Former Apple Employees: Siri Stinks

Apple Inc. AAPL's Siri platform isn't great, at least according to a group of ex-Apple employees.

Apple's Siri failed to keep up with its rivals including Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN's Alexa and Alphabet Inc GOOG's Home because Apple's workers disagreed with how it stores user data, a group of former Apple employees told The Wall Street Journal.

Apple typically stores data for a mere six months but Amazon and Google will keep the information indefinitely. This alone places Siri at a tremendous disadvantage since it understands less about each specific user.

The Apple employees also expressed concern with management's unwillingness to fully open up Siri to third party apps. For instance, An Apple user can't command Siri to play music through Spotify, which implies Apple doesn't have a full understanding of what kind of music the user enjoys listening. On the other hand, Alexa and Google Home have no such limitations.

This may have prompted two of Siri's co-founders to quit Apple and create a platform from scratch called Viv Labs which has since been acquired by Samsung. Meanwhile, two other Siri employees quit Apple to accept jobs at Google and Amazon.

Perhaps none of this matters since Apple boasts two key advantages:

• Its tremendous brand loyalty;
• Security conscious users may be more comfortable with Siri storing data for just six months as opposed to Amazon and Google who may hold on to data forever.

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