We don’t spend enough time appreciating Jeff Goldblum. He hands out sausages, proves hotels pay attention to detail, and is generally enjoying a viral moment. And it appears he almost, allllmost became Apple’s to-go voice.
Goldblum, promoting an Australian delivery app because Goldblum, went on an Australian morning chat show and, among other things, mentioned that a few decades ago, Steve Jobs was feeling him out to be the “voice of Apple.” That’s an interesting way of putting it, not least because, at the time, Apple was heavy into speech recognition and Siri has its roots in SRI, the Stanford public/private company known for cutting edge science and strong ties to Apple. Jobs was notorious for planning far, far ahead in his goals so that Siri, or what Siri would become, was on his mind decades ago is more than credible.
Of course, that never panned out, although Goldblum did serve as an Apple pitchman. In fact, the voice of Siri didn’t even know she was tied to the project until it was revealed. Still, it’s not too late for Jeff Goldblum to reside in our pockets as well as out hearts, since voice apps use pre-recorded phenomes to create natural language. Demand it loudly enough and he may still voice our phones.
(Via Fortune)