In Mat Honan's scathing critique of Siri, one part jumps out:
If I have my camera app open, it can't take a picture or set a timer ("I'm not much of a photographer," it replies), which is precisely the kind of thing voice control could be very useful for.
That first part irks me. This criticism is in so many reviews of the Siri service, that it can't take photos.
Excuse me? In what scenario is this actually more useful than pressing a button? You would have to have the camera app open, press and hold a button (either the home or remote button) and say "Siri, take a photo please."
Typically, I use Siri when my iPhone is tucked away in my pocket. Again, this use case not useful for photography.
The iPhone camera app doesn't support timers, so I'm surprised Honan would want Siri to support a feature that doesn't (yet) exist in the app. There are alternatives, like Camera+.
(Sidenote: you can remotely control the iPhone's camera; you just need a pair of headphones with the microphone and volume controls on it. Press volume up on the remote, and bam, picture taken.)
Not perfect
Siri isn't perfect, but it is a beta. "Beta is for Google," Honan writes. Perhaps he's right. At its current state, it doesn't do everything users could possibly expect. It does do a few things very well, particularly with timers (of the countdown kind) and reminders.
Would I like it if it tweeted for me, without having to work around it with text messaging? Of course. Would I like it if it remembered syntax throughout a dictated text message? Without a doubt. Would I like it if some features didn't require an Internet connection? You get the idea.
I can't help but think about the first iPhone iterations. When it first launched in 2007, would I have liked it to support third-party applications? Would I have liked the software to support multitasking?
When you invest in an Apple product, you invest in its potential. That you're buying a product that will be improved over the course of its lifespan. The first iPhone gained access to third-party apps. The iPhone 3GS gained multitasking support and notifications. Siri will be improved.
Maybe, it launched as a beta because speech recognition -- a critique Honan launched at Apple -- isn't there yet. Siri doesn't understand me 100 percent of the time. I don't think any speech recognition software can come close to that kind of accuracy.The people who study and work on speech recognition programming, Benoit Maison writes, say "there is no data like more data."
And that, perhaps, is why it doesn't have more hooks into other applications. Start with firm, tested first-party applications and then move out to support third parties.
Remember that no other phone had an assistant feature that comes close to Siri or even the potential of Siri. It's going to be hard for other software makers to catch up to bring something to the table that is more useful than starting a Web search for you.
Siri has room for improvement, but it's hard not to look at the competition and say "Wow, Apple is so far ahead."