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Comment by nilchameleons | Hacker News Reader

Can Siri carry on a 'conversation' about one task? For instance, can she/it find a place in Maps then understand a command like "get directions there" to refer to said place? I don't have a 4S to test myself.

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Annoyingly, Siri does not have maps support in Canada, so I can't test your example, but the answer in general is 'yes'. If you say, "Set a reminder", Siri will ask what you want it to be, and then will ask you what time it ought to be at. If she mishears your time, you can say, "No, at 9:00 AM", and she'll change the time.

It is impressive technology, but right now, my #1 thing I want Siri to do is understand me all of the time. I find the speech recognition is not as good as I had hoped, and I am frequently repeating myself and trying to enunciate more.

Probably because the Canadian accent is not currently supported - US, UK, Australia, if I remember correctly.

Except there is scarcely a difference between the accent of someone living in Michigan or Ohio or New York and someone living in Ontario - the accents are certainly much closer together than US vs. UK, for example. I just think the speech recognition needs more work.

There's currently no maps or business search anywhere other than the US.

With this specific example, it doesn't seem like that's the case. The best it can do is give you a list of restaurants based on your speech input, and then ask you to select one with your finger.

To an extent, yes. An example I ran into earlier - if you ask Siri to remind you of something on certain days, it will make an assumption about when to start that recurring reminder (based on how you word your request). I was then curious as to whether an interactive conversation would work, and said 'No, start it tomorrow instead' and it replied pretty naturally, affirming that she would have the reminder start tomorrow instead.

Yes, she understands context and can carry conversations in many situations, including the maps one that you described.

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