General Do you use Siri?!

[Starfia]

Yep, a ton!

Since I early-adopted HomePod and use Philips Hue stuff for lights, life is much closer to Star Trek. I most commonly request light changes, news and weather – I seldom touch light switches.

Second most commonly, I open apps on the Mac and iOS (e.g. just by saying "Safari") rather than mucking about with that tedious icon-tapping.

Third most commonly, possibly asking for words' definitions.

It's far from perfect and only feels so rich, but altogether something I'd miss a lot if it disappeared.

 

[akash.nu]

Very interesting. So far looks like more people don’t use it but people who actually do, are using it a lot.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I use Siri albeit not every day. I use it mostly to check bank balance and reminders.

I.... I forgot that Siri could check my bank balance... (Yes, my bank app allows it, I just completely spaced it after reading when they added it.) Thanks for reminding me!

 

[neutrino23]

I use Siri multiple times every day, mostly with Apple Watch. It is now faster to say “Siri, launch workout app” than to navigate the menus to get there. Siri knows the weather in places I’m traveling to, Siri knows sports scores and schedules, Siri is good for doing arithmetic. I also use Siri to call people. Faster than drilling down to their number.

 

[tarsins]

Didn't use Siri much before getting Homepods but now I use it daily, mainly to control the lights but also to add things to the shopping list, play music, read the news and some quick queries. The HomePod has really opened-up Siri for me and I also find it understands me much better.

 

[stillcrazyman]

I use Siri to make calls, send and read texts and play music. I also use it for navigation. All that is done in the CarPlay interface. Other uses include setting timers, alarms, and appointments. Other than that, not much. If I need to look something up on the web, that's easy enough to do.

 

[PeLaNo]

I use it all the time to make call,play music,set timer and many more. She’s far from perfect and has so much inconsistency in many ways. But when she works it’s perfect.

 

[HungryForMore]

I started to use Siri a lot to control iPhone since I got a pair of AirPods.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Multiple times every day. Very convenient.

 

[Ifti]

Don't use it at all.

 

[Shikaka]

I still feel like a jack@$$ talking to A.I. assistants in public, so I pretty much only use Siri in the car.

Unfortunately, a lot of my queries get the useless response, “This is what I found on the web...”

 

[ddrulez]

I use Siri on the iPhone/Apple Watch for phone calls, making calendar entries, for Homekit, timer, reminders and alarm clock daily.
On Apple TV I use it to skip forward every time I looking a anime.
I use it to calculate and for currency maths too.

 

[s15119]

‪Coming to think of it, I haven’t used Siri in the last year or 2. For me, voice recognition systems just have too many hurdles to get over to be used ubiquitously.

Voice recognition systems work in very specific conditions and I just feel like this is not a technology that will be used as a major input system in the mainstream consumer setup.

I wonder what the usage statistics is like throughout the world.

I use it multiple times daily. It's very effective for what it does.

 

[Sital]

Today I asked Siri when the post office in my town opened, by naming my town in my query. She came back with the post office times in a town with the same name in another state.

So, I repeated my query naming my state too. She came back with post offices closest to my current location at that time, not in the town I specified.

Finally, I repeated the query giving the street address of the post office I wanted the hours for, and she still just listed the ones closest to me. The one I was looking for was 5th on her list.

She's pretty good for sports scores though.

 

[ddrulez]

Worked for me right now, but Siri isn't really smart. I use Google to look for such informations.

I was really surprised that Siri give my the right answer.

 

[mjschabow]

Siri integration with Apple Music is amazing. For example, I can simply ask to shuffle Led Zeppelin Essentials and it will do it. It’s great for my commute. Best part is that the particular playlist isn’t even in my library.

 

[danny842003]

I use it on my HomePod daily with Apple Music but even then I tend to use my iPhone more. I have a strong northern English accent and it’s never going to be ideal for me I don’t think.

 

[Clix Pix]

Non-user here..... I don't need it and don't want it.

 

[Solomani]

Hey Siri: Turn on Low Power Mode.

Hey Siri: Turn on Night Shift.


Very basic commands. But Siri follows them reliably.

Ironically, telling Siri to turn ON Low Power Mode also will disable the 'Hey Siri' voice activation. The whole concept of Low Power Mode is to help conserve iPhone battery life, which means de-activating or throttling down several non-essential battery-draining activities.

 

[ipponrg]

I've turned off Siri on my iPhone, iPad, and all 3 of my Macbooks due to consistent misfires, poor tracking, and having to usually adjust what I told it afterwards.

Somethings it thinks I want to talk about TV series to it. Others, it hates when I ask if someone is serious. And sometimes it likes my cereal. I can't take Siri seriously because of this, and Apple should start over or improve on the tech.

 

[incrowdcynic]

I user her everyday, and it becomes clear after only a few minutes of use (supposing you are a thoughtful first time user)
that there are a lot of simple and intuitive/obvious inquiries she cannot respond to.


I would like to see what I call conversational extenders that allow her to keep with the subject of a previous inquiry or recognize that the same subject is being discussed.
[doublepost=1522043035][/doublepost]I also keep it active on my iOS and OSX devices so that I don't need to press a button. On OSX I use a workaround so that "Hey Siri" essentially works the same way it does on iOS.

It would be great if while at home she could detect that I'm using several devices and send the information to a particular device.

 

[pika2000]

The biggest barrier for me from using Siri is the voice recognition. If it cannot even recognize what you're saying half the time, you won't bother using it anymore. Heck, even Google Assistant, which imo has much better voice recognition, is not perfect.

So for these personal assistants to start being used more regularly, they have to recognize my commands perfectly first. Until that is accomplished, they are not solving any problems for me, only adding more annoyances of having to repeatedly saying the same thing.

 

[CopyChief]

I use Siri all the time, but for very basic things like setting timers, reminders and playing music. I typically don't use Siri for navigation. It's not a voice recognition problem, though: it's a POI/search problem within Apple maps. For saved POIs it works fine ("Show me how to get to work,") but finding unknown locations is terrible even when I type in items. The biggest problem (as others have mentioned here) is that it doesn't take into account current location when searching, so search results are often hundreds of miles away for simple things like pizza or post offices.

For other inquiries, questions with vey specific answers work best. Anything with a general, broad answer is going to lead to "here's what I found on the web."

In general, the biggest Siri shortcoming is context. The folks at Apple are trying, certainly - predicting what you might want to do at certain times of day - but simple things still don't quite measure up, like the POI search mentioned above.

 

[rukind2]

‪Coming to think of it, I haven’t used Siri in the last year or 2. For me, voice recognition systems just have too many hurdles to get over to be used ubiquitously.

Voice recognition systems work in very specific conditions and I just feel like this is not a technology that will be used as a major input system in the mainstream consumer setup.

I wonder what the usage statistics is like throughout the world.

If I want a headache I’ll use Siri.

 

[Volusia]

I use it for turning on/off lights around the house, timing when cooking, reminder notes, making calls when on AirPods, sometimes sending brief text messages.