Siri arrives 24 years after Apple prediction

Apple's newest iPhone may not have gotten the expected oohs and aahs from most people, but this piece of trivia about it could. When Apple Inc. unveiled its latest iPhone with an AI assistant feature from Siri, not many knew it was merely fulfilling a prediction it made almost exactly 24 years ago. Tech site Gizmodo said Apple made a concept video in 1987 about a computer with a touchscreen and a computerized assistant one could talk to —with September 16, 2011 as the implied date of the video. "They were off in their prediction by only 18 days. Wow," Gizmodo said. It was referring to the Knowledge Navigator, which was featured in the 1987 video. It featured a digital assistant almost identical to Siri. But instead of the disembodied voice of Siri as introduced this week, the assistant in the 1987 video was a male wearing a bow tie. Waxy.org noted the date on calendar of the professor in the video is September 16, and he was looking for a 2006 paper written "about five years ago," setting the year as 2011. "So, 24 years ago, Apple predicted a complex natural-language voice assistant built into a touchscreen Apple device, and was less than a month off," it said. — TJD, GMA News