First Look: Using iPhone 4S with Siri voice assistant - Page 3

Siri may not be ready for Prime Time. Wonder why Apple made a front and center feature of it, rather than introduce it as an also-ran, given it is Beta.

Go to my LINK!

And you saw emails being read?

The next great thing is always extraordinary.

For now, a user having to learn how to do "natural language" seems counterintuitive.

Thanks, I knew we were getting iMessage, I wasn't sure were it was.
So, it's just incorporated into 'Messages'?

http://www.apple.com/iphone/built-in-apps/messages.html
http://www.apple.com/iphone/built-in-apps/messages.html
http://www.apple.com/iphone/built-in-apps/messages.html
http://www.apple.com/iphone/built-in-apps/messages.html
http://www.apple.com/iphone/built-in-apps/messages.html

Because your "personal assistant" should respond to commands.

I agree, the swan 930 is confusing, and I wouldn't want Siri to achieve consciousness and think humans are an idiot species that is only fit for termination. It could mean tickets to see The Swan at 9:30, or it could be a place called Swan 930.

Thanks!

No comparison to existing solutions belong in any reviews.

That would be as Black as everything, and DED's first impressions were Pure White.

You do realize that WP7 automatically send its request to Bing if it is not a phone command, right?

Now go to Bing and type in all those Siri questions and see what happens...

Find bars in London
weather in paris
How many ounces in a pound
Square root of 345

I am not saying it will do the "siri personality" questions... but go ahead... try it... you may surprise yourself.

Note: I still don't understand why I would want to say to my phone: "Is it sunny in Paris or should I bring an umbrella?" when I can simply say "Paris weather" and get the same answer.

And you saw emails being read?

I found it odd that Siri could find the Washington Monument the first time I asked, but not the Statue of Liberty even after several attempts.

I still don't understand why they don't let you have 3G txt service from your carrier on the iPad 3G model. I built my own txt service using an older dumb phone plugged into a linux box so I can txt from my own web page but that is rather hacker-ish workaround. The replies come in as emails. Most of my friends are on iPhones so as they upgrade it might become a non issue.

Even people misunderstand other native speakers living in the same culture. But I agree with your statement, one expects "natural language" to at least be as effective as taking to a stranger. If Siri is anything like IBM Watson, it is only capable of parsing the structure of sentences, but ascertaining meaning is not truly possible; these systems really perform a heuristic search against a gigantic database, and return the best possible answer. Even Watson made mistakes.

People will buy the i4s despite the small screen. Could be that the bigger screen will follow Real Soon Now on the i5.

Everybody wanted one, but nobody expected an i5 this time around. It all depends on 4G rollout rates. Apple makes plenty of moolah on the 4s. The i5 will come out if and when it becomes worth it, either because it then will have a reasonable profit margin, or because Apple thinks it will be worth it to take a margin hit to get the increased volume.

Until then, NO i5 FOR YOU!

how do you get "wife" "husband" "brother" et al into siri
do you have to add these as separate entries to contacts or what
is there some settings or training necessary

Beullshit. You know how many were fatally disappointed by one thing or another, or maybe everything put together, and you use that to falsely calculate how many were disappointed with the screen size?

That doesn't follow.

Sheesh.

Get all your favorite Pub owners to advertise with Apple. That might go a long ways towards getting them recognized. Maybe multiple reviews on one of those consumer feedback websites? Which ones is Apple getting money from? Figure that out and likely you'll find Siri responding "The Swan" to any little snippet of anything that it hears.

Everyone would, and nobody would complain.

how do you initiate siri to do that?
when you get a text press home button
tell siri to"read text?

to bad you couldnt have a setting pref to do that

i got it to work with my honda BT system when i opened siri it came through speakers i spoke out my text message and "send"

If it won't work without a headset, it is DOA.

Have you tried Siri "The name of my favorite pub is The Swan".



I told Siri: "You can call me the swan"

Siri responded: "From now on I'll call you the swan, OK?"

I replied: "yes"

And Siri updated my contact entry:

Later, I asked Siri: "What's my name"

Siri responded: "You're The Swan. That's what you told me, anyway.

In a similar way you can tell Siri who your relatives are...

That is impressive. Very, very cool.

Maybe the Ai is way cool, but the voice recognition is the same as always like on other systems?

Yeah, let's get real here...

I, and most of the staff here with iPhones, want a bigger screen, ONLY if the overall size of the iPhone stay the same. Its not just the "Levi 501" peeps, its us who carry the phone all the time, even weekends and evenings, when we have no bags . jackets etc

same width, height, but thinner with a slightly larger screen - yay

Have to question that one. What makes you think it is selling "despite the small screen"? You've been following these discussions enough to have seen that many people prefer the current size.

Maybe, but I'd give it a bit more time for things to settle down - then we'll see what the verdict is. I'm not sure that it's necessarily in beta because of the software itself.

Just think if the Siri beta hadn't been limited to the 4 million iPhone 4Ses sold this weekend... and 100 million iP4s, Touches and iPads had hit Apple's servers and the Internet.

It's as if the servers were trying to take a drink out of a fire hose.


Someone once tried to come up with a a way to predict what would happen in scenario similar to this sort concentrated activity...


Something like: "What would happen if ten's of millions of concurrent requests were made for the same web site?"

After, consideration, the best answer they could come up with was: "It would be like all the urinals in New York City flushing at the same time!"


The prediction was: "Not to worry -- you'll be up to your ears in piss, first!"

Why do you bring up Bing? It's a really odd choice. Everyone's using the Googles...even Google haters like me are using Google.

Some overall thoughts on Siri...

(That's what this thread is about in spite of many attempts to hijack it... Mango, Screen Size... why not bring in the iPod HiFi, The Newton...)


Siri has some obvious problems -- some are inherent and others are due to server/bandwidth overloads, our unfamiliarity with the device, the device unfamiliar with our voice...


I think Siri will be the biggest technology accomplishment under Steve's watch!


And, yeah, the ripples created by Siri are much bigger than Apple or any single company.


Bringing Siri out now, it will excite, frustrate, motivate millions of iDevice users.

We will all learn, together, what Siri can, and can't do for us -- and both Siri and our lives will be improved:

1) The bandwidth/server power/iDevice power/performance issues can largely be resolved, over time, by throwing hardware at them.

2) The inaccuracies, missing capabilities can largely be resolved through better software (larger databases, etc.) running on that faster/better hardware.

3) When Siri exits beta, I suspect that Apple will open the APIs to 3rd-party developers -- and a million flowers will bloom...

4) Apple does not need to limit Siri [only] to the vagaries of the Internet.

5) I suspect that Apple will find a way to package and license Siri for in-house use by enterprise at local WiFi or Wired connection (Thunderbolt) speeds.


Just think of what Siri could do with data analysis and metadata within the enterprise -- going to the Internet for supplemental knowledge, when required.


If "necessity is the mother of invention"... then Apple has just placed a whole lot of need in the hands of about 4 million people...


We've all got a lot of work to do!


Thanks Steve.

Somebody on another thread suggested that you could use Siri to Bing Alicia Keys.

Good one

The phenomena is sometimes called "the vocal minority:" the 93% of customers excitedly stand in line for a new iPhone, and some slice of the rest complain on Internet forums about their pet peeves. Small minds are incapable of grasping that anyone would disagree with them. What follows is inevitably a flow of rhetoric.

I can think of another verb I would do with Alicia Keys, and it ain't google.

My wife and I got our 4S's today... and Siri is unbelievable. We've both used it quite a bit, mostly for sending texts and looking up a few quick things and it's obvious that it's a game changer.

Beyond the normal Siri stuff, the text dictation into any text box is flawless. Much faster than typing. It is almost 100% perfect... and that's what makes the difference. If it wasn't perfect no one would use it.

I really think that once people see what can be done with Siri and the way you interact with it they will really see the power in what apple has done here.

On the topic of using headsets. My wife and I drove around all morning using Siri in the car with the normal built in mic on our 4S's and Siri was perfect. It's text to speech capabilities are amazing, even with background noise.

We also tried the "lift to ear" Siri activation quite a bit... and that similarly worked great. I love how when in that mode Siri will read back your text message to you so you can confirm the message before you send it without having to take your eyes off the road. Really nice touch.

Honestly, I can't understand any complaints about Siri's text-to-speech capabilities. They are spot on. My wife sat around all afternoon sending texts to her family using Siri (and the speech-to-text into a text box stuff... can we really call that Siri?) and she is completely sold that this is the future. Things like "Tell my wife I'm on my way home" are so short and simple to achieve that it really makes you wonder how we've lived without this for so long.

Now, Siri certainly has shortcomings in what it can do... but as others have mentioned that will change over time.

For now, just use Siri for what it's good at... and get a glimpse at the future of computing.

Bar tricks! Ask her what the best phone is or tell her you need to hide a body. The answers are hilarious.

If it were just a little bit wider and maybe a tiny bit thinner, you'd buy it.

It is selling like hotcakes. It has a small screen.

Nobody knows what affect the small screen is having on sales.