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Jobs to Obama: You risk being a one-termer

From the cover of Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs available at Amazon.
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Apple founder Steve Jobs told President Obama he risks re-election because of a bad relationship with the business community, says a soon-to-be-published biography of the computer visionary.

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," Jobs told Obama in the fall of 2010, according to the biography by author Walter Isaacson that will be in bookstores next week.

The Huffington Post, which obtained an early copy of the bio, also reports that Jobs offered to do ads for Obama's 2012 re-election campaign.

"He had made the same offer in 2008, but he'd become annoyed when Obama's strategist David Axelrod wasn't totally deferential," writes biographer Isaacson.

From The Huffington Post account of the book:

Jobs, who was known for his prickly, stubborn personality, almost missed meeting President Obama in the fall of 2010 because he insisted that the president personally ask him for a meeting. Though his wife told him that Obama "was really psyched to meet with you," Jobs insisted on the personal invitation, and the standoff lasted for five days. When he finally relented and they met at the Westin San Francisco Airport, Jobs was characteristically blunt. He seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative.

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.

Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.

Jobs suggested that Obama meet six or seven other CEOs who could express the needs of innovative businesses -- but when White House aides added more names to the list, Jobs insisted that it was growing too big and that "he had no intention of coming." In preparation for the dinner, Jobs exhibited his notorious attention to detail, telling venture capitalist John Doerr that the menu of shrimp, cod and lentil salad was "far too fancy" and objecting to a chocolate truffle dessert. But he was overruled by the White House, which cited the president's fondness for cream pie.

Though Jobs was not that impressed by Obama, later telling Isaacson that his focus on the reasons that things can't get done "infuriates" him, they kept in touch and talked by phone a few more times. Jobs even offered to help create Obama's political ads for the 2012 campaign. "He had made the same offer in 2008, but he'd become annoyed when Obama's strategist David Axelrod wasn't totally deferential," writes Isaacson. Jobs later told the author that he wanted to do for Obama what the legendary "morning in America" ads did for Ronald Reagan.

Apple gets edge with use of voice-recognition technology

Executive Phil Schiller speaks about the voice recognition app called Siri during the company's presentation on Tuesday.

The voice-driven Siri virtual personal assistant that Apple touted as a major feature in the brand new iPhone 4S says a lot about how far speech recognition in phones has come.

Siri not only recognizes what it is that you are asking — "wake me up at 6:30", "any decent sushi restaurants around here — but it understands the intent of your words and can respond accordingly.

Siri relies on artificial intelligence and is tightly integrated with the various apps on the phone. Results are tailored based on your location and through partnerships with the likes of Yelp.

Mike Thompson, who heads up the mobile business at Nuance Communications, called the Siri news "an exclamation point on the mainstreaming of the technology." Adds Dan Miller, senior analyst at Opus Research, "I'm calling it an inflection point of sorts."

As a leader in the field, Nuance has partnerships with Apple (and Siri), and several other companies, and is the outfit behind Dragon Naturally Speaking speech-recognition products for computers and mobile.

Analyst Shyam Patil of Raymond James estimates that Apple is paying Nuance a recurring $5 million to $10 million in revenue every quarter over the life of an estimated two to three year contract. "If anyone can get speech right, its Apple," he says.

Of course Nuance is by no means alone. A veritable who's-who of tech companies including Google, Microsoft and IBM spend a lot of time on speech-related research, as do startups such as Vlingo.

"Our vision is complete ubiquity of this type of technology," says Mike Cohen who leads the speech technology efforts at Google. That means on every application, webpage, social network, in the car and so on. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has said that 25% of Google searches on Android phones are triggered by voice. Along with voice search, Android users can employ voice actions ("note to self -- grocery list: banana, milk, eggs, pizza") to get things done.

Until its inclusion as part of the iPhone 4S, a version of Siri was available on iPhones as a third party app. Apple bought the Siri startup in April 2010.

Though the app disappears, the promise of the Siri approach is in the way it is tied into the very fabric of the 4S and the way in which you can pose a question. For example, "do I need an umbrella today?" yields the same result as "what is the weather like today?"

"Its not that you get to use your voice, but you get to talk in a way that you feel comfortable with," Miller says. "The systems themselves are less robotic, it doesn't seem as gimmicky. There is a true Star Trek effect."

Good as it has gotten, voice recognition is far from perfect. Apple says Siri on the iPhone 4S is in beta. Siri isn't completely hands-free either. Though it can help cut down on certain steps as you navigate tasks, a typical Siri interaction may involve a combination of using your voice, looking at results with your eyes and touching the phone.

Thompson says: "We're in the 4th inning—the rate of change and innovation is faster than ever before in speech. The accuracy and performance is getting better. (In the) next five innings we'll see greater and greater natural language."