Siri, Mickey Mouse and an API walk into a bar  

The article linked above is one I wrote partially about the ‘why’ of Siri, but also about its future and the ways that developers might be able to use it. This is the pertinent passage:

As Siri gets more efficient, Apple will expand its capabilities, but probably not by offering access to developers with an API, at least not any time soon. Instead it is more likely that we will see Apple announcing deals with more information providers that will give Siri additional pools of data from which to give answers. Imagine a deal with ESPN for sports scoring or fantasy points, or a tie in with Fandango so that Siri can read you off the movie times at a requested theater.

Beyond more licensing deals for its brain, Apple may begin adding hooks that it can use to pull information store inside the iCloud data uploaded by an app, grabbing your list of action items from Omnifocus or having it read recent messages from an IM client. This would allow you to pull information from inside an app easily without having to clutter up your springboard or notification center with ugly and jarring widgets.

Beyond that I believe that we will see more direct app integration, most likely with the use of an app’s name (look for the addition of a phonetic name field in app submissions) and then a command. Perhaps, “EPSN Fantasy Football, what is my fantasy score?” or “OpenTable, book me a table at Chez Quis.”

I wrote this back in October. Since then Siri has added support for Yelp and — via Wolfram Alpha — Best Buy to its roster. It has yet to extend control of Siri to developers, but it seems likely that this is coming at WWDC.

Samuel Iglesias delves into the ‘how’ of a Siri API in this great article and makes some really interesting points about the difficulty
of semantics.

I’d venture to say that whatever Siri commands are extended to developers to hook into at first, they will be basic. There might even be a separate program that vets these apps and the ways that they’re hooking into the API. It’s a tricky business for sure.