Apple has a lot of improvements planned for Siri, in the run up to the launch of the much-rumored iWatch, according to a report by The Information.
Apple is reportedly working on increasing Siri’s utility by opening it up to third-party developers, improve its search abilities and make the virtual assistant more intelligent. Siri is said to be one of the most important ways to interface with the iWatch due to its small screen, and hence it becomes important to improve its capabilities.
TechCrunch relays the report which is behind a paywall:
The report points out how the Siri of today can’t do things like book a car rental or make a hotel reservation, or use a messaging app other than Messages to send a text. The improvements to Siri would potentially enable those types of things, enabling third-party integrations that don’t require one-to-one business arrangement between Apple and the external company. Current integrations like those with OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha do involve those direct deals, which limits the pace at which new third-party powers can be added to Siri.
It is widely known that Siri, prior to its Apple acquisition did a lot more than the Apple version, and although it has improved with each major iOS release, the utility would be much higher if third-party developers start getting involved.
Apple is also working on making Siri intelligent-enough to automatically decide what appears on a device’s “constrained screen space” based on the current scenario. The example cited is of a running app that gets launched automatically if the user is jogging. This feature obviously sounds like something meant for the iWatch.
We’ve been expecting a Siri SDK for third-party apps since quite some time, but the dynamic screen adjustment feature is something new. Let us know what you think about it in the comments below.
[via The Information]