From CNET: Stuck at home on a rainy day, Zooey Deschanel peered out her window while in long-sleeve pink pajamas and started up a conversation with her iPhone.
"Let's get tomato soup delivered," she said, and the phone quickly responded in a friendly voice with a list of nearby restaurants whose reviews mentioned tomato soup and that delivered.
That Apple commercial, which aired in 2012, showed off the new Siri voice assistant as a vision of a brainy, always-ready digital helper. Yet Siri was never as capable as the ad let on, and the voice assistant has since fallen behind as consumers gravitate toward Amazon's Alexa and Google Assistant.
Five years later, Siri takes on new significance as part of Apple's $349 HomePod smart speaker, coming out in December. This moment could give Apple a reason to fulfill that initial promise of what Siri could be, helping frustrated users finally get some better answers. But that's far from certain, and you may find yourself disappointed and maybe even without any delivered tomato soup.
"It may be a little of an afterthought to a certain extent," Ovum analyst Francesco Radicati said of Siri's pecking order in the Apple portfolio. "They will probably improve it more, but it won't become as big a thing as for Amazon or Google, because for Apple the device is the end all and be all."
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