To Horce Dediu’s post where he argues that Siri might be the next revolutionary interface. Here are his points in its favor:
There are many things going for it:
- It’s not good enough
- There are many smart people who are disappointed by it
- Competitors are dismissive
- It does not need a traditional, expensive smartphone to run but it uses a combination of local and cloud computing to solve the user’s problem.
- It is, in a word, asymmetric.
He’s really thrashing his straw man with the first few points. My informal read of the commentariat suggest Siri’s boosters outnumber its haters by an order of magnitude. The 4th, though, is important
But read his whole post. His real point is this:
In 2007 something happened which changed the industry. It took a few years to even realize it was happening but by the time it was obvious, it had changed to such a degree that huge companies found themselves in financial distress.
Revolutions are hard to predict, even when they’re happening. And they’re slow, so don’t go getting all frustrated that Siri’s best case scenario is dominance in 3 years.
Not Unreasonable 