Friday, October 21, 2011

Android Head: Your Phone Shouldn’t Be Your Personal Assistant

Android Head: Your Phone Shouldn’t Be Your Personal Assistant, article.
“I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant,” Mr. Rubin said. “Your phone is a tool for communicating. You shouldn’t be communicating with the phone; you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.”

That's about the stupidest put-down I've heard.
2017: "Apple's new iPhone 9 will kiss you goodnight and tuck you in, and wake you with a bj and breakfast in bed. This is so wrooong! A phone is for calling people, it's not for being your maid!"

6 comments:

Stephen A said...

I think it's a split in the mindset of Apple and Android.

Apple is a cathedral model. Centralised control, secrecy in development, one size fits all products. The iProducts are seen as djinn, unique, perfect and near godlike in power but magically bound to service to its fanboi master.

Android on the other hand is a Bazzar model. Largely open source, more transparent, with a variety of different products which may lack polish but make up for it with diversity and lower cost. As a result phandroids are more likely to view their android products as practical mundane tools or minions which are meant as extensions and amplifications of their will. As such they are much less desirous of autonomy in their tools.

Bruce said...

"... phandroids are more likely to view their android products..."

I don't think that Google makes phones for it's fans. I don't think Apple does either.

They are both making phones for the billions of people who have never owned a smartphone, much more than they are making smart phones for those who already own one.

Timo Lehtinen said...

“I don’t believe that your phone should be an assistant [...] you should be communicating with somebody on the other side of the phone.”

But in the case of Siri, that's exactly what you are doing. Most of her functionality runs “on the other side of the phone”, in a server. Granted, it is AI, not a bio-organism. But an average person can not afford a human PA. That's what makes Siri so cool. Plus the fact that it is faster than a human.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

And prob smarter than most.

Timo Lehtinen said...

Stephen Fry writes:

I remember writing a joshing note to Jo, my PA, in February last year when Siri came out. “Hm … Jo, Siri? Siri, Jo? … Hard to tell …” And then Siri seemed to disappear. Little did we know that Apple had bought this (originally DARPA developed) technology and was due to bake it into its new phone.

Bruce said...

I think Rubin was making a strategic comment here. Android uses voice for a number of things: search, dial, translate. By the way, the interactive mode on translate is kind of amusing - worth a try (on, say, a Galaxy Tab) if you haven't tried it out yet.

Rubin can't come out and say, "Apple just kicked our butt in voice," He can't say, "just wait, Google will have something just as good by next year." All he can say is, this is no big deal, don't anybody buy an iPhone instead of an Android phone because of this.

He may imply that "Google could do Siri right now if we wanted to, but we don't want to," however I don't believe that is true. When Google is capable of doing Siri, they will.

This is not an original idea of mine, it's my own interpretation of a post on Daring Fireball yesterday.