

    Patent?

    I wonder if it'll see a challenge any time soon.

    possibly by Microsoft.

  8. Sarev

    Presumably processed in the cloud...

    I'm guessing the Siri function would be passing your audio (or some representation thereof) to the cloud in order to calculate what you've actually said, giving the potential for Apple to be tracking what you're asking Siri to do. I imagine that's just another seam of personal data to be mined.

  9. chivo243 Silver badge
    Devil

    When it comes...

    There better be a system preference pane to disable the nosy damn thing! I have enough trouble some browsers auto correcting. Unless I could ask Siri to disable the auto correcting, then, Siri disable yourself!

    Bring on the Hal jokes!

  10. thx1138v2

    I knew it!

    That finger? I knew it! The Greys are taking over Apple as a preliminary intrusion into human space. Soon that finger will be on all human patents.

  11. Cipher
    Coat

    This sounds so wrong...

    "users would have to perform as certain gesture on a touch sensitive part of the computer"

    Has anybody thought of Siri's emotional well being in all this?

    1. Michael Thibault
      Paris Hilton

      Re: This sounds so wrong...

      Considerate of you to think of Siri's emotional well-being, but it's much too early for that. Eventually, though, you'll have to preface every command/request/activation with a "Siri, may I touch you?" or a "Siri, do you mind if I put my finger(s) right here?".

      I expect that voice control is inevitable, and it will improve iteratively, eventually evolving into a portable personal AI-like assistant you can invoke from any computing device (bearing the relevant logo, anyway). The one thing I'd like to see guaranteed--in the near-term at the very least--is that that Siri, or its descendant agent, neither tolerate, nor resort to, uptalking.

  12. jimbo60

    Claim 1. A method for invoking a digital assistant service, comprising: at a user device comprising one or more processors and memory: detecting an input gesture from a user according to a predetermined motion pattern on a touch-sensitive surface of the user device; and in response to detecting the input gesture, activating a digital assistant on the user device.

    Sure sounds like clippy to me, except for the part about a touch-sensitive surface. Unless a mouse counts as touch-sensitive. Let the lawyers have fun with that.

    Or, more recently, the Kindle Fire Mayday assistant (a real human!)

    Sorry Apple, 15 years too late...

    1. thesykes

      Claim 1. A method for invoking a digital assistant service, comprising: at a user device comprising one or more processors and memory: detecting an input gesture from a user according to a predetermined motion pattern on a touch-sensitive surface of the user device; and in response to detecting the input gesture, activating a digital assistant on the user device.

      Boiled down to... making a computer program react to user input.

  13. JLV
    Joke

    instead of working on the patent, how about working on the hottie avatar bit?

    Apple is really lagging behind on the 'hottie' bit of Siri.

    Check out http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/12/cortana_in_windows_threshold/

    Cortana is... fetching all right. Whether or not I would want to have a chatty assistant is uncertain, but at least she doesn't look like a paperclip. In fact, the Cortana avatar is one bit of synergy MS can show between its XBox division and the rest*. Lots of $ later, but hey.

    So, Mr. Cook, where's Siri's avatar at?

    How about striking a deal with Dan Simmons and using the persona from Remembering Siri in the Hyperion books? She's a surfer girl on a planet called Maui Covenant who becomes their PM by the end, so no scatter brain. Plus, surfer girl has a lot of avatar sexiness potential, methink**. And Simmons can use the cash, having been on a downtear in his more recent books.

    * on the flip side, Halo I, which I loathed as a game, came from Bungie, which once upon a time, had really nifty games like Myth. A great loss for gaming, Bungie => MS.

    ** Let's not focus on the PM bit of her career, she's aged considerably by relativistic time debt by that point - methinks a Lady Thatcher hottie avatar calls for mind bleach.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: instead of working on the patent, how about working on the hottie avatar bit?

      Missed ya too, JLV!!

  14. Robert Grant

    It looks as though you're trying to buy a non-Apple product

    Let me close that for you.

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