Get Serious With Siri
by Tommy Ly
October 17, 2011
By now, you've at least heard of Siri, the new personal assistant built into iOS 5 on the iPhone 4S. And, I'm sure you also know about the S#*! that Siri says. Being a grammar freak myself, I found it to be a little frustrating when dictating more than one sentence at a time. The lack of periods, alone, make using the keyboard a better option if I have a lot to say.
Luckily, thanks to its "can-it-do-this?" appeal, many customers have been playing with Siri to find those answers. Now, using Siri to dictate longer messages may be more manageable.
Jim Rhoades of Crush Apps has mocked up a non-comprehensive list of commands you can say to Siri for capitalization, punctuation, line breaking, and even symbols. While it's nice to know these options are available, there is still much to be desired. I had a few problems with Siri recognizing what I was saying. For example, trying to get "HELLO" by saying "all caps on hello" would sometimes produce "ON hello," instead of working like caps lock. However, when Siri did recognize what I meant by my commands, things worked flawlessly.
On the left is the result of saying "all caps on app advice is the best exclamation point," and "all caps on app advice is the best exclamation point new paragraph smiley smiley smiley."
As you can see, it's possible to get actual, grammatically correct sentences using Siri, although it requires much more talking than should be necessary. It will definitely be a while before the iPhone can truly work completely hands free.
So, will you stay old-fashioned and let your thumbs do the talking? Or will you literally speak your mind to Siri?
