I should go to bed but I’d like to mention this. My non-geek friends keep asking how well Siri will work. I don’t know but it’s easy to see that it works pretty well based on what Apple has shown us and what early reviews are saying. If it works well in my life or yours is not an answer I have yet. However, there’s this note about Siri being “Beta” on the iPhone 4S despite it being one of the key features and motivations for many iPhone 4 users deciding to upgrade to the 4S (among faster CPU, improved camera, etc).<\/p>\n
One thing that a lot of us have glossed over is that Siri is software built into iPhone 4S but the technology stops at “Say a command”. The logic of Siri takes place in Apple’s multi-billion dollar server farms around the world. These server farms receive our speech and\/or text and try to figure out what we’re trying to do and, once they come to a conclusion, the servers tell Siri to complete a task like creating a new SMS or playing a song (if it’s available). The beautiful thing is that Siri can learn in real time without a software update. Over time, as we provide more input, Siri will evolve (Think Skynet on your phone) but the brain still is in the cloud. Siri will continue to improve hourly and will one day break free of the Beta label when Apple feels it is ready.<\/p>\n
This is something Google does where the voice controls in their mobile apps actually are sent to the cloud to be deciphered and then there’s Google Voice and how it has improved the translation of our voicemails over time. This “learn as you go” intelligence is fascinating to me as much as it is scary.<\/p>\n
So, don’t think of Siri as a software system built into iPhone 4S. Think of it as a terminal into a brain consisting of thousands of servers that evolve every hour. Siri will get better the moment we all start using it so, for my benefit, use the hell out of it so my experience gets better.<\/p>\n
In closing, Siri software on your iPhone is not beta. Apple doesn’t ship beta products. However, the service in Apple’s Cloud that deciphers our commands and sends them back to Siri is in beta but I doubt it will remain that way for long. A few million iPhone users are going to help out starting this Friday.<\/p>\n
What’s your command?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I should go to bed but I’d like to mention this. 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