Apple has hired an Amazon executive to run the Siri team.
William Stasior is described by AllThingsD as a “prominent search technologist”. Statsior was in charge of Amazon’s search and search advertising unit, known as A9. That unit focuses on product and visual search technologies and provides the search technology for Amazon sites and other online retail sites. Prior to Amazon, Stasior worked for AltaVista.
Apple may have decided to bring in Stasior to support Scott Forstall who has been blamed for the disappointment of Apple Maps as well as the somewhat lacking Siri.
Despite advertising Siri as one of the key features of iPhone 4S the company always claimed that the voice interpretation solution is still in beta over a year after it first arrived on the iPhone 4S.
Stasior’s A9 team produced the Flow app for the Apple App Store. This is a visual search app that attempts to recognize and display relevant information about books, music, video games, and more by simply pointing your smartphone’s camera at the cover or UPC barcode, notes MacStories. That site speculates that Siri could become more than a voice assistant, using Stasior’s expertise to become a “visual assistant”.
Apple acquired Siri in 2010. Co-founder Adam Cheyer and CEO Dag Kittlaus have both left Apple.
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Author: Karen Haslam, Editor
Macworld editor since 2008, Karen has worked on both sides of the Apple divide, clocking up a number of years at Apple's PR agency prior to joining Macworld almost two decades ago.
Karen's career highlights include interviewing Apple's Steve Wozniak and discussing Steve Jobs’ legacy on the BBC. Her focus is Mac, but she lives and breathes Apple.