| Keep in mind that Siri was a wholly stand alone product for all smart phones before it was bought by Apple. Apple has improved the product to a degree, but really, nothing has been changed except it has been modified to run only on an iPhone 4S. Now to respond to claims by the Gizmodo toddler that reviewed it and kind of work your responses in here: 1. The "find me an abortion clinic" use case is flat out, utterly without a doubt retarded. You couldn't find a more manufactured controversy in the mobile space -- unless you go back to last week's now disproven "carrier iq is an android rootkit put on by the carriers" controversy. First off, no one, and I mean no one, searches for "abortion clinic". Both sides of the debate are aware of Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood doesn't list themselves as an abortion agency -- despite what you might have read at TheOnion.com. Searches that are REALISTIC Use Cases like "Pregnancy Information" or "Family Planning" or "Birth Control" or "Morning After Pill" provide realistic results. Yes, you can find edge uses cases that lead to Siri-baiting like above. Just like you could Google Bomb so that when you search for "idiot" you get George W. Bush's Wikipedia page. (I wonder..does that make the Googlebot a lefty? See how retarded that kind of anthropomorphic-thinking is?) 2. The editor's complaints that he can't find "the fastest route" to the emergency room. You know what else you can do with a phone if you really need medical care in an emergency situation? Dial 911. Odds are an Ambulance will get you seen by a medical professional a lot faster than driving. (Also, Google Maps on the iPhone automatically shows traffic where available. It wouldn't be hard.) 3. Complaining about No Turn-By-Turn baked into the iPhone: This is entirely Google's fault -- as they obviously have an API for it, but are locking Apple out in what you could argue is an anti-competitive behavior. This is why Apple recently just bought a Map Tiling company. It's obviously to anyone following the mobile wars that Apple didn't expect Google to be so responsive and competitive in the mobile space -- probably because they originally partnered to write the Maps app for the iPhone. Apple plans on cutting Google out of the mobile map search space in the future. Not in time for iOS 5, but next year it will likely be a whole different ball game. 4. Siri is supposed to be App-aware? Where did Apple market that? Complaining about use cases Apple hasn't even considered is childish. What next, complaining that there isn't a third-party API for other Apps to integrate with Siri (which will likely show up in the next year or so...)? 5. Where are these so-called Apple users that expect "Apple Magic" all the time? Because as a technologist, I'm guessing they don't exist. At all. Anyone who's used an Apple product for more than an hour understands that it's still a product, made here on planet earth, with it's on quirks and bugs. Every iPhone user has had to reboot their iPhone. Or had a download go bad. Or had dropped calls because AT&T is terrible. Or had to find a turn-by-turn GPS on their own. Same goes with Macs. Apple is know for high-quality design. For reducing the use case to such a minimal number of steps that seems so easy it might as well be "magic". In the auto space, BMW holds a very similar reputation. They are considered pricey, but worth it. A top notch driving experience. Well designed, well made, etc, etc. But the auto press is very much aware that like all other cars, it has an engine, moving parts, and can problems. They don't "magically" expect it to suck their dick to high heaven. In comparison, Android's voice recognition isn't Siri. It can search the web, but it can't search wolfram alpha or the yellow pages, or Yelp, or any of the other databases Siri is in. With Siri, you can say "Call me a cab". With Android, you have to have a cab company programmed into your phone. To equate the two is short sighted, at best, and technically ignorant at worst. |