Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

iPhone 4S reviews

Walter Mossberg (Wall Street Journal): When I asked for a "French restaurant in Bethesda, Maryland," it instantly returned a list from Yelp, ranked by user reviews ... The system understands multiple, colloquial forms of a question. I asked, "Will the weather get worse today?" and Siri answered, "I don't think the weather is going to get worse" and displayed a weather chart. 

David Pogue (New York Times):  You can say, “Wake me up at 7:35,” or “Change my 7:35 alarm to 8.” You can say, “What’s Gary’s work number?” Or, “How do I get to the airport?” Or, “Any good Thai restaurants around here?”  ... It’s mind-blowing how inexact your utterances can be. Siri understands everything from, “What’s the weather going to be like in Tucson this weekend?” to “Will I need an umbrella tonight?” (She has various amusing responses for “What is the meaning of life?”)

MG Siegler (Tech Crunch): You really have to use it yourself to see just how great Siri actually is. Using it for the past week, I’ve done everything from getting directions, to sending emails, to sending text messages, to looking up information on WolframAlpha, to getting restaurant recommendations on Yelp, to taking notes, to setting reminders, to setting calendar appointments, to setting alarms, to searching the web.

Brian Chen (Wired): Tonight I’m meeting my friend Peter, who wants to eat steak, so I can say, “I want prime rib” to find steakhouses nearby.

Rich Jaroslovsky (Bloomberg): When I asked Siri, “Will I need an umbrella tonight?” its robotic female voice informed me, “There’s no rain in the forecast,” while the screen displayed the weather report for my location. When I told it to find me a good Mexican restaurant in my neighborhood, it displayed a listing ranked by Yelp ratings.

Enough about the device: is there something about being a technology reviewer and anxiety about being outside and (1) it's raining, and (2) not being able to pick a restaurant?

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