Siri leaves beta, enters manhood
http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/17/tech/mobile/siri-changes-ios-7/index.html
Siri leaves beta, enters manhood - CNN.com
CNN Tech
By Heather Kelly, CNN
updated 7:00 PM EDT, Tue September 17, 2013 | Filed under:
Mobile
The updated Siri can adjust iPhone settings, do Bing searches for
The updated Siri can adjust iPhone settings, do Bing searches for "wombats"
and look through Twitter.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Apple is updating its Siri voice assistant feature on Thursday
Siri will get an optional male voice and will integrate Twitter and
Wikipedia results
Siri faces stiff competition from Google's Voice Search, which can also be
used on the iPhone
As part of the overhaul, Siri is no longer labeled a "beta" product
(CNN) -- When Siri, the voice "assistant" on the iPhone, made its debut in
2011, it was welcomed as futuristic way to interact with our gadgets. You
could
ask it simple questions, banter and flirt, or launch applications with one
push of a button and without slogging through touchscreen menus.
Two years later, Apple is giving Siri a major overhaul as part of Thursday's
upgrade to its iOS 7 mobile operating system, and it's marking the occasion
by finally dropping Siri's "beta" label. (Calling software beta usually
means it is still a work in progress and that the company is ironing out any
bugs.)
What else has changed in the full-fledged, non-beta Siri? The most obvious
update is that it has added an option for a male voice. iPhone owners in the
UK already had a male Siri voice, but this is the first time it will be
available in American English and German, with more languages expected to
get their
own male versions in the near future.
Hands-on impressions of the new iPhones
The voice gender can be swapped on the phone by going to Settings > General
> Siri. The female voice has also been improved to sound a little more
natural.
Though Siri's new male voice is a few octaves lower, the words and answers
seem to stay the same. Guy Siri still has the same canned responses to joke
questions like "What are you wearing?" ("Aluminosilicate glass and aluminum.
Nice, huh?") and the phrasing of its answers to real questions doesn't seem
to change between the male and female settings.
Visually, Siri has been overhauled so its design on the phone's screen is
more in line with iOS 7's flattened look. Instead of a dark gray background
sliding
up from the bottom, it throws a translucent blurred background over whatever
screen is on your phone when you launch Siri. It shows a single wavy line
that moves as it registers your voice.
Siri has added Twitter and Wikipedia integration, so you can ask to see
recent tweets about a hot news story or see the Wikipedia entry for
something specific
without leaving the Siri interface. You can ask to see what's trending on
Twitter, tweets for a specific hashtag, or simply, "What's going on?"
New iPhone hardware, software a boon for gamers
Siri has also expanded its powers to include control of common iPhone
settings, something that was noticeably missing in beta Siri. You can now
turn settings
like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on and off, change your screen brightness, turn on
Do Not Disturb or view a specific app's settings. If you use the new iTunes
Radio feature, you can vocally express your enthusiasm or displeasure with
specific songs to customize music stations.
One of the biggest challenges facing new Siri is some serious competition
from Google.
Slowly and with less fanfare, Google has been building up its own powerful
natural-language voice search in recent years. Although it lacks a catchy
anthropomorphic
name, Google Voice Search takes on many of the same tasks as Siri. In
addition to typical Google search results, it pulls answers from Gmail,
Google Calendar
and other Google accounts the way Siri does from the e-mail, contacts and
calendar apps on the iPhone.
Google Voice Search is less chatty, but by cutting out extra words it is
sometimes faster to return an answer. It cannot be used to control phone
settings
or launch applications on an iPhone, but if you are a Google Account user it
is a legitimate alternative for tasks like calendaring.
The competition between the two companies helps explain the new Siri's most
unfortunate change. Siri has dropped Google as its default search engine of
choice and switched to Microsoft's Bing. When a question can't be answered
by Siri itself or a Wikipedia entry, it will pull up web results from Bing
directly
in Siri. Unlike in Safari, there's no way to switch the default search
engine to Google.
Keeping answers in Siri does save time, however. Previously a Siri Web
search would launch Google in Safari, requiring you to unlock the phone.
But don't dismay, Google fans. You can still ask Siri to "Google" something,
and it will launch Safari and do a regular Google search.
_______________________________________________
ATI (Adaptive Technology Inc.)
A special interest affiliate of the Missouri Council of the Blind
http://moblind.org/membership/affiliates/adaptive_technology
