Chapter 14

Utilizing Your Personal Assistant: Siri

In This Chapter

• Understanding Siri’s commands
• Managing your digital life
• Setting expectations
• Grasping geofencing

You’ve seen the commercials. You might even know the voice by heart. But have you really put in the effort to conjure up a real relationship with Siri? Siri is Apple’s personal assistant, who debuted on the iPhone 4S and has since found a home on the new iPad and its most current iPhones. Unbeknownst to most outside of the technology field, Siri wasn’t actually created within Apple’s labs. The company that built Siri was acquired by Apple in April of 2010, and the rest—as they say—is history. Siri was billed as a “personal assistant” from day one, rather than a run-of-the-mill voice recognition system. The difference? You can talk to Siri like a real person, instructing her to do things. She does more than simply convert spoken words into text on a screen; she’s capable of actually accomplishing chores for you. The trick, of course, is understanding how to speak to her, what she can and can’t understand, and how to work around her flaws. Oh, and I refer to her as “her” throughout the chapter. Yes, she’s an inanimate robot, but it’s just so much more fun to think of her as a bona fide confidant.

Commanding a Robot

If you let yourself be persuaded by the ads on television, you might believe that Siri is exactly like a human in your phone. Just talk to her, and she’ll respond to anything without issue. That’s actually pretty far from the truth. Siri may be wise, and she may possess a freakish amount of language processing skills, but she’s not all-knowing. If you’ve ever used any of Nuance’s Dragon Dictate software, you may be familiar with having to tailor your delivery to suit the program. Basically, you have to talk to the robot on the other end in a way that you know it’ll understand.

In my opinion, there’s really no reason to leave Siri off. She doesn’t have a negative impact on battery life, and she stays well out of your way unless you call on her. Unlike other Apple-installed applications like Mail and Safari, Siri is not a standalone “app.” There’s no “icon” to access her. To make sure she’s enabled, simply visit Settings General Siri. You’ll find an On/Off toggle switch there at the top, which you should slide to On. You also need to select the language that’s most closely associated with your own. The Raise to Speak option is an interesting one; with this flipped on, you can simply raise the phone to your ear as if you’re about to converse with someone, and it automatically puts Siri into a listen mode. This is designed so that you can talk to Siri while looking “natural” on the phone, and presumably, no one will know you’re talking to a robot instead of a real person.

The primary method of activating Siri is simple—just hold down the Home button for a couple of seconds. Notice a small microphone icon surface from the bottom, indicating that Siri is active and listening for spoken commands. Also notice a “What can I help you with?” line, but it’s the shadowed “i” to the right of that phrase that’s important. Tap that to gain instant access to the growing list of things that Siri can do. If you ever forget what Siri can do, this is where you come to look. You can see what the list looks like currently in Figure 14-1.

Figure 14-1: Forget what Siri can do? Here’s a handy reminder list.

Like most great tools, you need to use Siri frequently to appreciate her. Frankly, it’s easy to forget that Siri exists. She doesn’t pop up and annoy you, so you need to get in the habit of leaning on her. It’s especially unnatural for those who have used the iPhone since 2007; suddenly, there’s a new way to input text and commands. You just have to remember to hit the toggle!

Take a look at a list of things Siri can help you with in iOS 6:

• Calling: say “Call [contact name]”
• Launching apps: say “Launch [app name]”
• Sending a text or iMessage: say “Text [contact name]”
• Playing music in Apple’s Music app: say “Play [album, artist, or song name]”
• Adding a Calendar entry: say “Set up a meeting at [time and place, with details]”
• Adding a reminder: say “Remind me [details]”
• Using the maps: say “Find [name or place and location]”
• Getting directions: say “Directions to [destination]”
• Checking the weather: say “What’s the weather like in [location]?”
• Setting the alarm clock: say “Wake me up at [time and date]”
• Using the Address Book: say “What’s [contact name]’s address?”
• Using Notes: say “Note that I [details]”
• Using Safari: say “Search the web [query]”
• Using Stocks: say “What is the stock price of [company]?”
• Using E-mail: say “E-mail [contact]”
• Using WolframAlpha: Ask any generic question and see how it shakes out!
• Checking the movies: ask “Is [movie title] playing nearby?”
• Using Facebook/Twitter: say “Post to Facebook or post to Twitter”
• Checking sports’ scores: ask about any professional team score
• Checking for restaurants: say “Make a reservation at [eatery name]” or “Find [kind of eatery] near [location]”

As for what Siri can’t do? If it’s not on the list, don’t expect her to work miracles. For example, if you use MOG as your primary music app, you cannot tell Siri to “play artist Everember in MOG.” She knows only how to play music in the Apple Music app. The same is true for any other third-party app—in fact, that’s the biggest flaw of Siri as she stands today. There are no APIs distributed to developers to enable Siri to access third-party apps. Although you can ask the built-in Maps app for directions, it would be better if you could instruct Siri to “open Navigon and route me to Boone, North Carolina.” Hopefully, Apple will let Siri converse with third-party apps in the future, but for now, it’s a (mostly) closed door. The only major exception is third-party programs that work via CalDAV; for instance, you can make Siri use Remember The Milk instead of its own Reminders app if you program your RTM information from Settings Mail, Contacts, Calendars Add Account Others.

Integrating Siri into Your Digital Workflow

As you spend a week or two with Siri, you begin to notice what she’s good at, and what she’s not so good at. Each time I pick up my iPhone, I make a decision as to whether to use Siri, and it all hinges on time. Remind yourself to ask this question: “Can I do this faster myself, or can Siri do it faster?” One of the things that Siri is wonderful for is a reminder. Whenever you’re out and about and a thought pops into your head, just toggle Siri and ask her to remind you of something at a later time or place. This is almost always quicker than pulling out your phone, opening Notes, and pecking a reminder in there with your thumbs.

Moreover, the Reminders app becomes infinitely more useful if you have a Mountain Lion-equipped Mac at home. In fact, the iPhone is a lot more useful when you have the other half of the ecosystem—a Mac computer—waiting at home or work. Reminders that you input on your iPhone (or iPad, for that matter) automatically sync with your iCloud account. So long as your Mac’s Notification Center is also synced to that same iCloud account, reminders will flash on your Mac even if you’re away from your phone.

If you need something deeper than a casual reminder, Siri can create Calendar appointments. If you have integrated your Google Calendars into Apple’s Calendar app, I recommend visiting Settings Mail, Contacts Calendar and cruising down to Calendar. Look for the Default Calendar option and ensure that it’s selecting your Google Calendar of choice (it’ll default to iCloud). This way, any appointment that Siri makes will also show up in your Google Calendar. It’s a behind-the-scenes way to get Siri to add something to Google Calendar.

Digging a bit deeper into the WolframAlpha integration, it might help to understand what exactly WolframAlpha is. Put simply, it’s an information engine. It takes basic questions and produces instant answers. If you ask Siri how many ounces are in a gallon, you’ll get a WolframAlpha card displaying the conversion. If you ask Siri how many Euros are in 100 U.S. dollars, you’ll get a WolframAlpha card displaying currency conversions. Most generic questions such as these will route through WolframAlpha first, and if no answer can be generated, Siri typically offers to search the web as a fallback.

It’s important to note that Siri understands human-like speech much better when relationships are established. In other words, it’s worth taking the time to teach Siri that Alice is your mom, Greg is your dad, and Kevin is your brother (hypothetically speaking, of course). That way, you can simply say “make a noon appointment tomorrow for lunch with Mom” and Siri will know precisely which contact to associate with it.

You can establish these relationships in one of two ways. You can toggle Siri and simply tell her “Alice is my mother.” Or, the first time you make an appointment using a generic term like “sister” or “father,” Siri will ask you which contact to associate with it. Unfortunately, Siri isn’t great at pronouncing unusual names. In that case, just have Siri call you “champion” or “master”—whatever makes you feel better in the morning. Have a look at how this conversation typically goes in Figure 14-2.

Figure 14-2: Let’s talk family, Siri.

Although comprehending your tasks is one thing, Siri’s also a pretty good dictation tool, too. For instance, if you’re composing a new e-mail in your Gmail app, you can simply tap the small microphone button on the lower portion of the onscreen keyboard to make Siri listen for voice input. As long as your cursor is where you want it to be—presumably in the body of the e-mail—Siri will listen for your words, translate them to text, and paste them in.

But, of course, it’s really not as simple as that. Although the process of starting a dictation is the same for everything Siri isn’t smart enough to always understand exactly what you mean. For instance, you have to tell her when you want punctuation. If there is to be a comma in the phrase, you literally have to say the word “comma.” The same goes for periods, exclamation marks, question marks, quotes, and so on. You also have to be careful when speaking initials, times, company names, nonstandard words, and atypical proper nouns—if it’s not in a traditional dictionary, chances are Siri will botch the transcription.

While we’re on the topic, it’s worth pointing out that dictation is a great safety feature, too. If you’re shuffling down a busy city street, being able to keep your eyes up and your senses aware while sending an e-mail or text is a real boon. Even looking down for five seconds can be enough time for you to mistakenly walk out into the street. In a vehicle, I still wouldn’t recommend picking up your phone to activate Siri and send a text, but starting with 2013 model year vehicles, BMW, GM, Mercedes, Land Rover, Jaguar, Audi, Toyota, Chrysler, and Honda will include a feature called eyes free. Effectively, this feature allows your paired iPhone to have Siri activated via a steering wheel control, where you can then initiate calls, texts, and e-mails to contacts without having to take your focus away from the road.

Why Location Matters, Even to Siri

Geofencing. Ever heard of it? If not, it’s a way of putting a “fence” around your phone based on GPS data. Although GPS data is obviously useful for things like navigation, it’s also extremely useful when combined with Reminders and Siri. The iPhone’s Reminders app can add location into the mix (as seen in Figure 14-3), in addition to time. If you want to be reminded to drive to the local grocery and grab a bag of oranges after you leave work, you could guess what time you’ll be leaving and set the reminder for that time. But what if you’re a little late leaving the office? Geofencing to the rescue.

Figure 14-3: See that location field in Reminders? Use it!

If you tell Siri to remind you to grab oranges when you leave work, she’ll then ask you if you’re at work—or, where work is. Once she has established a link between the word “work” and the location of your workplace, she’s able to monitor your position and trigger the reminder just as soon as you’re a few hundred yards away from the workplace.

Similarly, this works for “home.” If you ask Siri to remind you to check the mailbox when you get home, she’ll trigger that reminder as you’re pulling into your driveway as long as you’ve previously established a link between the word “home” and the coordinates of your abode.

It’s important to remember that while this feature is useful, it’s not bulletproof. If you work in a dense office building in midtown Manhattan, and you ask Siri to remind you of something when you leave work, you may get 8 to 10 blocks away before the reminder is triggered.

I’ll wrap this chapter up by mentioning one important thing that touches on everything that Siri does: data. Siri is not only data-driven, she’s data-dependent. In order for Siri to comprehend anything that you tell her—be it a command or a spoken sentence ripe for dictation—she needs access to the Internet. The reason? None of Siri’s speech translations are housed locally on the iPhone. Siri simply takes what you say, sends it out to a cloud-based translation server, and then acts on whatever impulses she receives back. If you remove that middleman, Siri is useless.

Obviously, Siri works best if your iPhone is latched on to a fast Wi-Fi network. She’ll work decently if you have a strong 3G or 4G connection, but she’ll drive you batty (see Figure 14-4) if you try to use her on a spotty connection or an EDGE (or slower) data connection. In a remote part of Montana, I’ve seen Siri take three minutes to look up an address. Talk about frustrating. If you notice that your data signal isn’t ideal, it’s probably best to skip Siri and use the more conventional finger-onscreen method of getting things done.

Figure 14-4: If Siri has a lackluster data connection, you’ll start getting annoying replies like these.

Summary

Siri has become the heart and soul of the iPhone, and in general, it makes users feel closer to their devices. It’s as if she’s a real person, able to understand typical human speech and assist you with things like creating appointments, scheduling reminders, and queuing up your favorite tunes.

It’s challenging to remember what all Siri can and cannot do, and from there, learning how to best phrase your queries to get the most out of her. Although she’s not perfect, she’s capable of handling many chores associated with first-party apps, and she’s a very suitable replacement to a notepad of to-do items in your pocket.

As great as she is, Siri still requires a data connection to function. This means that rural areas or users traveling overseas won’t be able to adequately take advantage of her services.