9 ms·

Daring Fireball: The iPhone 4S

180 points by mcobrien 15y ago

mcobrien 15y ago
Me: “Set an alarm for 9 AM.” Siri: “It’s set for 9 AM.” Me: “Change that to 10 AM.” Siri: “I changed your alarm to 10 AM tomorrow.” Me: “Cancel that alarm.” Siri: “I deleted your 10 AM alarm.” Me: “Thank you, Siri.” Siri: “Your wish is my command.” It seems this thing is really fun to use. I can't wait to try it out.
- antirez 15y ago
  "Your wish is my command, but you are a little bit confused about tomorrow schedule."
  - officemonkey 15y ago
    You seem to be having trouble setting priorities. Shall I: a. Purchase "The 7 habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey? b. Purchase "Getting Things Done" by David Allen?
    - purephase 15y ago
      I know it's tongue-in-cheek, but this is one of the first uses of Siri that makes me a bit worried about it in the future.
      - Skroob 15y ago
        That's not really Apple's style though.
- alecperkins 15y ago
  I can't wait to try stuff like this: “Remind me to fix Amy’s glasses when I get home.” Does its understanding of location extend to more than just home is the address I entered for myself? Exploring its capabilities will be really interesting. Siri's understanding of context is what makes it so useful. Pair it with Watson and it'd be unstoppable. (Wait, no! We've seen how that movie ends.)
  - ajanuary 15y ago
    It works based on geofencing, which allows you to specify and label regions.
    - unlogic 15y ago
      And that just means keeping your GPS turned on the whole day. Sure, I always dreamed about losing all my battery charge to such an insanely great feature.
      - alphakappa 15y ago
        You may want to wait and see how this feature really works.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- wanorris 15y ago
  That's incredibly cool, but I think Gruber's point about the problems of third party integration will prove to be crucial. Me: "Set my facebook status to getting ready to ride the roller coaster at Six Flags." Siri: ... Me: "Are there any headlines about my startup on the front page of Hacker News?" Siri: ... Me: "What Kindle books do I have on HTML 5?" Siri: ... Me: "Play me the latest episode of Glee on Netflix." Siri: ... Some of these, like Facebook, could be handled by smart first-party integration by Apple. But in general, any time a new use case comes along, first party integration is going to lag way behind, if it's implemented at all. I don't mean to rag on Siri -- it's an incredibly cool technology even today, and it apparently works amazingly well. But the more things you can do by picking up the phone and using the touch interfsce that you simply can't do at all with the voice interface, the less I think it will slot right into people's lives and become how they interface with their phone.
  - S_A_P 15y ago
    Totally agree here, if this sort of thing gets worked out, I would feel like the future is here. I kind of see a naive way to make an api around that, but the trick to me would make it generic and adaptable enough to allow such a broad range of functionality, as well as conflict handling in a graceful manner. I am totally intrigued...
- zerostar07 15y ago
  Can we hack it to end every sentence with ", Master" ?
kenver 15y ago
Does anyone know how well Siri performs if your accent is from outside of the States?
- mcobrien 15y ago
  I'm wondering about that too. It seems Nuance (the platform Siri is built on) supports lots of accents, though I'm not sure how this works on the iPhone. Maybe it uses your regional settings to choose an accent profile? http://community.nuance.com/blogs/dragon/archive/2009/03/05/international-dragon-english-ain-t-english.aspx http://community.nuance.com/blogs/dragon/archive/2009/03/05/...
  - high5ths 15y ago
    One of the videos had somebody with a non-US accent -- British, maybe? Can't seem to find it now, though.
    - greyish_water 15y ago
      http://www.stuff.tv/video/vidcasts/apple-iphone-4s-siri-demo http://www.stuff.tv/video/vidcasts/apple-iphone-4s-siri-demo Also worth noting that evidently Siri's voice can be changed, as well. That was a safe bet, but I hadn't seen it mentioned anywhere.
      - ugh 15y ago
        The voice seems to depend on the language. You seemingly can't explicitly switch it, you only can switch languages. It just so happens that iOS has both 'English' and 'British English' as languages, with female and male voice synthesis respectivly. (Those languages are already built into the current version of iOS as part of VoiceOver.) If you are German or French you only ever get one voice.
- hellweaver666 15y ago
  I have a friend from Scotland who has just ordered a 4s and is really excited about Siri. I'll be interested to see how it gets on with his thick Dundee accent (especially since I can barely understand him half the time!).
elithrar 15y ago
The humor in some of the responses is a really nice touch; perhaps something I didn't expect from Apple, who is fairly straight-down-the-line with their dialogs and software. Saying that, it's actually appreciated, and does a great job at attempting to establish an emotional tie with the user.
- teyc 15y ago
  The humour is classic Jobs. When he introduced the original Macintosh, it began with a speech synthesizer telling a joke. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY&feature=relat... forward to 3:20
  - ajanuary 15y ago
    That was actually written by Steve Hayden (http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Intro_Demo.txt&topic=The%20Launch&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...)
- rahoulb 15y ago
  As Gruber says, it sounds much more like the old Apple than the new Apple (see Happy Mac, Dogcow etc).
- Bud 15y ago
  Apple's computer-speech stuff has been humorous since the 1980s. Not surprising to see Siri follow in that tradition.
- interknot 15y ago
  Mr. Macintosh begs to differ: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Mister_Macintosh.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Mister_Macintosh.txt I also really like that the story proves you to be thoroughly correct about Apple trying to establish emotional ties. Here's hoping that they made that a part of their "corporate DNA".
- jameshart 15y ago
po 15y ago
How to determine which of the several 3rd party API's to use seems pretty straight-forward to me: Me: Search for Japanese food. Siri: I found these 5 results on Yelp nearby. Me: Search for Japanese food on Foursquare. Siri: I found these 8 results on on Foursquare nearby. If you explicitly request a certain service often enough, then Siri should start to default to it. That's exactly what a real world personal assistant would do. In fact, Apple doesn't have to be that creative. Just do what a real personal assistant would do in any given situation and you should be good. Also, I would really like some reviewer mention if the iPhone 4S has less of a rolling-shutter issue as the previous iPhones do.
- epistasis 15y ago
  The challenge is specifying which subsets of queries should be directed to the service. Foursquare won't be able to handle appointment requests, but it does handle restaurant requests. How does the Foursquare part of Siri specify this? Perhaps you're suggesting that all services answer all queries, and then there's some sort of ranking on the results from each service to decide which one responds. Foursquare would give a low score answer to appointment queries, so the calendar app would get preference. This would be the best suggestion I've heard, but requires processing every request against every agent, which may be OK for Apple, but only some independent developers would be able to provide their own hardware. They may have to provide software to run on Apple servers...
  - po 15y ago
    Any company that wants to provide "Siri-compatible" services registers on the apple developer website. Apple defines a set of services that it believes customers will be asking for (appointments, location-based recommendations, product-recommendations, weather, stock data, general search, etc...) and each provider can register their API endpoint and the query types they support. It seems that they already do this categorization to determine what to use (the built-in stock app for example) for a given query. Siri-compatable devices will regularly ping apple for a list of supported API endpoints and report back to Apple on how well these endpoints are performing on query speed and user adoption/satisfaction. That's all just my guess of course...
robmcm 15y ago
Shame it can't read emails, but then I guess there is so much crap in an email it just wouldn't read well...
- ugh 15y ago
  The voice synthesis is really nothing new, it has been part of iOS as VoiceOver (Apple's built-in screenreader, an accessibility feature) for a long time. It certainly wouldn't have any problems reading emails and it seems to me that emails tend to be less random than text messages. Maybe they wanted to keep the interaction short to give it more flow? Siri doesn't really ever seem to read very long stuff to you.
  - robmcm 15y ago
    True, I guess the modern language used in text messages could cause problems, however with the lengh of signitures and message history indentation that I get in a lot of emails, I could see them being an issue.
- smackfu 15y ago
  OTOH, it could certainly read the subject.
AlexMuir 15y ago
I don't think we (tech people) appreciate just how magical the public is going to find Siri. Most people have never used voice recognition beyond shouting "Call Dave Jobs[1] Mobile" in the car. This is going to be perceived as magic, in the same way as the accelerometer in the Wii or the original finger touch interface. Anyone with a 4S is going to be showing this off to their friends, and I can't wait to try it. There are parallels with people saying 'Touch has been around for years, but people prefer buttons' when the iPhone came out. True - until someone did it right. And now everyone wants touch. And yes, I know it's been around on Android. But Apple make you WANT to use it. No-one's ever been bursting with excitement to show me their Android voice recognition stuff, and nor have I been wetting myself to try it out. On the downside for Apple - improvements to the iPhone for the foreseeable future look to be on the software/web server side. They are vulnerable here. Limiting features to new models is going to piss people off, and fighting patent battles on software is much, much harder. [1] Funny typo - I meant to type Dave Jones. Only noticed this on rereading the post.
- doomlaser 15y ago
  Siri has been out since 2010 on the app store. Is there any reason (other than Apple's push with building it into the operating system) that users will take more notice of it now than they have in the last (nearly) two years?
  - mcobrien 15y ago
    Building it into the operating system is good enough reason.
  - robryan 15y ago
    Simply getting it in front of more users might make the difference. It's also a lot more tightly integrated I would assume.
    - cstuder 15y ago
      A lot, yes. Apparently you can just hold the phone to your ear in order to activate it.
sidwyn 15y ago
Loved the ending. "The one and only disappointment I have with the iPhone 4S is that the shutdown spinner animation is still low-res. That’s pretty low on the list of nits to pick."
ranebo 15y ago
As a keen cyclist I'm really looking forward to trying Siri, but after reading the footnote I can now actually see myself using it anytime: "You might wonder, Hey, don’t you feel like a jerk walking around the city talking to your phone? But here’s the thing: Siri, by default, kicks in when you hold the iPhone up to your ear, so you can talk to it and it looks like you’re on a phone call."
iand 15y ago
Even though Siri seems to be amazing I wonder whether people will use it much in practice. Voice is intrusive in the environment and annoying to people who aren't part of the conversation. Sitting next to someone conversing on the phone in a public space can be irritating but imagine how jarring it will be if the person next to you barks commands out loud at random intervals. Him: "Remind me to pick up my dry cleaning." You: "Huh? You talking to me? No..." Later: "After picking up my dry cleaning, I want you to book me a flight to Tucson" You: "I'm finding another seat..."
- reidman 15y ago
  Gruber addressed this in a footnote: "You might wonder, Hey, don’t you feel like a jerk walking around the city talking to your phone? But here’s the thing: Siri, by default, kicks in when you hold the iPhone up to your ear, so you can talk to it and it looks like you’re on a phone call."
- sambeau 15y ago
  This was what it was like at the beginning of mobile phones and then again at the start of bluetooth headsets. People get used to it pretty quickly (but will always hate it on trains and planes).
  - officemonkey 15y ago
    My rule of bluetooth headsets: the more often you wear it (when you're not on a call), the more likely you are a douchebag. It's held up fairly well, even as bluetooth adoption has increased.
nirvana 15y ago
Siri was originally an App, but it took a huge amount of effort to get it to work. I believe the reason the feature is exclusive to the iPhone 4S is due to hardware. Apple said the processor in the iPhone 4S is the A5. This may be the exact same chip in the iPad 2, or it might be the same class of chip. Apple doesn't detail the internals of their processors, so they can make device specific versions and call them the same thing if they want. Thus, this A5 could have co-processors in it that didn't exist in the one for the iPad 2. Specifically, I remember there begin something about an image co-processor that the camera uses, and it seems logical that there might be some video encoding or at least video feature extraction being done in hardware to enable 1080p video. (a big step up from 720p). There may well be a feature extraction engine in the A5 to turn the audio recording of your voice into a series of symbols that are much more efficient to send over the wire to the SIRI service. But, even if there are no co-processors, voice recognition is a very CPU intensive process, and the A5 has another CPU in it, as well as a greatly improved GPU. Either or both may be required for the current version of SIRI (which is more complete than the original) to work. Thus it literally may be the case that Siri wouldn't run on the iPhone 4.
- sambeau 15y ago
  There is a signal processor in the iPhone 4 A5. Phil Schiller mentioned it briefly in the keynote when talking about the camera (64 mins in). Schiller referred to it as an "Image Signal Processor" so it may be that it is custom silicone for used only by the camera but it seems more likely that it is a more general DSP and was badged like this for the presentation. It is probably a version of ARM's NEON technology: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php NEON technology can accelerate multimedia and signal processing algorithms such as video encode/decode, 2D/3D graphics, gaming, audio and speech processing, image processing, telephony, and sound synthesis by at least 3x the performance of ARMv5 and at least 2x the performance of ARMv6 SIMD Which directly mentions both image processing and speech processing. Update: According to wikipedia that's exactly what it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 The A5 contains a rendition of chip based upon the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU with NEON SIMD accelerator and a dual core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU. Their source is the reliable AnandTech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performa... Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4 Interestingly, as this is the iPad A5 being discussed it strengthens the argument for Siri-on-iPad2 (assuming the signal processor is key to Siri working efficiently).
frankiewarren 15y ago
Does anyone know if there are cues that remind the end user to use Siri? (eg. "you haven't used Siri in a week," or something of that nature). This feature, since it is primarily hidden behind the home button, might be forgotten by the average user. As Mr. Gruber stated, once he got it into his workflow, he missed it when it was gone. However, I think one of the biggest hurdles to mass adoption will be getting it into the workflow of the average user. Anyone have ideas of how to address this problem? Or do you think the product video is enough?
- ajanuary 15y ago
  Given they have similar situations with finder, multitasking, folders, deleting apps etc. I suspect they're just going to rely on people remembering the feature's there.
  - frankiewarren 15y ago
    I think those are a bit different. For all of the actions you mentioned, there is only one way to complete the task (eg deleting an app). With Siri, you can also accomplish any of its functionality using the traditional UI. Therefore the user has to remember to use Siri. However, your point is well taken. Maybe I'm not giving the average user enough credit.
    - ajanuary 15y ago
      True, I hadn't considered that for a lot of those there isn't any other way.
pieter 15y ago
I wonder how they'll handle different grammar constructions in different languages. For example, in English, "Text my girlfriend that I'm coming home later" would send a message with "I'm coming home later". However, in Dutch, saying the same thing "SMS mijn vriendin dat ik later thuiskom" should result in a text with the content "Ik kom later thuis", requiring labeling all parts of the sentence.
- dextorious 15y ago
  It might not even work in Dutch. From the webpage: "Siri may not be available in all languages or in all areas, and features may vary by area".
ajanuary 15y ago
"The most profound difference between the 4S and 4 cameras has nothing to do with image quality. It’s that you don’t have to wait nearly as long. [...] Even better, image quality is better, too." Jeez Gruber, make up your mind :P
- watmough 15y ago
  Maybe I'm not running enough apps, but my iPhone 4 has always seemed pretty damn fast getting to 'ready to take picture'. That said, I'm really looking forward to the additional speed in the 4S and Siri.
euroclydon 15y ago
Well, it's Apple's next model since the Grip of Death problem, and no word if it's fixed. Talking to my phone is nice, and so is a fast camera, but it's tragic that this beautiful sleek device has to be wrapped in an ugly rubber band for me to make a call! [Edit] Well, this article says it's been fixed with two antennas. I really don't like how they downplay the problem and act like it only affects ham-fisted gorillas. When I have just two bars, griping the bare metal with four fingers is enough to make the signal too weak for communication. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394178,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394178,00.asp
ankimal 15y ago
I just hope it can handle accents or at least learn to handle them over time.
6ren 15y ago
Siri paves the way for the display-less phone† - smaller, lower energy use Context switching could be done like short-cuts: when you open an app it captures (most) shortcuts; and you can reallocate short-cut bindings. These are easy improvements. Just think of both voice and touch interfaces as having grammars. Wolfram|Alpha's natural language interface is endlessly annoying for me - I think Siri would also get into trouble with more complex requests (but there's plenty of value in it before that limitation comes into play) †this neologism could well go the way of the horse-less carriage
sturadnidge 15y ago
An even smaller nit to pick is that nits are ordered by size, not count.
beej71 15y ago
So is it legal to hold the phone to your ear and talk to Siri while driving?

180 points by mcobrien 15y ago

Me: “Set an alarm for 9 AM.” Siri: “It’s set for 9 AM.” Me: “Change that to 10 AM.” Siri: “I changed your alarm to 10 AM tomorrow.” Me: “Cancel that alarm.” Siri: “I deleted your 10 AM alarm.” Me: “Thank you, Siri.” Siri: “Your wish is my command.” It seems this thing is really fun to use. I can't wait to try it out.

antirez 15y ago
"Your wish is my command, but you are a little bit confused about tomorrow schedule."
- officemonkey 15y ago
  You seem to be having trouble setting priorities. Shall I: a. Purchase "The 7 habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey? b. Purchase "Getting Things Done" by David Allen?
  - purephase 15y ago
    I know it's tongue-in-cheek, but this is one of the first uses of Siri that makes me a bit worried about it in the future.
    - Skroob 15y ago
      That's not really Apple's style though.
alecperkins 15y ago
I can't wait to try stuff like this: “Remind me to fix Amy’s glasses when I get home.” Does its understanding of location extend to more than just home is the address I entered for myself? Exploring its capabilities will be really interesting. Siri's understanding of context is what makes it so useful. Pair it with Watson and it'd be unstoppable. (Wait, no! We've seen how that movie ends.)
- ajanuary 15y ago
  It works based on geofencing, which allows you to specify and label regions.
  - unlogic 15y ago
    And that just means keeping your GPS turned on the whole day. Sure, I always dreamed about losing all my battery charge to such an insanely great feature.
    - alphakappa 15y ago
      You may want to wait and see how this feature really works.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
wanorris 15y ago
That's incredibly cool, but I think Gruber's point about the problems of third party integration will prove to be crucial. Me: "Set my facebook status to getting ready to ride the roller coaster at Six Flags." Siri: ... Me: "Are there any headlines about my startup on the front page of Hacker News?" Siri: ... Me: "What Kindle books do I have on HTML 5?" Siri: ... Me: "Play me the latest episode of Glee on Netflix." Siri: ... Some of these, like Facebook, could be handled by smart first-party integration by Apple. But in general, any time a new use case comes along, first party integration is going to lag way behind, if it's implemented at all. I don't mean to rag on Siri -- it's an incredibly cool technology even today, and it apparently works amazingly well. But the more things you can do by picking up the phone and using the touch interfsce that you simply can't do at all with the voice interface, the less I think it will slot right into people's lives and become how they interface with their phone.
- S_A_P 15y ago
  Totally agree here, if this sort of thing gets worked out, I would feel like the future is here. I kind of see a naive way to make an api around that, but the trick to me would make it generic and adaptable enough to allow such a broad range of functionality, as well as conflict handling in a graceful manner. I am totally intrigued...
zerostar07 15y ago
Can we hack it to end every sentence with ", Master" ?

kenver 15y ago

Does anyone know how well Siri performs if your accent is from outside of the States?

mcobrien 15y ago
I'm wondering about that too. It seems Nuance (the platform Siri is built on) supports lots of accents, though I'm not sure how this works on the iPhone. Maybe it uses your regional settings to choose an accent profile? http://community.nuance.com/blogs/dragon/archive/2009/03/05/international-dragon-english-ain-t-english.aspx http://community.nuance.com/blogs/dragon/archive/2009/03/05/...
- high5ths 15y ago
  One of the videos had somebody with a non-US accent -- British, maybe? Can't seem to find it now, though.
  - greyish_water 15y ago
    http://www.stuff.tv/video/vidcasts/apple-iphone-4s-siri-demo http://www.stuff.tv/video/vidcasts/apple-iphone-4s-siri-demo Also worth noting that evidently Siri's voice can be changed, as well. That was a safe bet, but I hadn't seen it mentioned anywhere.
    - ugh 15y ago
      The voice seems to depend on the language. You seemingly can't explicitly switch it, you only can switch languages. It just so happens that iOS has both 'English' and 'British English' as languages, with female and male voice synthesis respectivly. (Those languages are already built into the current version of iOS as part of VoiceOver.) If you are German or French you only ever get one voice.
hellweaver666 15y ago
I have a friend from Scotland who has just ordered a 4s and is really excited about Siri. I'll be interested to see how it gets on with his thick Dundee accent (especially since I can barely understand him half the time!).

elithrar 15y ago

The humor in some of the responses is a really nice touch; perhaps something I didn't expect from Apple, who is fairly straight-down-the-line with their dialogs and software. Saying that, it's actually appreciated, and does a great job at attempting to establish an emotional tie with the user.

teyc 15y ago
The humour is classic Jobs. When he introduced the original Macintosh, it began with a speech synthesizer telling a joke. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2B-XwPjn9YY&feature=relat... forward to 3:20
- ajanuary 15y ago
  That was actually written by Steve Hayden (http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Intro_Demo.txt&topic=The%20Launch&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...)
rahoulb 15y ago
As Gruber says, it sounds much more like the old Apple than the new Apple (see Happy Mac, Dogcow etc).
Bud 15y ago
Apple's computer-speech stuff has been humorous since the 1980s. Not surprising to see Siri follow in that tradition.
interknot 15y ago
Mr. Macintosh begs to differ: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Mister_Macintosh.txt http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Mister_Macintosh.txt I also really like that the story proves you to be thoroughly correct about Apple trying to establish emotional ties. Here's hoping that they made that a part of their "corporate DNA".
jameshart 15y ago

po 15y ago

How to determine which of the several 3rd party API's to use seems pretty straight-forward to me: Me: Search for Japanese food. Siri: I found these 5 results on Yelp nearby. Me: Search for Japanese food on Foursquare. Siri: I found these 8 results on on Foursquare nearby. If you explicitly request a certain service often enough, then Siri should start to default to it. That's exactly what a real world personal assistant would do. In fact, Apple doesn't have to be that creative. Just do what a real personal assistant would do in any given situation and you should be good. Also, I would really like some reviewer mention if the iPhone 4S has less of a rolling-shutter issue as the previous iPhones do.

epistasis 15y ago
The challenge is specifying which subsets of queries should be directed to the service. Foursquare won't be able to handle appointment requests, but it does handle restaurant requests. How does the Foursquare part of Siri specify this? Perhaps you're suggesting that all services answer all queries, and then there's some sort of ranking on the results from each service to decide which one responds. Foursquare would give a low score answer to appointment queries, so the calendar app would get preference. This would be the best suggestion I've heard, but requires processing every request against every agent, which may be OK for Apple, but only some independent developers would be able to provide their own hardware. They may have to provide software to run on Apple servers...
- po 15y ago
  Any company that wants to provide "Siri-compatible" services registers on the apple developer website. Apple defines a set of services that it believes customers will be asking for (appointments, location-based recommendations, product-recommendations, weather, stock data, general search, etc...) and each provider can register their API endpoint and the query types they support. It seems that they already do this categorization to determine what to use (the built-in stock app for example) for a given query. Siri-compatable devices will regularly ping apple for a list of supported API endpoints and report back to Apple on how well these endpoints are performing on query speed and user adoption/satisfaction. That's all just my guess of course...

robmcm 15y ago

Shame it can't read emails, but then I guess there is so much crap in an email it just wouldn't read well...

ugh 15y ago
The voice synthesis is really nothing new, it has been part of iOS as VoiceOver (Apple's built-in screenreader, an accessibility feature) for a long time. It certainly wouldn't have any problems reading emails and it seems to me that emails tend to be less random than text messages. Maybe they wanted to keep the interaction short to give it more flow? Siri doesn't really ever seem to read very long stuff to you.
- robmcm 15y ago
  True, I guess the modern language used in text messages could cause problems, however with the lengh of signitures and message history indentation that I get in a lot of emails, I could see them being an issue.
smackfu 15y ago
OTOH, it could certainly read the subject.

AlexMuir 15y ago

I don't think we (tech people) appreciate just how magical the public is going to find Siri. Most people have never used voice recognition beyond shouting "Call Dave Jobs[1] Mobile" in the car. This is going to be perceived as magic, in the same way as the accelerometer in the Wii or the original finger touch interface. Anyone with a 4S is going to be showing this off to their friends, and I can't wait to try it. There are parallels with people saying 'Touch has been around for years, but people prefer buttons' when the iPhone came out. True - until someone did it right. And now everyone wants touch. And yes, I know it's been around on Android. But Apple make you WANT to use it. No-one's ever been bursting with excitement to show me their Android voice recognition stuff, and nor have I been wetting myself to try it out. On the downside for Apple - improvements to the iPhone for the foreseeable future look to be on the software/web server side. They are vulnerable here. Limiting features to new models is going to piss people off, and fighting patent battles on software is much, much harder. [1] Funny typo - I meant to type Dave Jones. Only noticed this on rereading the post.

doomlaser 15y ago
Siri has been out since 2010 on the app store. Is there any reason (other than Apple's push with building it into the operating system) that users will take more notice of it now than they have in the last (nearly) two years?
- mcobrien 15y ago
  Building it into the operating system is good enough reason.
- robryan 15y ago
  Simply getting it in front of more users might make the difference. It's also a lot more tightly integrated I would assume.
  - cstuder 15y ago
    A lot, yes. Apparently you can just hold the phone to your ear in order to activate it.

sidwyn 15y ago

Loved the ending. "The one and only disappointment I have with the iPhone 4S is that the shutdown spinner animation is still low-res. That’s pretty low on the list of nits to pick."

ranebo 15y ago

As a keen cyclist I'm really looking forward to trying Siri, but after reading the footnote I can now actually see myself using it anytime: "You might wonder, Hey, don’t you feel like a jerk walking around the city talking to your phone? But here’s the thing: Siri, by default, kicks in when you hold the iPhone up to your ear, so you can talk to it and it looks like you’re on a phone call."

iand 15y ago

Even though Siri seems to be amazing I wonder whether people will use it much in practice. Voice is intrusive in the environment and annoying to people who aren't part of the conversation. Sitting next to someone conversing on the phone in a public space can be irritating but imagine how jarring it will be if the person next to you barks commands out loud at random intervals. Him: "Remind me to pick up my dry cleaning." You: "Huh? You talking to me? No..." Later: "After picking up my dry cleaning, I want you to book me a flight to Tucson" You: "I'm finding another seat..."

reidman 15y ago
Gruber addressed this in a footnote: "You might wonder, Hey, don’t you feel like a jerk walking around the city talking to your phone? But here’s the thing: Siri, by default, kicks in when you hold the iPhone up to your ear, so you can talk to it and it looks like you’re on a phone call."
sambeau 15y ago
This was what it was like at the beginning of mobile phones and then again at the start of bluetooth headsets. People get used to it pretty quickly (but will always hate it on trains and planes).
- officemonkey 15y ago
  My rule of bluetooth headsets: the more often you wear it (when you're not on a call), the more likely you are a douchebag. It's held up fairly well, even as bluetooth adoption has increased.

nirvana 15y ago

Siri was originally an App, but it took a huge amount of effort to get it to work. I believe the reason the feature is exclusive to the iPhone 4S is due to hardware. Apple said the processor in the iPhone 4S is the A5. This may be the exact same chip in the iPad 2, or it might be the same class of chip. Apple doesn't detail the internals of their processors, so they can make device specific versions and call them the same thing if they want. Thus, this A5 could have co-processors in it that didn't exist in the one for the iPad 2. Specifically, I remember there begin something about an image co-processor that the camera uses, and it seems logical that there might be some video encoding or at least video feature extraction being done in hardware to enable 1080p video. (a big step up from 720p). There may well be a feature extraction engine in the A5 to turn the audio recording of your voice into a series of symbols that are much more efficient to send over the wire to the SIRI service. But, even if there are no co-processors, voice recognition is a very CPU intensive process, and the A5 has another CPU in it, as well as a greatly improved GPU. Either or both may be required for the current version of SIRI (which is more complete than the original) to work. Thus it literally may be the case that Siri wouldn't run on the iPhone 4.

sambeau 15y ago
There is a signal processor in the iPhone 4 A5. Phil Schiller mentioned it briefly in the keynote when talking about the camera (64 mins in). Schiller referred to it as an "Image Signal Processor" so it may be that it is custom silicone for used only by the camera but it seems more likely that it is a more general DSP and was badged like this for the presentation. It is probably a version of ARM's NEON technology: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/neon.php NEON technology can accelerate multimedia and signal processing algorithms such as video encode/decode, 2D/3D graphics, gaming, audio and speech processing, image processing, telephony, and sound synthesis by at least 3x the performance of ARMv5 and at least 2x the performance of ARMv6 SIMD Which directly mentions both image processing and speech processing. Update: According to wikipedia that's exactly what it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A5 The A5 contains a rendition of chip based upon the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU with NEON SIMD accelerator and a dual core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU. Their source is the reliable AnandTech: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performance-explored-powervr-sgx543mp2-benchmarked http://www.anandtech.com/show/4216/apple-ipad-2-gpu-performa... Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4 Interestingly, as this is the iPad A5 being discussed it strengthens the argument for Siri-on-iPad2 (assuming the signal processor is key to Siri working efficiently).

frankiewarren 15y ago

Does anyone know if there are cues that remind the end user to use Siri? (eg. "you haven't used Siri in a week," or something of that nature). This feature, since it is primarily hidden behind the home button, might be forgotten by the average user. As Mr. Gruber stated, once he got it into his workflow, he missed it when it was gone. However, I think one of the biggest hurdles to mass adoption will be getting it into the workflow of the average user. Anyone have ideas of how to address this problem? Or do you think the product video is enough?

ajanuary 15y ago
Given they have similar situations with finder, multitasking, folders, deleting apps etc. I suspect they're just going to rely on people remembering the feature's there.
- frankiewarren 15y ago
  I think those are a bit different. For all of the actions you mentioned, there is only one way to complete the task (eg deleting an app). With Siri, you can also accomplish any of its functionality using the traditional UI. Therefore the user has to remember to use Siri. However, your point is well taken. Maybe I'm not giving the average user enough credit.
  - ajanuary 15y ago
    True, I hadn't considered that for a lot of those there isn't any other way.

pieter 15y ago

I wonder how they'll handle different grammar constructions in different languages. For example, in English, "Text my girlfriend that I'm coming home later" would send a message with "I'm coming home later". However, in Dutch, saying the same thing "SMS mijn vriendin dat ik later thuiskom" should result in a text with the content "Ik kom later thuis", requiring labeling all parts of the sentence.

dextorious 15y ago
It might not even work in Dutch. From the webpage: "Siri may not be available in all languages or in all areas, and features may vary by area".

ajanuary 15y ago

"The most profound difference between the 4S and 4 cameras has nothing to do with image quality. It’s that you don’t have to wait nearly as long. [...] Even better, image quality is better, too." Jeez Gruber, make up your mind :P

watmough 15y ago
Maybe I'm not running enough apps, but my iPhone 4 has always seemed pretty damn fast getting to 'ready to take picture'. That said, I'm really looking forward to the additional speed in the 4S and Siri.

euroclydon 15y ago

Well, it's Apple's next model since the Grip of Death problem, and no word if it's fixed. Talking to my phone is nice, and so is a fast camera, but it's tragic that this beautiful sleek device has to be wrapped in an ugly rubber band for me to make a call! [Edit] Well, this article says it's been fixed with two antennas. I really don't like how they downplay the problem and act like it only affects ham-fisted gorillas. When I have just two bars, griping the bare metal with four fingers is enough to make the signal too weak for communication. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394178,00.asp http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2394178,00.asp

ankimal 15y ago

I just hope it can handle accents or at least learn to handle them over time.

6ren 15y ago

Siri paves the way for the display-less phone† - smaller, lower energy use Context switching could be done like short-cuts: when you open an app it captures (most) shortcuts; and you can reallocate short-cut bindings. These are easy improvements. Just think of both voice and touch interfaces as having grammars. Wolfram|Alpha's natural language interface is endlessly annoying for me - I think Siri would also get into trouble with more complex requests (but there's plenty of value in it before that limitation comes into play) †this neologism could well go the way of the horse-less carriage

sturadnidge 15y ago

An even smaller nit to pick is that nits are ordered by size, not count.

beej71 15y ago

So is it legal to hold the phone to your ear and talk to Siri while driving?