Re: In the past decade, has Apple released ANY high-technology product before others did?

On 2025-01-29 08:30, Marion wrote:

On Tue, 28 Jan 2025 20:39:37 -0500, Rick wrote :
 

Has Apple pioneered *any* useful high technology in the past decade?
If so, what?

>
Siri?  Don't recall any similar product before that.

 Hi Rick,
 Thank you for hazarding a guess for what useful "high technology" Apple has
released within the past decade that nobody else already released prior.
 Good choice. Perhaps you may be right with Siri voice assistant technology.
I have to check the facts since people tend to only know what's marketed.
 Bear in mind that, even though I have plenty of Apple devices, I don't use
Siri voice assistant myself; but I volunteer in town where I've shown the
elderly & handicapped how to use Siri to access 1.800.chat.gpt so I'm
familiar with it. On Android, I don't use the "hey google" stuff either, nor would I use Alexa or Bixby or Cortana (for obvious privacy reasons).
 But that's just me (because I care about privacy).
 Certainly there is a place for voice assistant technology; hence, please
allow me to research who came up with voice assistant technology first.
 Running a search, these seem to be the 8 common voice assistants out there.
a. Amazon: Alexa b. Apple: Siri (officially rebranded as "Apple Intelligence" in iOS 18)

First error. Siri has not been rebranded as "Apple Intelligence".
If it were, the Systems Settings entry for it Siri would not be "Apple Intelligence & Siri".

c. Bidu: DuerOS
d. Google: Google Assistant
e. Microsoft: Cortana
f. Samsung: Bixby
g. Xiaomi: XiaoAI
h. Yandex Alice
 Let's look up the history & then sort by general purpose release date:
1. Siri February 2010 (app release), October 4, 2011 (with iPhone 4S) 2. Cortana was released on April 2, 2014 for Windows Phone 8.1.

Second error. Sloppy formatting. You didn't make Cortana its own line.

3. Alexa Nov 6, 2014 (limited release), June 23, 2015 (general release)
4. Bixby was released for Samsung phones on April 21, 2017
5. Xiaomi XiaoAI: July 2017
6. Baidu DuerOS: July 2017
7. Yandex Alice: October 10, 2017 8. Google Assistant May 2018 (wide availability on Android and iOS)
 With that research performed, you are indeed correct, in my opinion, that
Siri voice assistant technology was indeed first in the field (and maybe
even the best but which is better was never part of this question).
 Looking up Siri's history, Siri was initially released as a standalone app
for iOS in February 2010. However, Siri's official debut as an integral
part of the iOS platform happened with the launch of the iPhone 4S on
October 4, 2011. Then Apple rebranded Siri in 2024 as "Apple Intelligence".
 So, Siri was indeed first in this technology for the general public.
 By the way, as a humorous aside, using the logic of Alan Browne who argued
that the venerable 3.5mm AUX jack was working for over a hundred years so
Apple had to [courageously] remove it simply because it has worked for so
long,

Third error. Alan Browne made no such argument

bear in mind that the "IBM Shoebox" was demonstrated in 1961 as a
voice-activated calculator that could recognize 16 spoken words and digits.
Same goes for Audrey (1952), which was developed by Bell Labs to recognize
digits 0-9 spoken by a designated speaker. This was a significant step
towards practical voice recognition.
 Then there was Harpy (1971), which was Developed at Carnegie Mellon
University where Harpy could understand spoken sentences with a vocabulary
of over 1,000 words. It was a major advancement in speech understanding
research.
 Yet, they paled in comparison to what Siri, Alexa & Google Assistant do for
the common man, so I think we have a winner with Siri - although - note the
time span is *more* than a decade ago, so the main question remains as:
 Q: In the past decade, has Apple released ANY high-technology product before others did?
A: Nobody has yet to find anything - but certainly Siri was first.

<https://www.patentlyapple.com/patents-applications/>
'A new Apple patent does a Deep Dive into Future Fluid-Filed Tunable Lenses for Vision-related Devices'
'Apple Reveals an all-new Temperature Sensor that could be used with Apple Watch, AirPods and more'
'Apple invents a new Apple Watch health feature that is designed to forewarn a user of a major Health Event like a Seizure+'
'Three new Smart Fabric Patents were published last week covering Fabric with Electrical Components for devices, clothing and more'
'Apple invents Smartglasses with Waveguide-Based Eye Illumination'