Siri changed the world 14 years ago. Can it do it again?

The company has been struggling to make Siri better for more than a decade now.

- BY JASON SNELL

I was there on that early October day 14 years ago when Apple-led on stage by Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, and Scott Forstall-rolled out iOS 5 (fave.co/43yH8Po), the iPhone 4S (fave.co/448y6Zq), and one of the most important iOS features ever, Siri (fave.co/4oLtmkU). (Steve Jobs wasn't there, an empty seat left for him in the front row. He died the next day, fave.co/3K4LJSJ.)

Siri was the first true “voice assistant,” a voice-driven interface that Jobs clearly thought would be a huge part of the future of how we use our devices. He legendarily called Siri’s co-founder 24 straight days (fave.co/48dJLIS) to express his desire to buy the app and add it to iOS.

While Apple got there first, competitors followed. In some ways, it’s the contrary example to what Apple normally does: Instead of entering a category late and perfecting it, Apple entered this category first and found itself limited by those early decisions. The company has been struggling to make Siri better for more than a decade now, and it’s generally perceived as a feature that fails to live up to Apple's usual brand promise.

The shift to modern AI-driven technology is an opportunity for Apple to revamp Siri, but the company has struggled to get a smarter version of Siri out the door. While the original version of Siri was more of a novelty, with every passing year, it becomes more critical to Apple's future—and its troubling state becomes more of a red flag about the future of all of Apple's products.