Daring Fireball: The iPhone 4S

http://daringfireball.net/2011/10/iphone_4s

by mcobrien • 15 years ago

180 141 15 years ago

daringfireball.net

mcobrien3• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

"Your wish is my command, but you are a little bit confused about tomorrow schedule."

officemonkey2• 15 years 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?

alecperkins• 15 years 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.)

ajanuary6• 15 years ago

It works based on geofencing, which allows you to specify and label regions.

wanorris• 15 years 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• 15 years 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...

zerostar073• 15 years ago

Can we hack it to end every sentence with ", Master" ?

kenver2• 15 years ago

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

mcobrien3• 15 years 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/...

high5ths• 15 years ago

One of the videos had somebody with a non-US accent -- British, maybe? Can't seem to find it now, though.

hellweaver666• 15 years 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!).

kenver2• 15 years ago

Yea this is the problem I'm not sure that they've solved. There are loads of regional accents in the UK, and only one setting in the language options called 'British English'

sambeau7• 15 years ago

Like this, no doubt:

Burnistoun 'Voice Recognition Lift' Sketch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFcZIY-t1bc

sambeau7• 15 years ago

It seems to work fine for BBC english:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/12/iphone-4s-s...

rahoulb2• 15 years ago

I can't wait to see how it copes with British accents. Not just English vs Scottish etc - but the hundreds of variations.

I grew up in the East Midlands and now live in Leeds, 70 miles north. The difference in accents is night and day (although no-one in the UK knows what a Nottingham accent is). There's even a significant difference between a Leeds accent and the next city, Bradford (about 5 miles away).

I really hope Siri has some sort of unobtrusive training built in...

pyrhho• 15 years ago

I'm more interested in how it handles slang and local colloquialisms.

erwanl• 15 years ago

The idea is to build voice recognition from a large base of samples from different people (male/female, age, accents...).

That's why Google offered GOOG-411, mostly to train their database. And that's why all these solutions include a server-side part, because they need the large sample database that keeps growing.

elithrar• 15 years 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• 15 years 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=relat... forward to 3:20

ajanuary6• 15 years ago

That was actually written by Steve Hayden (http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...)

rahoulb2• 15 years ago

As Gruber says, it sounds much more like the old Apple than the new Apple (see Happy Mac, Dogcow etc).

Bud• 15 years ago

Apple's computer-speech stuff has been humorous since the 1980s. Not surprising to see Siri follow in that tradition.

interknot• 15 years ago

Mr. Macintosh begs to differ: 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• 15 years ago

Some of the humor and personality people detect in Siri may be grandfathered in from Wolfram Alpha, which has stock responses to certain queries. It's particularly good at joining in with movie quotes.

robterrell• 15 years ago

The Mac's desktop speech recognizer, which is so old most Mac users don't even know exists, even tells knock-knock jokes (in response to "tell me a joke" -- the script it follows is in ~/Library/Speech/Speakable Items). And this has been a feature of Mac OS since the pre-OSX days.

po2• 15 years 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• 15 years 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...

po2• 15 years 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...

derefr• 15 years ago

> If you explicitly request a certain service often enough, then Siri should start to default to it.

In other words, just use the code they've already got working in OSX's Spotlight "Top Hit" feature. (Which, oddly, doesn't exist in iOS Spotlight—maybe it requires a larger cache or something.)

pieter2• 15 years ago

This doesn't sound at all like Apple. More likely, they'll determine which services are the best for which type of query, and you'll only be able to use those.

robmcm2• 15 years 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...

ugh6• 15 years 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.

robmcm2• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

OTOH, it could certainly read the subject.

AlexMuir• 15 years 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.

doomlaser2• 15 years 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?

mcobrien3• 15 years ago

Building it into the operating system is good enough reason.

robryan• 15 years ago

Simply getting it in front of more users might make the difference. It's also a lot more tightly integrated I would assume.

danilocampos5• 15 years ago

I'll answer with a parallel:

"The secret to ending all poverty and hunger has been hidden deep in the earth's crust for two decades. Is there any reason why digging it out and placing it in Times Square for all to examine (except for the fact that now everyone can see it) will cause people to take more notice now than they did before?"

saturdaysaint2• 15 years ago

This is vastly more capable and polished than the app in the App Store for the last two years. Deep integration with calendar, reminders, location (it looks like they've smoothed over a lot of the awkward permission requests in iOS 4), phone book and hardware (via the home button) makes it a radically different app.

mikeash3• 15 years ago

Integrating it with the OS is the reason users will take more notice now. I'm not sure why you dismiss that, but it's actually a huge deal.

I've used Siri on and off since it came out. It's pretty good. The reasons I don't use it more are precisely the problems that will be solved by integrating it into the OS. First, the app was a pain in the ass to activate, requiring half a dozen taps to get started. This problem disappears on the 4S. Second, the app couldn't do anything with the data on the phone (like send e-mails or check my calendar) because it didn't have access, or at least they didn't build it to. Again, this problem disappears with integration.

The main advantage of something like Siri is convenience and speed. The app couldn't achieve that precisely because it was an app that wasn't built in to the OS.

dextorious7• 15 years ago

Huh? I, for one, didn't even know Siri existed until the keynote.

So I'd say, yes, there is a reason.

jvdh• 15 years ago

"I don't think we (tech people) appreciate just how magical the public is going to find Siri."

I think that that is exactly why we (tech people) hate it so much. We like to be in control of what happens, and Siri is all about giving most of that control over to your iPhone.

danilocampos5• 15 years ago

I'd speak for yourself — as a die hard "tech person" nothing in tech gives me a beefier erection than successfully accomplishing science fiction.

funkah• 15 years ago

No, it is simply another means of control, like touch input.

icebraining• 15 years ago

We do? I'm an geek, using Linux with a custom kernel and a tilling WM, and I never had any real interest in Apple products, but Siri seems fantastic; it's the first time I really want an iPhone feature.

Siri seems to be the dream of every guy who read or viewed sci-fi, where voice interfaces are ubiquitous.

Sure, I'd wish it didn't transmit everything to "the cloud", and I'm definitively not buying an iPhone just for it, but it reached to me like no other Apple product did.

mhw• 15 years ago

Not all of us tech people aspire to be system administrator on every single box with an operating system that we own or come into contact with. Eventually you start to realise there are too many boxes and not enough time. I have absolutely zero interest in being able to ssh into my mobile phone - I'm happy to accept that the people who were working on building the mobile phone full-time are going to be doing better work than I can manage to squeeze in outside of my day job.

ZeroGravitas3• 15 years ago

You could replace a few words and that comment would apply to last year's "one more thing": video chat. And many people did make exactly those comments. (Actually most of them said "Apple did it first! Wait, Europe had what a decade ago? Okay, I meant Apple did it best! That's why it'll catch on this time.")

As far as I can tell it's still the same niche users using it for the same niche tasks (talking to kids on business trips, sexting etc.). Nice to have for those that need it, but they mostly had it already via netbooks with Skype.

Likewise, I'm hearing about how this is going to transform computing for people with certain disabilities, when they've apparently just bought the same Dragon software you've been able to buy for years (for transcription, the Siri stuff is apparently semi-distinct).

Don't get me wrong, I like that I can already call up songs in my car by voice with my $100, no-contract, chinese-branded, 600Mhz ARM11 Android phone with a 3rd party, free, ad-supported app. (I amuse myself by practicing my french pronunciation with it too) The gushing just gets a bit old, as does the speculation about what magical powers the A5 must have to enable such wizardry.

saturdaysaint2• 15 years ago

I don't think Facetime's first year was a good measure of it's longer term outlook. The inability to use it with any past iOS products severely limited the launch impact - you were limited to whoever was buying the iPhone 4. With the 4S, just about everyone on an iOS device will have Facetime, and iMessage is obviously an effort to further this sense of a BBM-style device "club" among one's peers.

ugh6• 15 years ago

The two features aren’t really comparable. It makes no sense to compare the two.

dailyrorschach• 15 years ago

I think the issue with FaceTime is actually more to do with people finding they don't like looking at themselves, and their appearance on camera. I am of course obligated to here mention David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.

In the book, people begin to go so far as to buy masks and hologram replications of themselves to look as ideal as possible. This quote sums up the key problem:

"The answer, in a kind of trivalent nutshell, is: (1) emotional stress, (2) physical vanity, and (3) a certain queer kind of self-obliterating logic in the microeconomics of consumer high-tech."

This post on Kottke.org has some nice non-spoiler citations: http://kottke.org/10/06/david-foster-wallace-on-iphone-4s-fa...

As to accessibility you should also keep in mind that Apple has a great track record with that community through their work on the Mac and the iPhone, this is likely to greatly improve it.

Angostura• 15 years ago

"I don't think we (tech people) appreciate just how magical the public is going to find Siri."

Perhaps. But I as a tech person find it magical. But I showed the video of Siri in action to my wife and she had an immediate, visceral hatred of the idea of talking to the phone like that "If I want to set a bloody alarm, I'll tap the set alarm button thank you".

For context, she's not a luddite, she's tech savvy, though not into tech or its own sake. But I don't think she'll be alone, I think this is a feature that many non-tech people will loathe initially, perhaps for reasons they cannot articulate.

brador5• 15 years ago

I'd suggest this is due to the necessity to "converse" with Siri. I don't want to pretend I'm talking to a human when talking to a phone because if I'm on a train/plane I'd look like an idiot.

Instead, if it could understand something along the lines of: "alarm, 5.30, tomorrow" that'd be much better, quicker and simpler than: "Siri, set my alarm for 5.30am tomorrow morning". I don't want to have a conversation with my phone. Get in, get it done, get out. Speed always wins. But then I hate the new dumbed down Google too so what do I know eh.

Siri will flop, the speed is a non-issue for the majority of iPhone owners and the camera just about brings the phone up to spec with it's competitor cameras. If they went for a an iPhone 5 and iPad3 they would have made an absolute killing this christmas.

davidedicillo2• 15 years ago

That was the exact opposite reaction of my girlfriend's. She's basically upgrading her iPhone 4 just for Siri. Context, she's tech savvy but she works as a tax accountant.

I can see using it myself as lot as well, especially for reminders and texting while I'm driving.

@brador I think that may work with Siri actually. People try the more conversional stuff in demo because, let's face it, it's more "magical."

zerostar073• 15 years ago

My android phone has been begging me to talk to her for more than a year, but i refuse. It's still deep in the uncanny valley for me. You mentioned yourself that it might be useful in the car, where you are alone and nobody can hear you. Speech is disemmination, not simple message passing. It's literally shouting, when you really should only be whispering. If it was handwriting-recognition or some magical mind-reading or gesture-reading device i 'd use it.

dextorious7• 15 years ago

To recap, you haven't tried Siri.

> You mentioned yourself that it might be useful in the car, where you are alone and nobody can hear you.

And what if people can hear you, in the street say? It's not like we don't already TALK to our phones all the time while walking in the street. You think it matters to passers-by if you talk to your boss or Siri?

> It's literally shouting, when you really should only be whispering.

Huh? What do you mean with this bizzaro comparison?

jonknee2• 15 years ago

> "Call Dave Jobs Mobile"

This can be done on iPhones through the regular Voice Control feature in iOS 4. I use it frequently to change music while walking (holding the middle button on my headphones activates Voice Control).

slantyyz2• 15 years ago

Voice Control sucks for me, especially with ethnic names.

sidwyn• 15 years 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• 15 years 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• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

Gruber addressed this in a footnote:

sambeau7• 15 years 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).

officemonkey2• 15 years 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• 15 years 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.

sambeau7• 15 years 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

  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

  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-performa...

Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP:

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).

masklinn3• 15 years ago

> Also, the corresponding A4 page makes no mention of NEON or DSP

NEON is included in the A4's Cortex A8. In fact, NEON was added back in the 3GS: http://wanderingcoder.net/2010/06/02/intro-neon/

Only the 2G and the 3G don't have it.

Kylekramer2• 15 years ago

Apple won't even claim this. They just waffle and avoid the question. I don't know why it is so hard to believe that Apple would do this to give more incentive to buy the 4S. It is the flipside of the famous Google criticism "if you aren't paying, you are the product". With Apple, you get the product, but you are going damn well pay for it. Whereas on my Android my crap prepaid 600 MHz phone runs Voice Actions just fine.

ugh6• 15 years ago

Waffle? Apple never waffles. Apple just says nothing at all.

I have no problem with Apple purposefully limiting Siri to the new iPhone and I don't really understand people who think that because the hardware supports it they should get it.

It would be nice but it's Apple's choice.

frankiewarren2• 15 years 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?

ajanuary6• 15 years 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.

frankiewarren2• 15 years 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.

pieter2• 15 years 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.

dextorious7• 15 years 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".

ajanuary6• 15 years 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• 15 years 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• 15 years 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

ankimal• 15 years ago

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

6ren• 15 years 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• 15 years ago

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

beej71• 15 years ago

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

Daring Fireball: The iPhone 4S

Related Stories