Apple iWatch To Have A Smarter Siri
Apple is currently working on a more intelligent Siri for the iWatch. The company wants that Siri can interact with third-party services and apps more closely. Apple has deals with some partners such as OpenTable for Siri and Yelp, but the goal is for the digital assistant to work with any app.
Siri Limitations
Reports said there are things Siri cannot do such as booking a hotel room or calling a cab, which are the common duties of personal assistants. Apple wants Siri to send messages via an app other than iMessage or look up the weather using other sources aside from Yahoo. These Siri enhancements are also ideal with iWatch.
The California electronics giant is interested to further develop its digital assistant to provide users more features, perhaps similar to Google Now functions. Those that can be very useful on devices which screens are not big.
Integrating Third-party Apps
The tech that Apple is working on for Siri can be implemented to identify what app to display which is most useful to the user. This is significant for limited screen spaces like the smartwatch. For example, the user starts running. Siri may display a fitness app which could help him track the workout. The other unused apps are moved into the background.
Such enhancement will potentially enable third-party integration that can be freely done, without required business arrangement between them and Apple. Current integrations such as those of Wolfram Alpha and OpenTable involve direct deals that will put limitations as to what third-party powers can be integrated into Siri.
For now, it is unclear whether the advanced features of Siri and Siri commands will be available in iOS 8 or much later. Apple plans to bring out iWatch this year.
A matured or smarter Siri will be a key for products where the main interaction method is the voice, such as in CarPlay.
Google Now
Google is expected to enhance more its assistant Google Now. It should offer personalized search-based features for the users. The search giant is heard to be building a "semantic index" to parse each app's capability thus improving search suggestions while beefing up its predictive powers.