Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) filed a patent application for a desktop or “Mac” version of Siri, the virtual assistant which now operates only on the mobile iOS platform. This application, originally made on February 5th, 2014, was published today by the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) in accordance with standard procedures. The application itself is a titanic document running to 92 pages, far longer than the 4 or 5 page applications usually posted.
The patent application, number 20140218372, lists no less than eight different inventors, as might be expected from a project of this scale. The inventors credited include Julian K. Missig, Jeffrey Traer Bernstein, Avi E. Cieplinksi, May-Li Khoe, David J. Hart, Bianca C. Costanzo, Nicholas Zambetti, and Matthew I. Brown. All but two are located in San Francisco, California, with one in Redwood City and Ms. Costanzo hailing from Barcelona, Spain.
Though not labeled directly as “Siri” (thus raising the remote possibility that the assistant will go by another name in its Mac incarnation), the digital assistant described is clearly a desktop equivalent of the familiar iOS presence. In fact, Section 0065 of the new application specifically sites Siri’s patent as providing the basis and frame of reference for the current concept:
“An example of a digital assistant is described in Applicant’s U.S. Utility application Ser. No. 12/987,982 for “Intelligent Automated Assistant,” filed Jan. 10, 2011, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.”
The Mac version of Siri is slated to perform an enormous range of voice-activated tasks, including searching, deleting, creating new files, moving files, and many other computer related chores. The digital assistant will likewise take dictation. It will also be able to perform complicated tasks based on the context in which commands are given, and serve as a third input method in conjunction with the keyboard and mouse.
Adding a third simultaneous input method has the potential to greatly speed and streamline many tasks. Of course, it seems unlikely that voice commands will completely replace other inputs due to their relative lack of precision.
For example, a mouse can be used to click instantly on a specific point in an image which it might take minutes of narration to pin down using voice-activated selection. But the addition of a third input alongside the others may prove to add to productivity, and, at a minimum, will have some “gimmick value” for boosting sales.
