[Hermdroid]

So Siri is basically some ai technology. So was cyberdyne. Is this what Sarah Connor has been talking about for years!!!!!!!

[jeffrey1027]

It looks interesting!! Want to give it a try but it's no deal breaker for me to upgrade from my iPhone 4

[E_Brown]

I think Siri looks pretty cool, and I can't wait to try it out. Seems like it would be really useful.

[Hermdroid]

It looks interesting!! Want to give it a try but it's no deal breaker for me to upgrade from my iPhone 4

Same here. Hopefully iPhone 5 won't be to long of a wait. But when I was listening to some of the keynote Siri just reminded me of the plot from the terminator movies.

[thinkTwice]

Basically this is the reason to get the 4S.

The two things that would really get me to think about the 4S are:

Ability to change the voice and

If I can change appointments via Siri like, "Change meeting on october 4th 8am to oct 11th 8am". For some reason, I think this would be like brilliant.

[SeanHRCC]

It's a cool toy added to an already great phone...so why not enjoy it?

You have people so upset that Siri was the "big announcement" within this iPhone release...but why? Why be upset over an already great phone that has a better camera, faster processor, better usability features and some neat new toys to play with...again, all packaged within a phone that 90% of us already use and love.

I personally can't wait to try out Siri...i hope its as intuitive as they made it out to be on the videos, and also, as easy to use as they showed, it'd certainly be nice to be able to have the functionality of voice services as easy as they made it look.

[Massie]

If I can change appointments via Siri like, "Change meeting on october 4th 8am to oct 11th 8am". For some reason, I think this would be like brilliant.

I think that was actually shown in the Siri video--some guy jogging, and he tells Siri to move an appointment. Siri then tells him he already has an appointment scheduled for the new time. He then moves it to another time.

Edit: see it . It's the 4S video.

[DrewBear]

Siri looks great even as a beta product. I'm sure it'll improve quickly in the coming months.

[Xm_jdm]

I think it is great but I know that I will NEVER use the feature. Something about talking to your phone...

[redbeard]

Soon somebody working in a ballistic missile silo will plug his phone in to charge it, and Siri will get revenge for all the work he makes it do for him.

[DaPhoneking]

Soon somebody working in a ballistic missile silo will plug his phone in to charge it, and Siri will get revenge for all the work he makes it do for him.

In this mindset, if I plug my i4S into my work computer at the IRS, will I get a big refund?

[Dark_Blu]

So Siri is basically some ai technology. So was cyberdyne. Is this what Sarah Connor has been talking about for years!!!!!!!

If I can have Siri in the voice in want her to speak in, that works just fine for me. I will however limit our "conversations" to in car navigation and times when there are no humans around. The Android fanboys know they wish they had Siri but if Google (or Samsung) tries that, there will be a LAWSUIT!!!!

[redbeard]

In this mindset, if I plug my i4S into my work computer at the IRS, will I get a big refund?

That or an audit, depending on how you've been treating your phone..

[John-Fox]

Does anyone think Scott Forstall was being very careful what he said to Siri, checking his notes carefully for verbiage maybe ... as if Siri's responses were already canned to prevent any goofs during the presentation? I just hope it works as well as he made it out to be.

[DaPhoneking]

Does anyone think Scott Forstall was being very careful what he said to Siri, checking his notes carefully for verbiage maybe ... as if Siri's responses were already canned to prevent any goofs during the presentation? I just hope it works as well as he made it out to be.

I'll have to watch the keynote when I get home tonight, and report back.

[chenzo51]

I can't wait till the jailbreak community cracks Siri and we can change the voice and use it for apps like Tom Tom. Apples maps suck and I never use it. Any idea if they plan on letting it go system wide? Can 3rd party apps use an API to utilize it or is it just locked to what apple has decided we need?

[DrewBear]

Does anyone think Scott Forstall was being very careful what he said to Siri, checking his notes carefully for verbiage maybe ... as if Siri's responses were already canned to prevent any goofs during the presentation? I just hope it works as well as he made it out to be.

Some people had a few minutes of hands-on time with the 4S. Here's what said:

The most impressive part was the demo of Siri, the new assistant that lets you do just about anything you can do on your phone -- but with your voice. We tried to psych it out with a bunch of random requests, including the history of Chester, Vermont (a lovely town) and the best Ramen places in San Francisco. Siri never faltered, never missed a beat. It worked as well as Scott's demo up on the stage. There's nothing better to say than that. We even sent ourselves a few text messages, which Siri transcribed to a T.

And here's what Topolsky at had to say:

Most notable of those features is the device’s “personal assistant,” otherwise know as Siri, which is a voice-controlled secretary of sorts which translates commands and questions into human language answers and actions. I had a chance to use this feature during our brief demo, and if I wasn’t blown away during Scott Forstall’s presentation on stage, this definitely changed my mind.

Siri is unique in the fact that you can ask it familiar, natural language questions like “show me movie theaters in the area” and it will return a real, readable answer and a list sorted by proximity. You can also say things like “wake me up at 6AM,” and it will set your alarm. But basic tasks like that are only half the story.

Siri works on the idea of logic and context, so when you say you want it to wake you up, you’re starting a conversation with the phone which it is actively following. If you want to sleep in a bit, you can say something like “change my alarm time,” and it knows what you’re talking about — it will prompt you for a new time.

Even more impressive is its ability to work out your calendar events. I asked the phone to schedule a meeting at 3:30 PM, only to be told that I already had a meeting at 4. And would I like to change my other meeting time? Yes Siri, I would.

Taken one by one, this might not sound like much, but in use I found it kind of staggering. I wasn’t speaking slowly (as Scott did during the event) or even trying very hard to sound clear. There was background noise. But it really worked, and worked well.

Neither of these guys are big Apple fans. They sound impressed.

[Jellotime91]

Does anyone think Scott Forstall was being very careful what he said to Siri, checking his notes carefully for verbiage maybe ... as if Siri's responses were already canned to prevent any goofs during the presentation? I just hope it works as well as he made it out to be.

No, he was being relatively casual and conversational. But you do have to be aware, of course, that you're talking to a computer. You can't start saying slang things like "Lemme smang it, gurl", and think the iPhone will know what you mean.

@DrewBear
Ok really? Engadget is not pro-Apple? That's hilarious. Please point me to a review where they've ever said the iPhone is anything but the best phone on the market.

And is 'Topolsky' Joshua Topolsky? Did he leave Engadget? Anyway that guy has never said anything negative about Apple that I've seen, and I used to watch their Engadget show religiously and follow Engadget like a lemming.

I am not at all contesting what they are saying, and I'm betting it's true, but I just think it's funny that you'd say neither of them are big Apple fans... As far as journalism goes, they are the biggest Apple fans around.

[LazyStarGazer]

I watched the keynote last night before going to bed, and whenScott was demonstrating Siri, I thought, "This could change my life".

I tend to be quite forgetful sometimes, so the ability to easily create time and location based reminders for myself is f'n great!

Call my insurance company on my lunch break.
Remind me to grab my lunch when I leave the house tomorrow morning.
Remind me to pick up butter when I pass by the grocery store on the way home.

I could do this now with current apps, but I usually don't because I find setting them up and typing them annoying.
Siri makes it fast and easy. I like easy.

[Alli]

I've had the Siri app all along. I've used it both successfully and unsuccessfully - more the latter than the former.

The problem with any of the voice recognition apps (AI or not) is that you have to activate them to use them.

[boomhower1820]

I'm looking forward to it. In my job I spend a lot of time in my car. The voice services I've tried on android haven't worked very well for me. This looks to be exponentially better.


Sent from my iPad 2 using Tapatalk

[Nicodm]

Siri is huge. I think it will blow people away. I can not wait to try it. People saying they wont get the 4S will be missing out on this.

[Jellotime91]

I've had the Siri app all along. I've used it both successfully and unsuccessfully - more the latter than the former.

The problem with any of the voice recognition apps (AI or not) is that you have to activate them to use them.

Very true! Unfortunately there's no way to avoid this, currently.

I feel though that if I'm going for a walk or exercising, it's very convenient to use the headset and send messages, set reminders, ask random questions, etc. I already use VoiceOver pretty often to call people while I'm walking to/from WalMart or waiting for the bus.

As for using it when I'm just at home, I don't know that I will use it for much other than conversion questions like "how many cups are in a litre" and so on.

[SeanHRCC]

For those of you that travel abroad with any kind of frequency, or have ever found yourself in a place where even the most basic english is not understood...I've read that Siri will have a very intuitive translator software that will basically make these situations nonexistent.

When me and my wife went to Italy years back, we left our tour and went on our own to several places and found ourselves unable to communicate a few times (having to search high and low for help with translation, as we only knew very basic and common italian which didn't help out in the country...

That is going to be amazing honestly...to be able to go anywhere in the world pretty much and have the phone act as a fluid translator.

[f1l4]

Siri is great but there is one little problem.
What about non english-german-french speaking world? What about small countries with "small" languages? No Siri for you!
I just want to say that it's not same iPhone for few countries and rest of the world.

Why to upgrade then? To get better camera?

Does anybody know will it be possible to use Siri in English in some other country or it won't be available at all?