Hacker News Reader

Comment by interlagos | Hacker News Reader

Seriously question for the iPhone toters among HNers -- do you actually use Siri? Anecdotally I've found that many of my 4S equipped peers have already abandoned it. After that brief excitement over Easter eggs, it just doesn't excite them.

I use my Android's voice control daily. It follows a different philosophical model (as the Google guy said, it's the Star Trek versus the Star Wars model, which is a comparison that is apt), however the result is a device that does the majority of what I want perfectly. I am never guessing at the limits of its lingo (all current natural language systems have limits, which is why they are so uncommon) because I know the specific commands that do the things I want.

The real competition to Siri is that people don't want to treat their phone as a human. That the slow imprecision of spoken language is only a worst-case substitute for alternative options.

View on HN

My wife uses Siri several times per day to add events to our shared family calendar.

And I have to say, even as an Android zealot: I'm jealous. It's a far superior interface for entering calendar events. She can say things like:

"Harper has ballet at 4:30 on Thursdays and a Dentist appoint on December 7th at 1pm."

or even

"There's no ballet on December 22nd or 29th"

A part of the reason my peers might not use it often is perhaps simply because they don't need to schedule very much. My wife I could imagine enjoying such functionality.

The thing about some of the more complex scenarios, however, is that for me it would have to be 100% reliable and trusthworthy. If it were only 99% reliable and trustworthy, or even 99.5%, the lack of faith and the need to double check would remove its utility.

It confirms with you, no trust required.

I would love to see the confirmation for a command like

"Harper has ballet at 4:30 on Thursdays and a Dentist appoint on December 7th at 1pm."

I use it several times a day for:

- timers

- reminders

- calendar events

- calling people

Can't wait for the map integration to get to the UK, then I'll be able to use it for finding my way too...

For anyone else who hadn't heard the Star Wars vs Star Trek comparison, here's the top relevant Google result:

http://androidcommunity.com/google-executive-siri-is-star-wa...

"Well, we don’t like to set ourselves in a head-to-head kind of way, you know, Apple makes terrific products, I think Siri is great; I think it’s really hard in the long run to follow strategy of making kind of an artificial personality. You know, it can be really funny at first, but that uncanny value of just, uh, having a personality that you start to interact with, um, as you would a person, with all the contextual ambiguity you would with a real person – that’s a really challenging approach, and they’re going for it, that’s great. Our approach is different. The metaphor I like to take is – if it’s Star Wars, you have these robot personalities like C-3PO who runs around and he tries to do stuff for you, messes up and makes jokes, he’s kind of a comic relief guy. Our approach is more like Star Trek, right, starship Enterprise; every piece of computing surface, everything is voice-aware. It’s not that there’s a personality, it doesn’t have a name, it’s just “Computer.”" - Matias Duarte

I've got an Android, but my fiancée has the 4S. She's a very normal user and this is her first smartphone.

Siri was fun for us at first and I was impressed with what it could do. But at this point my fiancée doesn't use it at all.

I disagree with others in that you DO have to learn how to speak to Siri for it to work, not the other way around. Yes, it's intelligent, but you have to bend your words a bit so that it will understand you. I can't think of a specific example right now, but I did see it happen to her a lot. And once it happens a few times you tend to give up on it.

In reality Siri accomplishes only simple things that can be done manually with a few touches. "What's the weather going to be?" Might as well just use the Weather app. "What's my schedule like today?" Just pull up your calendar and it's all there. I don't want to wait for the phone to talk to the Apple server to say "not bad. Only two meetings today." And by the way, who is Siri to say what is "not bad" or not?

And forget about using it in public. Overall I see it as the public's fascination with technology for the sake of it, not because it makes our lives better or more productive. Which is certainly Apple's wheelhouse.

I use it almost daily to set any reminders/alarms etc. Also to play music. (eg: "Play songs by <artist>")

Yeah, at the end of the day, when it's, say, Tuesday 4:00 AM and your eyes start to close harder then you can hold them, you are still looking at some shitty and not interesting at all comments on HN, you are almost asleep. You feel it.

Now your eyes are closed, you think you will asleep right now. You are closing your laptop. You are ready to asleep. And then (!) you start remembering that you need to set an alarm! You go through pain of your eyes trying to set the alarm, but the light of your phone it too bright, and eyes don't want to open already.. argh!

I would like to have Siri for this purpose, since this particular situation happens to me just too often.

Interestingly, I use siri only once a day too and it's to tell it: wake me up at xx in the morning, just before falling asleep.

Looks like others are doing the same.

I use it several times a day too. Uses cases where it's superior to hunting and pecking is...

Grabbing temperature information before stepping outside, Setting an alarm, Asking Siri to text X friend when driving, Ask Siri for my bank balance while driving to a store & Ask Siri to play iTunes music while driving.

Other uses though not everyday but two or more times a week are..

Ask her for directions when driving or when Im a passenger, Ask her to search the web for X topic & Talking to her while driving for fun to chase time away.

To me this is trans-formative tech and it needs to be built into our cars.

I have 4s and I turned it off maybe a week after I got the phone, I like the phone itself btw. It just makes too many mistakes and cant understand pronunciation of the last names of half the people on my contact list. Reminder and calendar are the only features that it worked ok for me.

But for calendar I usually want to see my calendar before making appointment so the only case where I was using it time to time was when cooking something and needing a timer, but then I realized I have a $5 timer in the kitchen that works better and faster to set.

Do you know that you can add Phonetic first and last names to your contacts? I had the same problem in the beginning, but slowly I started adding phonetic names to my most often used contacts and now it works great.

Siri is invaluable while driving. And I say that as a Canadian who doesn't have map integration with Siri yet.

Is it that Siri is invaluable, or that basic voice controls are invaluable? I use my Android and its unlauded, no-big-hype voice controls to-

-navigate -map -send messages -set alarms -search

It has a very finite understanding, but it accomplishes literally everything I've ever needed to speak to my device (anything more complex would be inefficient to speak to it).

My original question should be reworded to question whether people are using the specific purported advantages of Siri. Most replies seen in here are bog standard basic voice functionality having nothing to do with the advanced natural language understanding of Siri.

Well when driving I ask or tell Siri ... text X friend, then she asks me what would you like to say to X, i then compose a message where she then repeats it thru my stereo (have iphone plugged into car stereo) and asks me if i want to send the message she transcribed for me, cancel it or compose again?

Does the built in Android app have a conversation with you like that to ensure the message is composed properly? I'm thinking this is where Siri differs from the built in Android voice tech.

This back and forth between me and Siri allows me to drive safely (keep eye on the road) while getting work done.

This is identical to how the voice functionality works on my GS II.

-> "text blah blah" -< "Send text message to {blah blah}. Speak your message." -> "Content of message" -< "Message "contents of message". Say send or cancel".

And so on. No hoopla or extravagance, it simply works. Perfectly.

"anything more complex would be inefficient to speak to it"

Really? I find Siri to be better at far more complex tasks than simple ones. IE, saying "Schedule dinner with Karen at 7 PM on Friday" is a lot more efficient than unlocking the phone, launching the calendar app, navigating to friday, and typing in "Dinner with Karen" at the 7 PM slot.

I use it everyday when I'm riding my bike: 'Play song x', 'call mom'..

Reply on news.ycombinator.com