Some Apple fans no longer on speaking terms with Siri | 0 Comments
By brian on 02-22-2012 08:22 PM
Siri is easily the most touted feature of the 4S, Apple’s best-selling iPhone ever. And there’s speculation it might be a feature in the next version of the Apple iPad, expected to be unveiled in early March. So four months after Siri’s debut, we wanted to see how consumers are taking to the talking assistant. Is it a must-have addition they couldn’t live without, or a novelty that seemed fun at first, but now is barely used?
USA Today recently reached out to an unscientific sampling of readers to find out, and the verdict is 50-50. Some people absolutely love it, while others say they are no longer on speaking terms with Siri. Ken Burke of Vancouver, Wash., says he checked in with Siri at the beginning because it was fun, but he bored with it quickly. “I can count on one hand how many times I have used it in the last three months.
Apple, which declined to comment on this story, has not released specific numbers for sales of the iPhone 4S. But some 187 million iPhones of all stripes have been sold since the device’s 2007 launch. And in the quarter that ended last December, Apple sold a record 37 million iPhones. Verizon Wireless and Sprint now sell the phones in the U.S. in addition to AT&T, which was once the exclusive U.S. carrier. When Apple introduced Siri, it made a point of saying the feature was in “beta,” and says on its website, “We’ll continue to improve it over time.”
Gary Earl, from Nashville, says he uses Siri so much — as many as 30 times a day — “my 8-year-old boy has been telling everyone I have a new girlfriend.” He uses it for reminders, Web searches and setting his calendar. an Neves, who lives in New York but hails from Brazil, finds it “annoying” when he asks Siri to dial a family member, “and it says I found five restaurants close to you.”
Ginny Geer of Memphis says she has to repeat her request to Siri too many times and ends up “just typing in a phone number or looking something up for myself. I had a sassy teenager, I don’t need a sassy phone.”
Competing phones based on Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating systems have speech recognition as well, “but they’re not nearly as refined as Siri is,” he says. Siri may be ground-breaking and the most widespread use yet of voice search, but for consumer Eric Casperson of Houston, it still has a long ways to go. While he uses Siri occasionally for reminders, more often than not, it’s just “a fun toy,” he says. “Good to settle a bar bet, asking her to do the research for you.”
Source: USA Today
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