Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), initiated in 2018 a massive hiring program for engineers who will have the role of working on improving the personal assistant Crab for those who use it constantly. Apple started this process shortly after boxing HomePod was launched and people started complaining about the fact that the personal assistant is far below their expectations.
Apple is hiring no less than 161 people to work on improving Siri, 24% more than at the end of last month, which is also the highest figure so far. Most of the jobs that Apple offers are for its new campus, Americans hiring in San Francisco, Shanghai, Cambridge and other locations around the world.
Siri is one of the most important personal assistants for computers, mobile phones and tablets, and its improvement is very important for Apple. Various comparisons made last year demonstrated the fact that Siri is far behind Google Assistant when it comes to understanding the commands spoken by users, and Apple wants to solve this.
"According to hiring data that we track at Thinknum, the number of open positions that contain the term "Siri" has accelerated in recent weeks, with a current all-time high of 161 job listings posted today alone. This marks a jump in hiring for the keyword of 24% in just over a month. As for patterns in the job titles, the most common title is "Siri - Software Engineer", of which there are 5 positions. With three positions, "Siri – iOS Engineer" has three replicated openings."
Siri is criticized from all sides due to the fact that, for many, it is inferior to Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, so it will be interesting to see how Apple will try to solve this problem. Even if Apple will hire 100 people to work on improving Siri, it will be a long time before users feel these changes.
