Upgrade tipped for Apple's Siri

Asking Apple's voice-activated assistant, Siri, what the company plans to unveil at its Worldwide Developer Conference on Tuesday elicits the response: "If I told you, they'd probably make me sit through product security again." Witty, perhaps, but Siri will have to supply more satisfying answers if it's going to convince customers, developers and investors that Apple is keeping pace with Google Now and Amazon's Alexa in one of the hottest emerging areas of tech: virtual personal assistants. Alongside updates to Apple Music and the company's mobile, watch and television operating systems, Apple will announce that for the first time it will let outside developers integrate Siri with their apps, according to a person familiar with the plans. READ MORE: * iPhone's Siri can'beatbox', in newly discovered trick * Siri learns to speak Kiwinglish * The women (and man) behind the voice of Siri Getting programmers on board is an essential step toward building tools that make Apple's devices more indispensable - such as apps that let you use voice commands on an iPhone or iPad to order a pizza or summon an Uber car, both of which Alexa can already do through the Echo in-home speaker. "Siri needs to grow up and get smarter, and by being in other apps it will get smarter because it will know more of what I do," said Carolina Milanesi, an analyst at Creative Strategies.