Happy 2018 Birthday Siri! Apple’s virtual assistant made her debut on October 4, 2011 which makes her seven years old today. Siri is now more powerful than ever, and with the release of iOS 12 users can work to customize the assistant a bit with the Shortcuts app. Siri can make calls or send texts for you whether you are driving, have your hands full, or are simply on the go. It also offers proactive suggestions, like texting someone that you’re running late for a meeting, so you can stay in touch effortlessly. Set alarms, timers, and reminders. Get directions. Preview your calendar. Siri can do it all without your ever having to pick up a device. Based on your routine, Siri can even anticipate what you might need to help you breeze through your day. Machine learning is constantly making Siri smarter. And you can personalize Siri to make it even more useful. Choose to have Siri speak one of 21 different languages. Teach Siri who your family members are. And spell out unusual words so Siri can recognize them in the future.
Check It Out: Happy 2018 Birthday Siri! Apple’s Virtual Assistant is 7
7 years old? How ironic since Siri has the intelligence of a slow 7 year old……dog. In fact Siri doesn’t do much more than the Voice control we’ve had built into Macs going back to OS 9 maybe OS 7!!! Open Files, Search, close files…. Interestingly the machine learning aspects and the primitive attempts to keep context for multiple queries seem to be related to how much privacy you want to give up = your shopping, eating, location habits etc because that’s the first thing Siri wants you to give up – your location. Nope – when Apple bought Siri it was on the way to being a hooked up (to 3rd parties) intelligent assistant before Apple buried it in their sandbox and froze it limited to basic questions and simple command of the object you are using – which seems not very ‘intelligent’ 🍎