The very fact that Apple has 800M credit cards on file is the reason why they know better than offering a service like this.
Even if 10% of their users started using their service to require "magic", there is no way in hell even a company like Apple could scale an operation like this that's bottlenecked by humans.
Why not? 80m users is probably in-line with what some of the larger banks and insurance companies deal with. They're big call centers, but we're not talking entire cities here.
A concierge service is a lot more intensive than responding to the clients of a bank.
If Apple did this at their scale, they would probably end up very quickly having an (hopefully public) API for every business around, rather than having their agents call the same restaurant 10 times a day. That would really be a revolutionary way to consume.
I saw a profile (probably on HN) about how the Siri technology was developed. This service sounds nearly ideal for Siri. In the short term I'd bet 50% of requests could be handled with total automation. Seeing how they add functionality to the system I'd bet they can get that up into the 70+% range over time. Many things still require a human touch, but you can throttle demand with pricing.
I'd expect it to come from Amazon first though. Seems more up their alley.
This is a good point. I should clarify, Siri technology could do this. I have tried Siri many times and most of the problems seem to revolve around it understanding what I'm saying. Plus it's almost always easier to just do things myself. The scenario Magic is trying to handle seems actually better tuned to the Siri technology than Siri the product.
Funny way to generate a lot of jobs for the future, no?
I mean in future times when everything is so automated that you don't longer work in a supermarket or restaurant, because people don't leave the house any more (sad future, I know).
Even if 10% of their users started using their service to require "magic", there is no way in hell even a company like Apple could scale an operation like this that's bottlenecked by humans.