What's in a name? For someone like the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, quite a lot. The notorious perfectionist didn't particularly take to the name "Siri" when Apple acquired the company two years ago -- but accordingly to that company's co-founder, Jobs never came up with a better one.
Network World is reporting on comments made by Dag Kittlaus at this week's Technori Pitch event in Chicago, where the Siri co-founder gave the keynote address. Back in April, 2010, Kittlaus and friends sold Siri to Apple for $200 million, and the virtual assistant would go on to be the flagship feature of the new iPhone 4S launched last October.
During the keynote, some background on Siri came bubbling to the surface, including a tidbit about "how Jobs wasn't particularly enthralled with calling Apple's voice recognition feature 'Siri.'" In Kittlaus' native Norway, the name Siri means "beautiful woman who leads you to victory" -- but it also helped that Siri was easy to spell and the domain name was still available.
By the time Steve Jobs came calling, the late Apple co-founder "wasn't sold on the Siri name," despite Kittlaus lobbying to keep the name. Ultimately, Jobs failed to come up with anything better, and Siri was reintroduced to iPhone users last October.
"What's particularly interesting about this is that there are similar stories regarding the naming process behind the iMac and the iPod," the report also notes. "Two products with names Jobs reportedly didn't care for either but ultimately acquiesced to after not being able to find better alternatives."
Kittlaus also noted that the first call from Apple came a mere three weeks after the original Siri app launched in the App Store in early 2010 -- a call made by Steve Jobs, which was soon followed by a three-hour discussion at the CEO's house.
"I ended up very lucky, timing wise," Kittlaus said of Jobs. "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."
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