Siri

When Siri first arrived on the iPhone 4S I thought it was really cool and at the time I had some serious tech-envy. I was in a situation where I had an iPhone 4 that was given to me by my employer and my personal phone was an iPhone 3g (yea old I know, I still have the original iPhone at home in my office as well). Anyway, there was really no point in spending the money to upgrade my personal phone since I had a newer and free work phone. It was not an "S" but a 4, and again - free. As much as a tech-junkie as I was determined to wait for the speculated iPhone 5.

What Can I Help You With?

It all started one weekend when I was over at my dads for dinner when suddenly my step-mom piped up in the middle of another conversation simply saying "oh shxt, I nearly forgot". It hit her that she had never shown me her new phone and had some questions if I did not mind. Of course I don't mind, whats better than a nice dinner and a side of tech?

So she fumbles around in her purse for a few moments and pulls it out and whatta you know its a shiny new iPhone 4s (drool). The first thing that came to mind and that flew out of my mouth was "So, you have Siri, aww crap, lucky! So how do you like it", she replied with "hmm, I guess its fun". What? Fun? This was not the answer I was expecting to hear. I though it would be described as a "lifesaver", "magical", "a real game changer" or something along those lines. Getting an answer in the form of "its fun" was still ringing in my ears so I had to ask exactly why it was "fun".

She explained that you could ask questions and get silly answers or ask where the closest Starbucks was for example and it was generally accurate but she could already do most of this with her cars navigation system. I proceeded to tell her all the great things you could do, almost selling her on the idea that it was more than "fun", its no toy afterall.

Explaining to the best of my ability at the time the true power of Siri. Tasks such as launching applications with a simple voice command, setting reminders and so on as well as the "just think about whats-to-come in future updates and integration".

Unfortunately and to my surprise she was still not impressed and actually more concerned and interested in getting her contacts transferred to it from her old iPhone (all pre-iCloud by the way). Anyway, it was still nothing more than a novelty to her. Not because it wasn't really cool but because she did not need it to do most of what it currently did really well, and the things she did need it to do, it seemed to fall short trying to accomplish them in the manner she was accustomed to.

In its defense at the time it was beta. I would wager a tall stack of money that if I could have asked Siri to move her contacts from one phone to the other she would have had an entirely different feeling about it.

iPhone 5

Fast Forward around 8 months time and its time for the much anticipated release of the iPhone 5, the one I have been waiting for and will buy pretty much no matter what is or is-not new. It's the perfect time for me to get out of my work phone contract without costing the company a bunch of money. I have been eligible to upgrade my iPhone 3g for over a year and do I really need any other reasons to spend money on new technology? No! So what do I do? I watch the keynote with baited breath, anticipating the end so I can find out when I will be able to put in my order.

Information gathered, fast forward again to midnight the night that the pre-orders began - got one no problem. iPhone 5 - 64gb in black exactly as I wanted paid for. For good measure I order a 2 lightening plug adapters and 2 of the lightening corded adapters. Yea that $100+ expense was a little annoying and painful on the checkbook but I don't care, IT'S FOR MY NEW TOY!

Around 5 to 7 days later, maybe less, I get a message in my Gmail inbox that there has been a FedEx delivery at my house (I signed for the package ahead of time). Oh man, queue the goosebumps and stomach full of butterflies, I cant wait to get home! Once home that evening I was like a little kid on Christmas morning tearing into the package and starting to get it setup.

The new size is a little weird at first, but I immediately start to love the fact that I have an extra row of application icons. Some of my apps have black bars on the top and bottom but everything looks great and is new-phone-fast, perfect! I am a happy camper!

Epic Fail? Nah, Average Fail

Once again, time travel forward a few days, less than a week; I'm sitting there as the passenger in my wife's car and as usual I am messing with something tech during our commute and probably driving her nuts, this time my iPhone 5. Frustrated about something essentially unimportant I grumble to her "I wonder this or cant remember how to get to there" or something along those lines. In a sarcastic but in the loving way only she can do it tone, she replies, "why don't you ask your fancy new iPhone, I am sure Siri can help you out, you do still have Siri on the 5 right?". Umm, errr, uhhh -- Oh no! At this very moment I feel like a failure to all things tech! How on earth have I managed to forget about Siri up to this point? By now I have setup everything on the phone, added new apps, poked around and am getting use to the new form factor and weight, completely digging it. Except for one thing, I forgot Siri, epic fail? Nah, average fail.

Siri And I Chat

What do I ask Siri, what can I ask it to do? What will be the first digital words I hear in response to a question I have asked. Why not ask the original question I was grumbling about? No, it has to be something cool, but what? Should it be this hard? No actually it shouldn't be. Ok I got it, I know the question I would like to ask my virgin Siri software, here goes:

Siri: beep beep, how can I help you?
Me: What is the meaning of life? (expecting "42" by-the-way)
Siri: To think about questions like this

Hmm, um ok a little anticlimactic? No matter, it was fun. Wait! What?? What did I just say? That it was "fun". Ahh ha, now I better understand why most do not "get" Siri and the direction it's trying to take us and why most users see it as more of a novelty rather than a digital assistant.

Don't get me wrong, I honestly did think it was fun and asked it several other immature questions. I also realized the power behind the answers and it made me wonder what else it could do. I started asking questions about the weather, NASCAR, making it launch applications and so on all through my voice. It was awesome and at the same time, yes, a lot of fun.

The problem I found soon thereafter was that I never really thought to use Siri. By the time I pushed the home button to trigger "how can I help you?" I could have generally completed the task I was going to try and ask her to perform, if I asked in a correctly formatted way.

I didn't use Siri much more for quite some time. All the while it was patiently waiting under the hood for me to better understand it, so I could better utilize its features and functionality. Will that time ever come? I mean I still have to push that friggin' button and format a question the proper way.

Siri-ess-ly-diggin-it

This brings us to today. I am proud to say that I have been using Siri like a madman for just over a week straight and left feeling annoyed at times that I cannot hold that home button and be asked "what can I help you with" (although its really a tone I know, I know).

Up to this point I assume that I am still only scratching the surface. I am composing text messages all through dictation, reminders are being set via voice, applications are launched, music is played and the list goes on. Learning and understanding my digital personal assistant is saving me big-time, especially typing texts with my thumbs, which I can only assume will be beneficial down the road in the form of repetitive injuries in the wrists, hands and fingers.

Perfection Is Asking A Lot

Is Siri perfect? The short answer is no, for starters its only a year old. So once you move past expecting it to be you sort of learn how to use it more effectively and efficiently. I think of it as nothing more than a new way of thinking and speaking. You don't talk to your wife or children the same way you talk to your coworkers or boss do you? Using Siri is similar, you simply have to change up the conversation to fit the audience.

My only fear is that the ideas that lead to improvements will suffer due to the lack of users actually better understanding Siri. I for one would hate to see it go the way of the dodo bird because I actually look forward to future improvements and features.

Fun

I can honestly say that my step-mom was absolutely right, Siri is "fun" although we all have slightly different interpretations of the word I suppose. She has fun asking it random questions or trying to get it to do knock, knock jokes. I am ok with that because curiosity can lead to creativity and more.

For me the "fun" comes in the form of productivity and I think its turning out to be "funner" day-by-day, improving my productivity and general staying-in-touch with family and friends. I am by no means a crazy texting animal but at times its the best way to communicate although not the most comfortable and thought-out.

Oh I guess I should mention one key thing; Other than some errors I had to fix because of lazy pronunciation by me and then the addition of some punctuation and related, I composed this entire entry using Siri. How cool is that? Pretty cool if ......................you ask me!

Alert! Meeting; South Meeting Room

Sorry for the interruption on the last sentence of the previous paragraph. Earlier last week during my commute home I added a reminder for an important meeting this afternoon so I would not forget about it. Guess what, its meeting time in 15 minutes, gotta run...

Photo: Siri iOS 6 Icon