I'm glad there is someone to speak for everyone. I was getting worried
It understands my English very well but thats because I pronounce things properly.
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Nuance CEO Confirms Siri Partnership with Apple
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I'm glad there is someone to speak for everyone. I was getting worried
It understands my English very well but thats because I pronounce things properly.
I agree with the other poster. Being able to open two apps side by side on a tablet is sometimes handy.
Before the iPad came out, a lot of us thought for sure that Apple would allow us to run multiple iPhone apps side by side on it. That would have been an excellent use of screen space. Useful, too. E.g. a browser in one, note taker in another, mail in a third.
Instead, they went with allowing only a single iPhone app surrounded by huge amounts of wasted space. Now, it's understandable that they wanted iPhone apps to look silly, so that developers would work on iPad-specific apps, but still...
For tablets, multiple windows and multiple users is the future.
It's a shame Siri has great potential but has been left to wither on the vine to a large extent. Google voice recognition technology is now ahead of it but Siri still has the edge in understanding natural speech and conversational requests. Apple need to step up and actively push this forward if they are going to produce a really compelling service.
You're joking, right? Although I don't use Siri, the Nuance voice recognition technology (ever heard of Dragon Naturally Speaking?) is the most mature in the industry. It has its origins as far back as 1982. It makes perfect sense for Apple to partner with them. To devote the resources to develop an equivalent to such a mature product would be a waste (Apple maps anyone?). If you were being facetious, please excuse.
While far from the computer on Enterprise. Siri is quite useful for me when I am texting hands-free in my car. Unit conversion is awesome. Ask it how many gallons in 100 cubic feet. It does a perfect job on that. Stock prices are perfect.
While it has great potential still, it's already a very useful tool for me. You just have to know how to use it and master its quirks.
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Opinion. Siri is a great tool. Perfect? No. Does everything I want it to? No.
But I sure like telling it to "Play something LOUD." and it knows to play KISS out of my music selection.
I saw an article on another forum about how you can tell Siri to flip a coin and announce whether it was heads or tails, or give you a score from throwing 2 random dice.
Now I haven't used Siri probably in at least 6 months but thought I would give them a try. I have a (mild) Scottish accent but I speak clearly and Siri has had a historically awful track record of being able to understand a request.
So I asked it to Toss A Coin. It misunderstood this and thought I had said one word instead of three. So I said it very slowly, unnaturally slowly as if I was dictating to a small child and it recognised it this time. Heads.
So I then asked it to Toss Again, at the same speed I had asked it to successfully Toss A Coin. No, didn't get it. Want me to search for this yadda yadda.
Repeated the same process: Toss A Coin (slowly) Successful. Toss Again (slowly) failed to understand.
To be honest it's very much in keeping with my overall experience of a truly pathetic feature.
Now I haven't used Siri probably in at least 6 months but thought I would give them a try. I have a (mild) Scottish accent but I speak clearly and Siri has had a historically awful track record of being able to understand a request.
So I asked it to Toss A Coin. It misunderstood this and thought I had said one word instead of three. So I said it very slowly, unnaturally slowly as if I was dictating to a small child and it recognised it this time. Heads.
So I then asked it to Toss Again, at the same speed I had asked it to successfully Toss A Coin. No, didn't get it. Want me to search for this yadda yadda.
Repeated the same process: Toss A Coin (slowly) Successful. Toss Again (slowly) failed to understand.
To be honest it's very much in keeping with my overall experience of a truly pathetic feature.
I just tried asking it "how many litres in a gallon?"
Eventually, after many attempts, it understood my question but gave the wrong answer. Even though every regional setting on my iPhone is for the UK (including Siri itself) it still gave the conversion for US Gallons.
It did get the correct answer when I asked "how many litres in a UK gallon?" but you shouldn't have to be that specific, especially as it's got Location Services turned on.
Siri's potential is really incredible if you think about it but they've completely ignored what people really want to be able to do. I don't care one iota about reserving movie tickets or seats at a restaurant. It's so rarely that I even get out to do either of those that it's not any more of a hassle to just do it myself.
But I do watch a lot of tv shows or movies on my apple tv using Netflix or Hulu. I can use the remote app to control the apple tv but I want to be able to tell Siri to start playing the next episode of Arrested Development, or perhaps tell her to pull up something for the kiddo.
Maybe I'm the only one but I think that would be way cooler than what Siri can do now.
But I do watch a lot of tv shows or movies on my apple tv using Netflix or Hulu. I can use the remote app to control the apple tv but I want to be able to tell Siri to start playing the next episode of Arrested Development, or perhaps tell her to pull up something for the kiddo.
Maybe I'm the only one but I think that would be way cooler than what Siri can do now.
For the times I have used Siri, and Apple Maps on a monthly basis, they have worked Rock Solid for me, and they have not let me down, that being said, if it went away, I wouldn't cry about it either.
Apple maps have not be bad for me either, but I do understand that some folks have had issues with them. I do not see Apple going back to Google anytime in the near future anyway.
Apple maps have not be bad for me either, but I do understand that some folks have had issues with them. I do not see Apple going back to Google anytime in the near future anyway.
I wish when using the dictation feature within a message there was the ability for it to stop recording when you're done speaking and to send by voice. I find you still have to interact with the screen quite a bit.
I know Dr. Wolfram is a totally certified genius and was excited about the idea behind Wolfram Alpha, but after 20 or so visits to the site over a few years (waiting/hoping for maturation) I've found it to basically not deliver on being able to answer the kind of factual questions that are supposed to be its forté, and which with a few Google or Bing searches I can piece together the answers to, and no longer endure the frustration of trying to get it to be useful to me.
Siri sometimes reminds me a bit to Apple Script on the Mac (while of course first one being less feature-rich). It's useful in some occasions and for a specific (smaller) group of people, who actually use it productively. However, in many cases using the Siri or Apple Script lane to solve a problem takes longer in many cases than doing it manually. So while being a really cool technology for some occasions, that is then really helpful if you use it the right way, it often seems to be in the way of its own.
huh? where'd you get that from? no proof whatsoever that anyone actually wants to be able to open multiple windows on their tablet.
Nuance Voice Recognition technology is the industry standard - there is no better ASR engine on the market.
The reason it may have poor recognition is that the grammars for the engine were not written correctly, fully, or optimized enough. Siri unfortunately covers a wide gamut of search terms and that lowers it accuracy - just like when you're talking to a person with little context, you may not understand what they're saying initially.
Nuance does license a Siri like engine called Nina to integrate into mobile apps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=561SVPrf1YI
Nina tends to be more accurate than Siri since it is tuned for a specific application, i.e. banking, travel, etc. and therefore the engine has more context to understand a user's queries. It's pretty neat, I think USAA implemented it in their mobile app.
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It really depends on how Apple licensed the software, direct from Nuance, via a partner, does Nuance do any development, do they even host the software, or does Nuance merely provide the engine and licenses?
Apple may have kept tight reins on the Siri Engine itself while only leveraging Nuance ASR/TTS. Hard to say since no one has released the full architecture of Siri nor have has anyone clarified the true extent of the partnership.
That feature is available, it's called Dragon TV:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCjuT960tJ8
I guess they're just waiting for a TV manufacturer to pick it up ...
While I agree with you "in spirit" (and 100% with regards to multiuser!)... Once again, this is VERY tricky. As I said, it simply could NOT be implemented across the board for iOS.. That would create a highly compromised experience on iPad mini, & a horrible experience on iPhone. So, the only way it would work is a custom build of iOS only for full-sized iPad.. Then you have the fact that as the elements are resized for the screen split process it may affect the usability of the touch controls, as they are currently set to precise parameters for running at full screen size.. And the fact that while some apps may lend themselves quite well to this experience & be amazingly handy (having notes open w/ calendar side-by-side, for example), I imagine that many apps designed to run full screen would be much harder to read/use/manipulate & without a clear way to only allow those that will handle it brilliantly, the user would be left with a frustrating "maybe it'll work, maybe not.." trial & error situation. This is NOT what Apple is known to deliver and I for one, don't want that to change. If they could make a NEW set of usability requirements for iPad apps, so that developers could make sure split screen would work swimmingly before it is submitted.. I could totally get behind it! :0)
Also, with regards to willy nilly support of side-by-side multitasking... I thought of another issue. Two apps open with dissimilar tilt controls. "Argh, I was shaking to shuffle in my music app & passed my turn in my word game!"...
That type of thing.... The more I think about it, the LESS it seems to make sense to support side-by-side multiple apps open on a tablet device... unless maybe it rendered them both to like a "screenshot status" where neither is accepting input, until one is selected, allowing it to be manipulated.. tap the other to "freeze" your current, swap back & forth.
Hmmm, was just thinking about how warm my iPad gets when doing HD gaming on it for a while.. also, how tolling it is on the battery. I bet if it was simultaneously running TWO intensive apps, I'd get about 3 hours battery life & it would be quite toasty. Yeah.... NOT seeing the major trade offs matching the slight benefits at this point.
That type of thing.... The more I think about it, the LESS it seems to make sense to support side-by-side multiple apps open on a tablet device... unless maybe it rendered them both to like a "screenshot status" where neither is accepting input, until one is selected, allowing it to be manipulated.. tap the other to "freeze" your current, swap back & forth.
Hmmm, was just thinking about how warm my iPad gets when doing HD gaming on it for a while.. also, how tolling it is on the battery. I bet if it was simultaneously running TWO intensive apps, I'd get about 3 hours battery life & it would be quite toasty. Yeah.... NOT seeing the major trade offs matching the slight benefits at this point.
Quite the contrary.
Forum and Articles --
There was speculation here back before the iPad came out, over whether or not it would allow running multiple iPhone apps at a time.
When it did come out, articles were written about this inability, such as this VentureBeat article listing the lack as a #1 reason not to buy an iPad.
Apps to Pretend --
To get around the lack of multi-window support, some iPad apps were created (as much as Apple would allow) to emulate the ability.
E.g. dual browser window apps, and the Taposé app that tried to be like the Microsoft Courier.
Competition Does It --
Samsung's Note tablet allows having not only overlaid little windows, but some of their apps are made to work side by side. Have you never seen this commercial of what the Note can do with side by side windows?
It's like anything else. You don't have to use it. But sometimes it would be quite handy. Have you never wished you had a calculator onscreen while looking at some figures? Some people don't do a lot with their devices. Some of us do.
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But this is an opinion piece. If I wrote an article stating don't buy an iPad because it doesn't have nfc does that mean anyyone wants nfc in their tablet? I'd think not.
Well sure, apps can emulate anything they want. Again, not an indication that not having that ability is important or something many people want.
The competition has nowhere near the success of the iPad. Yes, the competition does it. No, it's not a deal breaker and seemingly it's not even a consideration when buying a tablet as evidenced by ipad sales vs any other tablet.
why would they admit this?
Why wouldn't they? I've found Siri to be generally quite accurate in understanding my spoken word. However interpreting language is another thing entirely.
Siri doesn't always cope well with homonyms...words that sound the same but are spelt differently or perhaps even have the same pronunciation and spelling but different meanings.
When I said "Can you make me a tea?" it interpreted "Can you make me a T?".
Also, if you're in a noisy environment it might help to try to speak a little closer to the microphone.