A new report coming from The Information claims that Apple will be making its SDK open to all third-party application developers who want to integrate Siri into their apps.
Siri is a digital assistant that only works with Apple’s native apps, something that is common across many current virtual digital assistants including Google’s Now and Microsoft’s Cortana. However, Apple is releasing an SDK that will allow third-party developers who feel like making use of the abilities of Siri in their apps to do so, making the digital assistant more competitive than its competitors.
The virtual assistant was unveiled in 2011 and since then, nothing significant has come on board. As it seems, this will be the first major hurdle Apple has jumped with this application as it will make it a universal platform that does well with personally helping users.
Of course, Siri has had access to a few third-party apps like Yelp for some time, but this move will mark the first for the assistant to be available to the disposal of all third party Apple developers. For instance, if you have installed a Burger King app on your device, you can ask Siri to launch the app and order you a meal. Cool huh!
Don’t get too excited just yet for integrating Siri into developers’ apps is no easy task. The assistant works with a query-based algorithm, something that means developers will have to come in with a similar kind of algorithm to enable the assistant work with their apps.
As pointed out earlier, Apple is not the only player in the world of virtual digital assistants. In addition to the two mentioned, we also have Amazon’s Alexa and Facebook’s M. While these companies have been busy updating these assistants with newer features, Google is the latest to do so following its introduction of Google Assistant just this past week. This means that users of Google Now can use the assistant to find information online and carry out things like booking tickets and so on. But so far, Apple seems to be holding the upper hand in terms of opening up its digital assistant to third party developers.
There are reports that Google is looking to do the same with its digital assistant but through the newly launched Allo. On the other hand, it is not known when Facebook will make M public as the assistant has been in testing for quite some time now.
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