“Siri” is a Great Idea, But Far From Perfect – The Geek Girl Report

By now, most of you have heard about Siri, the digital assistant program on Apple's iPhone 4S. She can give you directions, reminders and suggestions of where to eat. She can set up appointments, take dictation, even tell you what the weather's going to do. She can do a lot of things, but she's not perfect. As you would expect from new technology, Siri makes mistakes. A lot. In fact, as we mentioned on Lubbock's First News last week, Siri's glitches made national headlines when it was revealed that she couldn't give a straight answer when asked to look for abortion clinics.

The fact is, Siri is still in it's "beta" mode. That means that it's still being tested and not in its final form, so there's bound to be mistakes. However, it strikes me as a little odd that Apple would put a piece of software (Siri) that's not in its final version on a piece of hardware (iPhone 4S) that is. My guess is that Apple was in too much of a rush to get the iPhone 4S out, and wanted to throw Siri on there as a way to differentiate it from the iPhone 4 since, as I've said before, there are very few differences between the iPhone 4 and the 4S.

I'm not blasting Siri by any means. I think it's a great idea. You have one convenient (albeit slightly flawed) program that handles all of your concerns and inquiries and interacts with you like a real person. She's even got her own attitude. (Try telling Siri "I love you," or "What is the meaning of life?" and see what happens...) And frankly, I'll be very surprised if Siri does not make an appearance on future iPhones. But seeing as how she's still in "beta" mode, I'm sure this won't be the last we see of Siri, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the software develops in future iPhones.