Friday, May 24, 2013

Siri a smarter assistant!


Introduced in fall 2011, Siri was the major novelty of the iPhone 4S. This voice assistant then beta should evolve to become more intelligent, but it is clear that we are far off. Spring 2013, Siri is still wearing a letter "beta" by Apple and it is still limited, or almost. With iOS 6, he certainly won some functions, such as management of restaurants and cinema. Siri is nevertheless a few useful assistant outside the United States, where it is capable of many more things. There, he can answer general questions with Wolfram Alpha, it can reserve tables or movie tickets, but it cannot do everything, far from it. And if his personality with its sometimes funny answers impressed in 2011, it is now tired of seeing Siri fail to meet some simple requests. Already claimed for iOS 6, hopefully enriching Siri by other developers is finally on the agenda in 2013. The wizard and Apple could integrate with any task manager rather than just reminders. It could even incorporate more complete results provided by an application. This should include can easily choose the application to control, but this change makes sense and would probably raise the interest of Siri. Another element that deserves to be controlled by Siri, some simple adjustments like “activate” or “deactivate” the Bluetooth or WiFi, or quickly switch to airplane mode.

It is not related to an update of iOS, but Siri suffers from problems of understanding since its early days and although Apple has promised steady progress, we are still waiting. Too often, the evil wizard understands what you say and you have to wait several seconds and repeat, so we almost always quicker to unlock the device and manually what we wanted do with Siri. This is particularly the case for the management of messages is very buggy and malfunctions too often, so it is very convenient, especially when traveling. Siri is useful in some cases, but it is of no help in many situations. Since this is a voice assistant is the user to activate and ask him a question, then an assistant really useful would himself inform you. This is precisely the challenge as of now, the latest service from Google that is available on Android devices, but iOS. Wizard Google intends to bring you useful information based on your current situation. It may be the weather forecast for the city where you are, but also forecasts for the city where you go. If you fly, now it will display a reminder of the flight with all the necessary information. If you have an appointment at the other end of the city then It calculates the time required to get there and alert you at the right time, taking into account traffic. Apple could make Siri as a helpful assistant. The iPhone user will enter appointments in the phone and the manufacturer now has its own mapping service to calculate the route and prevent the right time. One could imagine other services in iOS 7, such as better management of cinemas with the possibility to notify Siri for your interest in a film and an alert sent automatically when it leaves. Passbook, one of the new iOS 6 could be naturally integrated display shortly before leaving your train ticket. Until then, Apple has chosen a much less intrusive than Google where everything is automatic approach. If you appreciate the discretion that Siri is activated at the request and only what is asked, it would be much more useful with an entrepreneurial spirit. If you put a roast in the oven and you ask him to set a timer for 45 minutes, should not it tell you if you have a scheduled appointment in 15 minutes?

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