Siri's next BIG step forward??

fuzion11 said:

Why wouldn't Apple have done this first before sports? Is it because there is just too many factors involved, too much info?

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Yes, probably too much information and gathered in a less unified fashion than sports. Also, people check sports scores a heck of a lot more than concert dates.

Regarding a specific catalogue of information... I dunno I don't really have one specific thing. Just a general breath of information

Her next big thing will be her jump to the Mac. But as she makes her way to the Mac, I think it'll be important for her to not only accept verbal commands. She needs a text box, invoked easily (like spotlight). This is because there are a lot of circumstances where you don't want to speak into your computer (in an office, in a coffee shop, around friends/family, in a noisy location) and it's easy to just type on your laptop.

Siri's next big step had better be actually controlling the device (turn off Wifi, decrease brightness, etc.).
Anything short of this will remain a disappointment.

Gjwilly said:

Siri's next big step had better be actually controlling the device (turn off Wifi, decrease brightness, etc.).
Anything short of this will remain a disappointment.

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Yeah I wouldn't mind more device interaction type of support.

Siri will need some sort of continuous feedback feature. By that I mean it won't have to wait until you finish speaking before acting on something. The simplest example is dictation, where the words you speak are transcribed live into text as you speak it (obviously with a second or two of lag). Some things just don't work well with the current whole command, wait, action setup.

Continuous listening will be the next feature with something ridiculous like eye tracking. I don't think this will ever make it past concept, but I imagine in Safari you would could tell it to scroll down, open links near where you're looking (with maybe some neat confirmation if links are too close to tell apart, like perhaps a zoom, or special 'visual handles' that direct you to look here for this particular action'). You could say, open 'macrumors', or 'add this page to my reading list', or 'bookmark this page', or 'zoom to where I'm looking'.

Or in iBooks, you could say 'next page'.

Dunno, just spit-balling here.

I would like it if Siri took over the answer service of the phone, you could introduce IVR and other features that are more useful than just simply leaving a message.

Also, if the person calling you deals with Siri and it's a good experience, it's pretty much a free advert for the iPhone there and then.

Mad Mac Maniac said:

Yes, probably too much information and gathered in a less unified fashion than sports. Also, people check sports scores a heck of a lot more than concert dates.

Regarding a specific catalogue of information... I dunno I don't really have one specific thing. Just a general breath of information

Her next big thing will be her jump to the Mac. But as she makes her way to the Mac, I think it'll be important for her to not only accept verbal commands. She needs a text box, invoked easily (like spotlight). This is because there are a lot of circumstances where you don't want to speak into your computer (in an office, in a coffee shop, around friends/family, in a noisy location) and it's easy to just type on your laptop.

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I like your text input option idea. Sounds like a perfect addition to Siri on a Mac. Especially, as you say, in an office situation.

I suppose it's inevitable that someone will try to cyber with Siri hahaha...

sammich said:

Continuous listening will be the next feature with something ridiculous like eye tracking. I don't think this will ever make it past concept, but I imagine in Safari you would could tell it to scroll down, open links near where you're looking (with maybe some neat confirmation if links are too close to tell apart, like perhaps a zoom, or special 'visual handles' that direct you to look here for this particular action'). You could say, open 'macrumors', or 'add this page to my reading list', or 'bookmark this page', or 'zoom to where I'm looking'.

Or in iBooks, you could say 'next page'.

Dunno, just spit-balling here.

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Lol. "next page"? Some people might accuse you of being lazy if you do that. I agree there could be some use case for this, but it's pretty small.

I like the concept of continuous listening, but also you don't want siri to start doing stuff when you say something to your friend, spouse, child/parent. Maybe you would have to start with the word "siri" to activate her.

I think where continuous listening would be even more adventageous is after you activate her, but are waiting for her to finish talking and send the next beep. She is a bit talkative, which is understandable as she's still not super accurate and people are still learning how to use her. But it would be nice if you could interrupt her while she's talking (and maybe you can if you push the siri button, but it would be good if you could just talk).

I don't care for sports. So this was a non-issue for me. How about game of thrones character stats come up. Lol. Kidding.

I was more hoping for some quick settings. Now that we know they can do more with the notification center, why not add this. I'm so tired of not having this.

Next Siri really needs to become global. Ok so Siri now knows about basketball and baseball but these are not very popular sports here in the UK and Siri knows nothing about Football from what I can tell.

Using Yelp was a nice idea but again over here Yelp is practically unheard of and when I actually looked at their data for around me it was all incorrect, according to Yelp my house is a McDonalds and a Pub and Siri is also unable to provide cinema listings for the UK as well which is a real shame.

Brenz said:

Next Siri really needs to become global. Ok so Siri now knows about basketball and baseball but these are not very popular sports here in the UK and Siri knows nothing about Football from what I can tell.

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I forget where I read it, could be Apple's website, but I saw "Soccer" on there. I suppose as long as you call it "Soccer" she'll know what you mean lol. Although, in the UK, it might accept "Football."

Can anyone confirm?

I definitely didn't see Cricket on there though. So Cricket fans miss out. For now.

EDIT:
Yup, football/soccer is confirmed: "Sports fan? Siri knows baseball, basketball, football, soccer, and hockey."
From http://www.apple.com/ca/ios/ios6/siri/

I'm hoping that at least in the UK it'll accept "football" to mean the same as "soccer." If only everyone just called it football.

Sports was a natural inclusion for Siri as well as the movie information because there are very mature companies with great database of sports.

Siri is designed to plug in new data models so concerts and other things are almost infinitely possible but the devil is in the details.

I think Apple is working on increasing responsiveness and preparing for a much larger load of Siri users with the iPad joining the fray with iOS 6.

The biggest thing that has happened though isn't Sports scores it's the huge amount of localized language support coming. Anyone who's learned a new language can attest to how difficult it is to switch gears here and Siri not only switches gears but also tunes for how Chinese is spoken in Tawain versus mainland China or how Spanish sounds in Espana versus Mexico. That's damn impressive!

I think by "version 3" which means next year at WWDC Developers will get invited to the party. Siri is an ambitious project.

Brenz said:

Siri knows nothing about Football from what I can tell.

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It does. Craig specifically mentioned Soccer (which is what I assume you are talking about). Cite

pdjudd said:

It does. Craig specifically mentioned Soccer (which is what I assume you are talking about). Cite

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Ah yes it does seem to have some football knowledge but annoyingly it doesn't seem to know anything about Euro 2012.

Apple continuously describes Siri as being in "beta" form currently. Though hopefully iOS 6 will be the end of that phase.

As for specific commands like you listed, it's likely more complex than retrieving sports info. When you ask a question, Siri is obviously accessing some sort of database to retrieve the information and perhaps there isn't one readily available that includes such information. Just a guess, though. I would love to see those sorts of improvements implemented. Siri is hardly useful when you have to wonder "Will Siri understand this?" before asking something.

fuzion11 said:

I asked her this morning..."when did Hitler die" and she came up with a lot of great info...even the day light savings details of that day. I'm a huge history buff, so that's super neat for me!

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Yeah that is cool! That's that kind of stuff (and the breath I referred to above) that I'm hoping for Siri in the future. Sure you could label that as "history", but I would just call it "random fact I wanted to know". I would like to be able to start asking random questions like "how big is the pacific ocean?" or "What was the name of the bad guy in the original ninja turtles?" or "how many different flavor skittles are there?" Things like that. I expect Siri to eventually become a much heavier google replacement. In 10 years I want to look back and think "wow I can't believe I used to have to google something to find the answer. then go through pages of links and read through articles and websites to continue looking for my answer" Just ask Siri!

Also, maybe for some complicated questions Siri would give you a list of the most likely answers, with the probability of each being right. I'm thinking of that computer that they used on Jeopardy.

RoboCop001 said:

I'm hoping that at least in the UK it'll accept "football" to mean the same as "soccer." If only everyone just called it football.

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Well maybe you won't need to say either. I don't believe they ever used the name of the sport during the demo. "Who won the Giants game" and "Who is taller kobe or lebron" and "what are the national league standings"

To iPhone: "Siri, warm up my car"
Siri: "Okay, _____, I will warm up the car for 10 minutes"

<gets in car>

Siri (in BMW): "your engine has been running for 6 minutes, 29 seconds"

To Car: "Siri, set my home thermostat to 72 degrees and start my dishwasher"

Siri (in BMW): "Okay, I will set thermostat to 72 degrees"

misterquin said:

As for specific commands like you listed, it's likely more complex than retrieving sports info. When you ask a question, Siri is obviously accessing some sort of database to retrieve the information and perhaps there isn't one readily available that includes such information.

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It looks as if Siri uses Yahoo for all the results and they have the Euro 2012 results on their website so its seems to be a case of Apple not bothering to include all football results.

Continuous listening is pretty cool but it has its obvious flaws. I had the tweak installed on my last jailbreak that did this. The battery drain was not as bad as I would have thought, but Siri would pop up when I wasn't trying to summon it. I remember a specific occasion when I said "Are you seriously trying to..." and the phone is all "yes?" and that took the wind out of the point I was trying to make haha.

Sports are something a lot of people obsess over, especially stats. So I can see why they did that. I think the way they included movie info is great, I will use that for sure.

I'd like to see Siri have a little more control over the device. Not just adding stuff but deleting stuff. Turning wifi/etc on and off. Stuff like that. A lot of this is available via jailbreak and it is stable, so hopefully Apple sees that and will take the hint.

siri is only somewhat useful if i switch to english which makes me look even more like a tool using it out in germany

e.g. siri in german doesnt get english words

"Wo läuft der Film The Avengers?" (where can i watch the avengers?)

turns to "i'm sorry, i dont know what u mean by "Wir wünschen" LOL

siri needs to become multilingual otherwise those movie features will be HORRIBLE in other languages where english titles are used

fuzion11 said:

I really like that idea...I'm sure these commands will be implemented soon...likely within 2 years I would think.

I remember reading someone at Apple is working on a revolutionary thermostat, so I can totally see Siri working hand in hand with that.

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I see Siri's Map integration as a much bigger thing than sports and movie data.

The thermostat is the Nest, and although it isn't an Apple product it was created by a former Apple exec. Rather than supporting individual devices I'd like to see a way for third-party apps to integrate with Siri. GM's OnStar app can already do remote control of some car models. The Nest app already can set your AC temperature. There's an app that can control the massage chair in my office. Offering developers a way to voice-activate features in their apps could be huge.

im hoping for the ability to recap me on the latest walking dead episode..

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fuzion11 said:

I really like that idea...I'm sure these commands will be implemented soon...likely within 2 years I would think.

I remember reading someone at Apple is working on a revolutionary thermostat, so I can totally see Siri working hand in hand with that.

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"the revolutionary thermostat" is already out you can pick one up at the apple store. and its the guy who did the click wheel on the ipod i think? or something to with the ipod. ex apple employee

nest learning thermostat.

http://store.apple.com/us/product/H9279LL/A


you can change the temperature from anywhere with an idevice.