Siri, the spritely iPhone 4S assistant, has won herself a lot of celebrity friends, if Apple's new television advertisements are any indication. Aerial snake wrangler (and noted gazpacho chef) Samuel L. Jackson appeared in a commercial with Siri, followed shortly thereafter by a spot featuring actress and human-embodiment-of-cake-frosting Zooey Deschanel. Now, actor, director and fashion designer(!) John Malkovich has become the latest famous person to hang with Siri, firing off one-word commands at his iPhone whilst lounging in a spacious room that has many leather-bound books and that, by all appearances, would seem to smell of rich, rich mahogany.
As we have with previous Siri commercials, we thought we'd put Siri to the test and try to recreate the advertisement for ourselves, just to see how well Siri works in real life. The process is simple: Everything John Malkovich says to Siri, I say to Siri on my own iPhone 4S here at The Huffington Post offices. Every take you see is a first take, because what's the point of a voice assistant if you have to say something twice?
In our tests, we're looking at how fast Siri goes, how accurately Siri performs, and how well Siri can understand me. Because here's the thing: Not only are the Siri commercials the subject of two class action suits -- both of which claim that Apple over-promises on Siri's capabilities in its advertisements -- now we have an article in Fortune quoting a former Apple employee saying that Steve Jobs "would have lost his mind" over Siri and that current Apple execs are "embarrassed" by the little assistant's performance.
Aw, Apple execs! Stop being so hard on yourselves! Siri is a pretty good start, and it's really talented at setting alarms! Also, even though people aren't really using it that often, its very existence does seem to make people happy.
Seriously, though, Siri has indeed successfully entered the zeitgeist, and most people don't seem to mind Siri's so-called shortcomings: In a December survey by ChangeWave, a full 50 percent of iPhone 4S buyers said their favorite thing about their new smartphones was Siri.
But back to the ad, and the supposedly "embarrassing" Siri. Below, I test out Siri (and my John Malkovich "impression"). The result: Siri does well with the one-word commands. The voice assistant makes one mistake -- it hears "true" when I say "joke" -- but otherwise performance is fast and accurate.
Granted, I'm only saying one word at a time, so it's harder for voice recognition to mess up. Siri definitely had much more trouble with the more sophisticated commands from the infamous "Rock God" commercial when we tried that out a couple of months ago.
Overall, however, Siri passes this test. See the full play-by-play below, with a special Malkovich-ian treat at the end of the video:
Follow Jason Gilbert on Twitter: www.twitter.com/gilbertjasono
But it was useful for text messaging though I have to go in and edit as it cannot parse some simple phrases, text messaging has become much more verbose and useful, no more 'K responses.
Siri has a ways to go to be useful on all its expected levels.
There is a reason the accuracy has gone up since the "Rock God" commercial and that's because they make sure to program Siri to do exactly what she does in the commercials after that embarrassing outing of false advertising. Just because you can re-create these commercials doesn't mean she can do everything on here, it simply means she was programed to respond to those exact commands the exact way they are in the commercial. I bet if you changed up even a couple of words you would get a wildly different result.
And here, I thought that Siri was an actual living being whose soul inhabited my iPhone. Way to burst my bubble, Debbie Downer.
NaySayers are resisting Siri almost as much as they resisted the launch of the iPhone itself. Of course they claim that Apple didn't invent mobile devices, or voice assistants. But love it, or hate it, there's no denying that Apple "did" deliver the very first voice assistant with a healthy sense of humor.
Something robots, clones and droids are not yet programmed to comprehend.
Of course my Android voice search does what is shown in the Siri commercials just as well without the annoying robo-voice.
I think we need jailbreak more than it
something like http://www.asoftmall.com/resources/how-to-jailbreak-iphone-downgrade-iphone-firmware-iphone-transfer.html is good tips
http://youtu.be/CFMG9mPBeSQ
Those ads are completely absurd and they know it. Like the ads, Siri is the first voice assistant module created with a quirky sense of humor and the ability to make fun of itself.
It's so easy to diss these dopey commercials that the last thing we need is an overnight onslaught of haughty, instant-parody dissertations of the balmy beta app. Especially when there are dozens of (dead-serious) Droid ads just begging to be spoofed!
; )
2) Only doing one take ruins your test. Why? Because the Nuance voice engine (what actually powers SIri and helps it figure out what you want) LEARNS from you as you talk to it. It figures out your mannerisms, your accents, your slang, etc. You need to talk to it in order for it to learn. So if you only speak to it once, it's not picking up that ability.
In short, do a better job testing.
The Malkovic commercial implies that he's had the Siri going for a while and has built a relationship with it. Not a hard concept to grasp.