Just How Much Can Siri Understand? Quite a bit...

[Jeff Campbell]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/05/iphone-4s-what-can-you-say-to-siri/' target='_blank'>http://www.tuaw.com/2011/10/05/ipho...ou-say-to-siri/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Curious about the iPhone 4S's new voice assistant feature? So were we. TUAW tracked down a set of example phrases that the new Siri voice assistant is capable of understanding. It turns out that Siri can handle many categories of voice interaction."</em></p><p><img height="400" src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/at/auto/1319160871.usr105634.jpg" width="600" /></p><p>Pretty long list of things that Siri can work with, such as stocks, weather, web searches, etc. For a laugh or two, you might also want to visit <a href="http://****thatsirisays.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">STSS</a> to see just what kinds of responses people have been getting with different questions. Warning, some of it is NOT family friendly.&nbsp;</p>

[Macguy59]

Ads for it for are somewhat misleading. The "Remind me when I'm at the store . . " gives the impression that Siri somehow knows when you are at a grocery store. In fact Siri only knows a "store" if there is a contact called Store with an address in your contact list. Location based reminders are more miss than hit right now. Time/day reminders are pretty accurate but there needs to be a distinction between Siri as a voice front end and the actual Reminders app

[Sven Johannsen]

It's conceivable. It could recognize your position as somewhere near a grocery store as identified in the NAV POI database. Then it could make the assumption you are on foot, because you aren't going over 10 miles per hour. That's giving it a lot of credit, but it could happen. Of course you could be at the barbershop, the strip mall that the grocery store is in, but that still would be a reasonable time to remind me.

You are right though, I don't think reminders would let you identify just 'the store' without some prior agreement. Haven't played that much with it.

I really wonder how many folks will actually come to grips with talking to their phone? It is a very simple and intuitive interface. Saying "make an appointment with my dentist at 3PM Thursday"" is alot more efficient than the multitude of taps and types it takes to set that up via touch screen, but I feel sort of odd doing that unless I am alone. I can already do speech entry and some tasks on my Windows Phone and Android Tablet, and I tend to still use the usual entry method. Maybe I just need to get used to it. Some hands free texting is becoming more natural.

Does anyone else feel weird talking to their phone? Conversationally, with others around?