Apple Expands in AI, Smart Home

Developers get API to access Siri

Rick Merritt- EE times, Jun. 14, 2016 – 

With its latest software upgrades, Apple will expand ecosystems around its approach to machine learning and the smart home, competing with archrival Google. Along the way, it will pack more eye candy into the iPhone user interface to entice Android users and release a tool that aims to turn the average user into a novice programmer.

Apple released developer versions of upgrades coming this fall for the operating systems on the iPhone, Macintosh, Apple TV and Apple Watch. The software provided no clear clues about any new hardware coming with expected device and systems announcements in the fall other than that the products will require more memory and processing, especially for graphics and machine learning.

Smarter search based on machine learning algorithms running on end user devices was a big theme in the upgrades. It's not clear whether Apple will pack any novel chips or cores in next-generation systems to accelerate them. Last month, Google announced a custom processor for machine learning running algorithms in its data centers it made open source last year.

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