Siri's co-creator is surprised by the amount of things she * can't * do – and blames Apple's perfectionism

Among all Apple products and services, few suffer criticisms as sharp and uniform as Crab: Ma's digital assistant is useful for some tasks, but it is almost impossible to find a user who has adopted the tool as an inseparable part of their day and who uses it to perform at least part of their day's tasks. And see whoever agrees with us on this critical (not so) smart critic: no one less than one of your co-creators.

Norman Winarsky he was one of the heads of SRI International, the firm that took the first steps towards the creation of Siri; when the team that founded the digital assistant left the company to found a startup separated and proceed with its development, Winarsky went together, as co-founder and board member of the initiative. He said goodbye to Siri only when, in April 2010, Apple bought the technology and took it with him to satisfy his own purposes.

Today, in a brief interview with Quartz, Winarsky stated that Siri is not where he could (or he believed he could) be at this point in the championship. The executive admits that he had a totally different idea for the assistant, a more proficient and focused on a smaller number of tasks that he performed perfectly, such as, for example, realizing that the user's flight back home was canceled, offering alternatives on time or, failing that, offer a reservation in a hotel room.

Surprise and delight are kind of left out for the moment.

According to him, Apple's search for “perfection” that was Siri's loss. When trying to make the assistant a point for a series of tasks of all kinds, Ma ended up creating a product that is not very good in any of them; instead of the center of intelligence and building devised by Winarsky, we have a tool that performs basic tasks, such as registering reminders and alarms, checking the weather forecast or asking basic general knowledge questions, but does not offer an in-depth view of the user and the has the ability to change according to each person’s life.

Winarsky further states that, although Siri is much better than when it was launched, basic things are still lacking for her to become a valuable product. For example, even the playful element of the whole thing is the ability for her to talk naturally and offer humorous or smart responses, when appropriate is being overlooked by Apple. "Surprise and delight are kind of left out at the moment," says the executive.

It remains to be seen, now, how Apple can fix this problem and turn Siri into a valuable tool, one that people buy iPhones and iPads only (or mainly) by their presence. Is that possible?

via MacRumors