Apple's Siri Could Revolutionize How Users Interact With Their Smartphones

Apple's Siri Could Revolutionize How Users Interact With Their Smartphones

Apple's recent release of Siri, the intelligent virtual personal assistant for the iPhone 4S, may signify an important shift in how users interact with their mobile devices and further solidify the company's leading edge in the smartphone industry.

What does Siri do?

Siri is a voice command system that allows users to sends texts, find information and set up reminders via speech, but it also does something much more revolutionary: it attempts to understand the user.

If you ask Siri "Are there any good Cuban restaurants nearby?" she (Siri's voice is female) will provide you with a list, organized by rating. If you then turn around and ask "How about French?" she'll give you a list of French restaurants nearby, understanding that you are still talking about restaurants.

You could then ask Siri to book you a table at La Palette at 7 pm with Dad, and she'd do so. Then say, "send him an email reminder also," and Siri will know you are still talking about dinner with your father and will send a message accordingly.

And Siri only gets smarter; as she gets to know more about your habits, contacts, schedules and interests, she becomes more efficient. Siri is different from other voice command systems because she learns, because she is contextual and personalized.

She's Funny, Too.

Yes, Siri might even make you laugh. If you ask Siri "to open the pod bay doors," she understands this is a reference to HAL, the evil supercomputer from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and will reply with something like, "We intelligent agents will never live that down, apparently."

How Siri could change the way people think of smartphones:

Although reviewers have made it clear Siri still has some glitches (she does mishear or misunderstand at times, for example,) the application hints at the remarkable possibilities for the future and represents an important shift to more personalized and efficient service from smartphones, making them even more indispensable to the user.

Siri and Google:

Since Siri's release there has also been some speculation on the effect the application will have on Google. If Siri is a more intelligent and personalized search engine, does this mean it will ultimately kill Google? If a user can search for a nearby restaurant via the application, then book a reservation on OpenTable through it, who's going to use Google anymore?

Other experts have been quick to point out the unlikelihood that Siri will cause Google's demise. First of all, Apple will surely not license Siri to other smartphone manufacturers, meaning only iPhone users would potentially stop using Google, not a large enough portion of the market to do fatal damage. In addition, Siri and Google's functionality do not overlap entirely. Most importantly, though, is that fact that it sill remains to be seen whether Siri will become a widely used, well-loved application essential to the iPhone user's experience, or simply a flash-in-the-pan gimmick users never really warm up to.

Want to learn more?
Contact ComputerSupport.com today at http://www.computersupport.com/ for more information.