Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

So who actually USES Siri

W

windowstomac

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 23, 2011
274
66
Just curious:

I, nor any of my friends, use Siri for anything other than occasional playing around. Who here makes real regular use of Siri?
 
I use it daily for reminders, alarms, timers etc...

I use it occasionally to call people when my phone's in my pocket and I've got my headphones in. Other than that, I don't use it
 
I have used Siri every morning since I got my iPad Mini to check the weather, make notes, reminders, timers, alarms, and to write messages for me.

I wish there was a way for you to say "Siri" and the app would pop up.
 
Very useful in the car, and very useful when I'm feeling lazy and don't want to go through menus to call someone or make a reminder.
 
I use it quite a bit. Directions, dictating (while walking), making calls, check messages, weather, sports scores....

It has improved a lot in the last couple of weeks.
 
Siri has been an excellent addition in my car via Bluetooth. Placing phone calls is a stellar alternative as compared to my car's Bluetooth phone system. It's much more efficient and safer. I am also able to listen to texts and reply via Bluetooth using the voice option, whereas I never engaged texts while driving. Now, with 2 quick taps, I can advise someone that I am driving and will get back to them or simply call them.

Having upgraded from the original iPhone to an iP5, Siri has been a very welcomed and fantastic improvement. Now, if were able to integrate Siri to my car's on board GPS system, that would be perfect.
 
Us it daily to check and make my work schedule.
Directions through maps app(which I love)
Make phone calls send emails and texts.

I just wish apple would bring to the ipad 2
 
I upgraded to iPhone 5 from the iPhone 4, and I'd say the biggest improvements to my experience have been
LTE
Siri (really, improved Voice Control)
Turn-by-Turn directions

(in that order)

-------
1. I use Siri daily when I'm NOT in the car:

-To call people: Holding the button and saying "Call my wife" is faster than unlocking, tapping phone, tapping favorites, then tapping my wife's number.

-To use Find my Friends to see when my wife gets home / leaves work, etc.
"Where's my wife?" and a map pops up showing her location. Wonderful.

-------
2. I use Siri daily when I AM n the car:

-Text or iMessaging:
"Tell my wife I'm ten minutes late."

-Send quick reply e-mails.
"E-mail person x: Sounds good."

-Launching and using Apps.
"Launch Audiobooks" starts the app and automatically begins playing my audiobook where I left off. No touching required.

-To make notes to myself: I'll touch to pause my audiobook, then say "Siri make a note:" and then dictate a quote from the book I'm listening to. (This sometimes works well, sometimes not. But it is handy to have the ability to take notes on an audiobook, hands free.)

-For directions: "how do I get to xyz?" (this auto-starts the turn-by-turn directions. Very handy.)
-------

My critiques/complaints:

For the way I use it, I would have been happy if Apple had simply expanded the list of Voice Control commands to include the ability to launch apps, get directions, and play music. The context flexibility of Siri is nice, I guess, but once I figure out what phrasing gets me the result I want, I don't change how I say it anyway. I could have easily learned whatever syntax Apple wanted to use for Voice Control. And it's a pain that Siri doesn't work when not connected to the internet.

I used voice control alot on the iPhone4 to listen to music in the car. My annoyance then was that you could tell it to play songs by a certain artist, but you couldn't tell it to play a song by title. Still don't understand why, since for both the artist and the song title it has to interpret my voice and compare it to one of the song's text fields. Siri allows me many more options, but I wish it didn't require the internet.
 
dgalvan123 said:
-To use Find my Friends to see when my wife gets home / leaves work, etc.
"Where's my wife?" and a map pops up showing her location. Wonderful.
Click to expand...

Do you use a passcode? I'd love to do this, but it seems like you must have a passcode set up in order for find my friends to keep you logged in.
 
ECUpirate44 said:
Do you use a passcode? I'd love to do this, but it seems like you must have a passcode set up in order for find my friends to keep you logged in.
Click to expand...

Yes this is true.
And yes I lock my phone with a passcode. Frankly, a 4-digit passcode doesn't slow me down too much. I have mine set to be required after 5 minutes. It typically takes me 3 seconds to enter the code. Much shorter than having to enter my iCloud password everytime I use Find My Friends.

If you find the passcode annoying, you can set it to only be required after your phone has been unused for up to 4 hours.

Settings --> General --> Passcode Lock --> Require Passcode.

That way you'll basically never have to enter the passcode and Find My Friends would keep you logged in, allowing you to simply hold the home button, say "where's my wife" and see her location without entering either a passcode or your icloud password. (You wouldn't need to enter the passcode to unlock as long as you use your phone at least once every 4 hours. . . so you'd probably have to enter it the first time you use the phone in the morning)

Obviously there's some security issues with setting the passcode lock to be that lax. If you lose your phone and someone else finds it in under 4 hours, they could see where your family members are located. But that's your decision whether that risk is high enough to offset the added convenience.
 
Siri is the only way I do reminders anymore. Phone calls to well-known contacts like my wife too. Location-based searches like find restaurants or gas stations near me. Sometimes to make restaurant reservations. But I prefer the interactions I can do 100% by voice instead of having to select something from her list or look at her list.

I guess this isn't really Siri but I dictate almost all of my posts like this one. I find voice dictation accuracy to be significantly better than Siri's voice recognition capability. I guess that's because she is trying to understand context as well.
 
i only use it to set an alarm every once in a while.

i cant really use it to text because i cant think of what i want it to say so quickly so it ends up with lots of "uhm ... uhm ... hmmm .... aaaah uuuuuhm ... waaaait ... uhm"

i also cant get stuff like reminders to work, it always ends up with a message like: do u want me to set this reminder "remind me to call xy like it puts the words that are meant as a command to siri inside the actual message lol but i cant be bothered with siri to figure it out either, so doing it myself is just faster
 
I use Siri all the time. I find it super helpful for "call my wife", "text soandso blah blah", "remind me to xyz", etc. Super handy for me.

It doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's close enough for me. I hope they keep investing in it and making it better and better.

My wife's experience is worse. It can't understand a damn thing she says, but I think it's because her phone is in a case and mine isn't.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back