Wow, Siri seems really useful

[OfTheDamned]

 

[OfTheDamned]

 

[B2L]

Yeah it cracks me up, I always read the ones on Why Siri Why

 

[tommy_ed]

we have a demo 4s and i've been playing around on siri a lot. You can make her say some funny things, but in all seriousness.. It's truly incredible the kind of comprehension that thing has I've been pretty impressed with it

 

[ScorpDX]

Cleverbot.com - a clever bot - speak to an AI with some Actual Intelligence? for those who haven't seen it. Basically the same concept on the computer.

 

[menendeztom]

Haha that's awesome... Damn I need to upgrade to the highest end Android... Thinking Galaxy Nexus

 

[Pitamakan]

we have a demo 4s and i've been playing around on siri a lot. You can make her say some funny things, but in all seriousness.. It's truly incredible the kind of comprehension that thing has I've been pretty impressed with it

Yep. I know it's fun to spread snark about the competition, but after using Siri for the past week I can say in all seriousness that it's extremely useful. Google's going to really need to scramble to stay competitive in that arena.

 

[Vihzel]

Large photos:

Spoiler

That's directly from my phone. (I have the 4S and waiting as well for Galaxy Nexus)

 

[Crocobill]

You guys are lucky to use Siri in English !!! I made a test with a French friend who doesn't speak english and spoke to Siri in French. Results are pretty bad...

 

[Dark Jedi]

How do you use it? I was at verizon today and couldnt find it? Maybe she was hiding from me.

 

[Pitamakan]

How do you use it? I was at verizon today and couldnt find it? Maybe she was hiding from me.

Maybe she figured you for an Android spy, and thought it wise to hide?

But seriously, you activate Siri by holding down the iPhone's home button ... the microphone pops up from the bottom of the screen.

 

[Vihzel]

You have to hold down the home button and she'll come up. She is pretty useful and better implemented than Google's voice search in certain areas for sure while Google has Siri beat in others.

She's really useful to me in that I could say things like:

Me: "Find me a Starbucks." (for internet connection to look up things on my comp since i'm always mobile)

Me: "Remind me to call/email (insert name) when I arrive at work." <--- reminders are great; I have my work set to a certain address so it'll actually ring and pop up that reminder when I actually get to work

Me: "Remind me to go to the bank at 3pm." <--- that wording makes Siri remind you at 3pm to go to the bank, not that you have to be at the bank at 3pm

Me: "Wake me up at 8am tomorrow."

Me: "Wake me up in 40 minutes." (nap) <--- much easier than having to manually set an alarm for only 40 minutes from now

 

[DaSchmarotzer]

I never used Siri and I don't intend to. I've never used anything voice-related (more than a couple times to try it out), since it just seems even longer and I certainly don't want to talk to my phone. I always set it on vibration to reduce noise as much as possible.

Plus, since my daily language is French, those things never work really well.

 

[Stuntman]

Voice recognition speed and accuracy will improve over time. You can always find some phrase you can say that makes Siri response in a funny manner. For many things, I think it looks pretty useful. I haven't had an opportunity to try it much yet.

I can think of some things I would like Siri or any voice reco app to do. What I would find really see useful is for me to ask for the traffic info for a specific intersection. I would like to be able to check the traffic at that location as I approach the turn to my alternate route while driving. Right now, if I check the traffic before I start driving, it is out of date by the time I get to the turn off.

I do use voice reco occasionally. Right now, it just feels weird to speak into my phone. I think I will get more comfortable over time. Even if I'm all alone, I feel a little weird.

 

[Pitamakan]

It's definitely going to be interesting to see what impact Siri will have on the broader world of technology. My personal guess is that it's going to be pretty transformative, and that in a few years we're all going to be having conversations with our phones, our computers, our TVs, and a fair amount of other stuff, besides. For better or for worse.

 

[Frisco]

It's definitely going to be interesting to see what impact Siri will have on the broader world of technology. My personal guess is that it's going to be pretty transformative, and that in a few years we're all going to be having conversations with our phones, our computers, our TVs, and a fair amount of other stuff, besides. For better or for worse.

Well.. the day we decided to give up our decades old land line account with the phone company, I began to think about how communication has changed over my life time. This Siri seems like a next logical step, and on...

..any of you with new babies about now, try fantasizing about how technology will be for them as they move into their 4th and 5th decades of life. Our stuff here in 2011 will seem primitive just as the old reality of a phone number being permanently associated with an address seems primitive now.

 

[pastafarian]

I've played with Siri a bit now and while interesting, it's still mostly a toy. Sure there's some people who will find it legitimately useful, but it's not nearly accurate enough yet to be useful to most. Like OCR software, 98% accurate seems like a really great statistic, but the 2% inaccurate is a major pain in the butt. The really amusing (disturbing?) thing is how the media totally dismisses all the major advances that proceeded Siri, while allowing Apple and its fanbois to grab the "inventor" mantle. Siri is a good step, but still miles from the finish line. What it really shows off is Apples continuing control over the tech media.

 

[Stuntman]

The really amusing (disturbing?) thing is how the media totally dismisses all the major advances that proceeded Siri, while allowing Apple and its fanbois to grab the "inventor" mantle. Siri is a good step, but still miles from the finish line. What it really shows off is Apples continuing control over the tech media.

I would contend that no one else was able to market voice recognition as well as Jobs did. Voice reco has been available on my Android phone for a while, but I didn't try it very much before Jobs' iPhone 4S announcement which included Siri. After the announcement, I ended up trying a bunch of voice reco stuff on my phone over and above the default Google Voice and Cyberon Voice.

Jobs and Apple can draw greater attention to products and features than say the developers of VLingo. Partly, the Siri announcement is tied to the iPhone 4S announcement. Also, Siri seems to provide some functionality over and above many of the voice recognition applications and services. More importantly, if you tell a bunch of people on the street that VLingo is making a big voice reco announcement, most people probably don't know what VLingo is or doesn't care. If you tell the same people that Apple or Jobs is making a big voice reco announcment, you will get more interested responses.

 

[OfTheDamned]

I would contend that no one else was able to market as well as Jobs did.

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