On Tuesday, we noted that while iPhone voice-activated assistant Siri can’t help you find an abortion clinic in New York City—once called The Abortion Capital of America by New York magazine—it can help you find a gun store downtown, in a city with some of the most restrictive gun controls in the country. Apple didn’t respond to our query of why this was, but Apple CEO Tim Cook has finally spoken on the matter.
Mr. Cook responded to the president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (or: NARAL Pro-Choice America, for short), Nancy Keenan, who wrote into Apple regarding the coverage of Siri’s latent pro-life activism. He wrote:
Nancy,
Thanks for your note.
Our customers use Siri to find out all types of information and while it can find a lot, it doesn’t always find what you want. These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone, it simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better and we will in the coming weeks.
I appreciate you pointing this out.
Best Regards,
Tim
They also told the New York Times the same thing.
For the record, the last Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, didn’t donate to charity, wanted to give the world “freedom from porn,” and denied paternity of a daughter he claimed he couldn’t have for almost a decade. Tim Cook is openly gay and recently instituted a policy of matching Apple employees’ donations to charity.
Also, for the record, a sampling of comments from our original post on the matter:
- “I love Siri!! And Siri loves babies!!!“
- “Good. Apple actually did something right for a change.”
- “This, more than anything else, makes me want to buy an iphone.”
Damn. Looks like Apple just lost a few fans.
Something tells us they’ll be okay.
fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek