How to make Siri a Better Listener

We’ve all heard the rumors: Apple will likely remove the long-standing headphone jack from the next iPhone. The alleged decision by the phone manufacturer has caused a great deal of anger, defense of its potential, but also search for a reason. What would make Apple remove something considered so essential to the mobile experience without a better alternative?

Apple does have a reputation of removing dated technology from its hardware in the name of convenience or performance, but the reason is usually apparent. Why ditch the floppy drive on the first iMac? Because CD-ROM can store much more data — it’s the future. Why ditch the DVD drive on the first MacBook Air? Because the internet will be the new place we get our applications and media — it’s the future. Of course, the timing is usually contested, but timing does not seem to be the issue here. The fact remains that wireless audio, as we know it today, is just not as convenient or well performing as wired earbuds. It might be in the future, but the tech isn’t there yet.

My favorite posts on this subject — and there are many — are the ones that search for this reason and decide if it is an acceptable alternative to the headphone jack. This is one of those posts.

It starts with a woman named Alexa.

Well, she’s not quite a woman. She’s an AI assistant that lives within Amazon products like the Echo and the Dot. If you are an owner of one of these products, you understand what a pleasant experience it can be to use them. Whether you get your news from her in the morning or ask her to call you an Uber without leveraging a visual interface, Alexa’s responsiveness feels like there is someone in the room with you. The technology is so good that it makes even the most avid Apple enthusiasts question whether Apple’s Siri can compete in the impending tech battleground — AI.

While I have seen many discussions around why Apple needs to improve its AI in order to compete, they usually miss a major point in the intelligent assistant war to come: microphones.

There are three reasons why the Amazon Echo is such a responsive implementation of AI:

1. The software is great. It has great voice recognition software and AI that allows it to understand requests and route them appropriately.
2. The software is open. Any developer can build Alexa Skills that allows her to do more things that Amazon can’t do on its own.
3. It has seven microphones. Count ’em. Seven.

Why can I gently say: “Alexa, start my jazz Pandora station,” from across the room and my Echo can hear it, yet when I shout: “hey Siri, play my jazz playlist,” from across the room, my iPhone sits idle? It’s not because Siri isn’t as good at starting playlists as Alexa — it’s because my iPhone can’t hear me from across the room. It’s microphones are limited by the iPhone’s battery, and therefore, power consumption. My Echo has seven microphones, all receiving a constant flow of power from an outlet.

Voice is becoming a more important part of how we interact with our technology. Apple knows it too, or they wouldn't have built SiriKit this year. Like many WWDCs, software gives us clues to impending hardware. Siri’s software is getting better. Siri is becoming more open. Only Apple can make Siri-enabled devices better listeners, and it needs to do it with microphones.