Siri, the digital assistant for for the iPhone 4s has been the tip of the spear for Apple‘s advertising of their latest smartphone. But according to the creator of Siri Dag Kittlaus, Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs, didn’t really like the name to begin with. Siri is a Norwegian name that means “beautiful women who leads you to victory.”
A new report from Yoni Heisler of NetWorkWorld briefly highlights Kittlaus’s speech from last weekend where he talks about how he came up with the Siri name and why Mr. Jobs wasn’t a fan.
I worked with a lady named Siri in Norway and wanted to name my daughter Siri and the domain was available. And also consumer companies need to focus on the fact that the name is easy to spell, is easy to say…
Kittlaus goes on to talk about how he had to persistently try to convince Jobs that it was a good name, and how Jobs continued to disagree but finally gave in because he couldn’t think of a better name himself.
Three weeks after we launched I got a call in the office from someone at Apple that said, “Scott Forstall wants to talk to you and he’s the head software guy.”
And I said sure…
Only it wasn’t Scott that called it was Steve. And Steve never announces where he’s gonna be and what he’s gonna do because there’s too much commotion around it. So he said, “Dag, this is Steve Jobs.”
And he wanted me to come over to his house the next day, and I did, and I spent 3 hours with him in front of his fireplace having this surreal conversation about the future.
And, you know, he talked about why Apple was going to win, and we talked about how Siri was doing. And he was very excited about the fact that.. you know, he was very interested in this area in general but, you know, they’re patient, they don’t jump on anything until they feel they can go after something new and he felt that we cracked it. So that was his attraction.
I ended up very lucky, timing wise. I got to work with him for a year before he got real sick. And he’s pretty incredible. The stories are true. All of the stories.
Kittlaus who is formerly a Motorola Executive, eventually sold Siri to Apple for $200 million dollars making him and the other co-founders multi-millionaires.
According to a recent survey 90 percent of iPhone 4s owners actually use Siri and a third of them would like to see Siri featured on the new Apple TV.
How do you feel about the Siri name?
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