My wife got an iPhone 4S on opening weekend. Our consensus so far is that Siri is largely a gimmick. Fun to mess around with the first couple of days, but she h

My wife got an iPhone 4S on opening weekend. Our consensus so far is that Siri is largely a gimmick. Fun to mess around with the first couple of days, but she hasn't used it once since. Three problems: 1. AI Uncanny Valley. It's hard for her to know what's going to work and what's not. Things that seem like they should work, don't. It feels like it understands things sometimes, but obviously doesn't at other times. This makes the experience feel fragile and unreliable. 2. It's actually unreliable. The speech recognition is not quite good enough, and the connection/server issues were intermittently awful. 3. Robopsychology. My wife doesn't actually want everyone around her to know who she's calling or what she needs a reminder of, sort of for the same reason she leaves the room to take a phone call. It's socially awkward to broadcast your private interactions that way. This is true at work and in public, which greatly diminishes the opportunities she might have to use it. When she does get the opportunity, it never occurs to her.