My life with Apple's iPhone personal assistant
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This is one of those things I told myself I'd never use due to being gimmicky and likely of zero value to me, and to my enormous surprise it's proved itself really quite handy.
Now don't go overboard and think that I've gone over to the other side to be converted to the Cult of Cupertino. Whilst I have found my iphone and iOS to be well designed and in some ways superior to Android phone offerings, i still object to their low right-to-repair score and the sheer bloody cost of Apple hardware. i only have this phone due to the kindess of my friend Will; I'm not about to buy into the whole Apple ecosystem; my laptop will continue to be running Linux distros and barring major cash windfall i doubt that my next phone will be one of Apple's, but hot damn Siri has proved its worth in terms of quality of life.
To be able to call out "Hey Siri, what's the weather going to be like?" or "Hey Siri, how's your battery?" and get both a vocal and visual response almost instantly, has made my life easier from time to time, especially in the dark with the phone a yard away. "Hey Siri, set a time/alarm for X", "Hey, Siri, create a remind to X", "Hey, Siri, what's the temperature going to be at X?", "Hey, Siri, call so-snd-so". Very handy at times, that Siri. "Siri, send a message to so-and-so" is even more valuable although I only use it in private as i still feel foolish talking out loud to apparently imaginary people. Dictating short messages is handy as i can avoid the special hell that is fiddly on-screen keyboards that i always manage to fumble-finger. She (definitely "she", having a British female voice!) is generally accurate, but at least on this phone, not terribly smart. I've not yet figured out how to persuade her to edit a message, she struggles with follow-up requests, not having advanced AI (yet), but she responds nicely when i thank her. She even understands and uses British phrasing; I was surprised when I asked "Hey Siri, turn on the flashlight" and she told me the torch was on. Nice touch, Apple.
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