Like Bo, now Apple's Siri knows baseball
Apple's new tie-up with Major League Baseball seems to have brought more than dugout cred for the iPad -- the company's virtual assistant, Siri, now has access to a trove of modern-day and historic baseball statistics.
Siri can now cough up data for thousands of MLB players, from stars of today -- like Freddie Freeman -- to old-school hurlers like Cy Young. As noted by CNET's aptly-named Terry Collins, a total of 28 leagues are supported.
Available leagues include the entire MLB minor league system as well as major international leagues such as Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball.
Unfortunately for statheads, Siri doesn't understand modern-day numbers like WAR, though you can ask her for things like on-base percentage. She also has a difficult time with more contextual questions; asking "what team did Dale Murphy play for" returns the Colorado Rockies, even though Murphy is known primarily as one of the greatest players in Atlanta Braves history.
Siri appears to get her information from a combination of MLB itself, Yahoo! sports, and Wolfram Alpha, so these discrepancies may have more to do with the data sources than Siri herself.
As she has since iOS 6, Siri will continue to provide scores and schedules as well.
Last week, Apple revealed a multi-year agreement with MLB that will see the iPad Pro certified for use in the dugout during games. Each iPad Pro will come with a custom iOS app -- dubbed "Dugout" -- developed by MLB Advanced Media in partnership with Apple.
Siri can now cough up data for thousands of MLB players, from stars of today -- like Freddie Freeman -- to old-school hurlers like Cy Young. As noted by CNET's aptly-named Terry Collins, a total of 28 leagues are supported.
Available leagues include the entire MLB minor league system as well as major international leagues such as Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball.
Unfortunately for statheads, Siri doesn't understand modern-day numbers like WAR, though you can ask her for things like on-base percentage. She also has a difficult time with more contextual questions; asking "what team did Dale Murphy play for" returns the Colorado Rockies, even though Murphy is known primarily as one of the greatest players in Atlanta Braves history.
Siri appears to get her information from a combination of MLB itself, Yahoo! sports, and Wolfram Alpha, so these discrepancies may have more to do with the data sources than Siri herself.
As she has since iOS 6, Siri will continue to provide scores and schedules as well.
Last week, Apple revealed a multi-year agreement with MLB that will see the iPad Pro certified for use in the dugout during games. Each iPad Pro will come with a custom iOS app -- dubbed "Dugout" -- developed by MLB Advanced Media in partnership with Apple.
Comments
Siri needs a HUGE revamp for iOS 10. She's really been pissing me off lately. Apple needs to get on this, Siri sometimes has no idea what iTunes is. Frustrating.
She'll be queried frequently on my iPad this season.