As with Apple not yet opening their Siri Api, every move their competitors do, is a good one to raise the pressure.
Google seems to back on of the many open source alternatives now, though it’s only in a first beta currently:
‚Sirius‘ Is the Google-Backed Open Source Siri | Motherboard.
There are other movements like api.ai as well, but of course: with the massive installed userbase, Siri is the big mama everybody is waiting for.
It is not quite sure yet, if Apple integrates Siri Api’s into HomeKit, other than e.g. with AppleTV
The most important role for Siri will be with the Apple Watch of course.
I’ve been using Siri here and there, but other than to set the alarmclock for the next morning, there was not much of a use for it.
Only one part, and I am noticing using it on a regular if not daily basis is now: speech-to-text. That works so well, that it writes better and faster emails and messages for me (with less typos 🙂 ) I use it on the iPhone as well as on the Mac: you can activate it in the system settings for the most languages.
As one could see in Tim’s Demo lastw eek, spoken text on the iWatch can be either send as text or as voice-message, which then makes perfectly sense. As you dictate you see, how Siri „understands“ and brings the text in context and corrects it. If they open their API together with TouchID, Apple really changed they way of interacting with digital devices once again.
Update: Google just announced to open its „now“ Apis…