Yesterday the co-founder of Siri, Dag Kittlaus, spoke at a keynote presentation in Chicago. According to Network World, Kittlaus unveiled some interesting information that ultimately lead to Apple’s acquisition of the company and paved the way for Siri to migrate from an app on the App Store to system-wide and deeply integrated personal assistant.
Kittlaus revealed that Steve Jobs personally contacted him to set up a face-to-face meeting only three weeks after the Siri app was released on the App Store way back in 2010:
Three weeks after we launched I got a call in the office from someone at Apple that said, “Scott Forstall wants to talk to you and he’s the head software guy.”
And I said sure…
Only it wasn’t Scott that called it was Steve. And Steve never announces where he’s gonna be and what he’s gonna do because there’s too much commotion around it. So he said, “Dag, this is Steve Jobs.”
And he wanted me to come over to his house the next day, and I did, and I spent 3 hours with him in front of his fireplace having this surreal conversation about the future.
And, you know, he talked about why Apple was going to win, and we talked about how Siri was doing. And he was very excited about the fact that.. you know, he was very interested in this area in general but, you know, they’re patient, they don’t jump on anything until they feel they can go after something new and he felt that we cracked it. So that was his attraction.
Kittlaus pointed out that Steve Jobs wasn’t thrilled with the name “Siri” initially but, for lack of a better name and Kittlaus’ constant persistence, Jobs decided to stick with the name “Siri” when the personal assistant made its big debut last October alongside the iPhone 4S.
Stay tuned for more Apple and Siri related news.
