It might spell the end of fiddling around for remote controls in between the sofa cushions. The upcoming big Apple TV will use iPhone’s Siri ‘personal assistant’ as its main control method – and will use touch control as a back up. Leaks from Apple’s manufacturing chain say that Apple has been working on prototype sets since September – according to a design blueprint laid down by late CEO Steve Jobs.
His ‘eureka’ moment was realising that Siri’s voice control could be used to ‘talk’ to the set. The quote ‘I finally cracked it,’ in the recent biography by Walter Isaacson was misquoted in recent reports, reports the New York Times. Jobs was referring to the realisation that the television should be voice-controlled – using the natural-language algorithms of Siri so that people talk to the set as they would to someone sitting next to them on the sofa. Mr Jobs, who died earlier this month, told author Walter Isaacson: “It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine.” A third party analysis suggests the device will hit shelves by late next year or 2013.
