The iOS 6 Review: Maps Thoroughly Investigated and More
by Brian Klug & Saumitra Bhagwat on September 19, 2012 2:21 PM ESTSiri
We put Siri through her paces quite extensively when we reviewed the iPhone 4S, and since then, she’s learnt some new tricks along the way. Also, Siri is no longer exclusive to the iPhone. At Apple’s Fall event last week, it was revealed that in addition to the 3rd generation iPad, Siri will also be available on the new 5th generation iPod touch. So with the iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5, that’s four devices with support for Siri now. Good stuff.
Well hello there Siri running on an iPad!
Location based Siri queries really depend on, as you might guess, your location. A lot of queries worked fine in the US, however we also did testing in Dubai where the results have been quite appalling. There’s very little that you can do with Siri in Dubai. Anything location-based simply doesn’t work, but other, more general queries work just fine.
I was actually quite impressed by Siri’s sports quotient; it pulls up game schedules and team rosters very accurately. Now this isn’t limited to American sports, because it pulled up information about teams and schedules for the English Premier League as well. Other stuff like Cricket and Table Tennis evoked a much humbler response; probably something we can expect to see a few years down the line. Siri can now also launch apps, but unless you have a ton of apps, it’s probably faster to do it the old-fashioned way. Just for fun, I was looking at some of the queries Anand ran for Siri in our iPhone 4S review and decided to replicate the one for calculating tips. I was pleasantly surprised to see the results, because it returned the answer in USD as well as AED (UAE Dirham). Its little things like these that go a long way towards fostering the kind of overzealous customer loyalty that Apple enjoys.
Siri's good with non-American sports too.
People may use Siri to do a lot of different things and I would argue that, because of the subjective nature of the results, primarily based on your location and other external factors, a review would simply not do justice to all the readers. So instead of focusing on Siri’s performance, we will be focusing more on its implementation on the iPad.
Now the iPad has a mammoth 9.7” screen compared to the 3.5” screen on the iPhone 4S and the 4” screens on the new iPhone 5 and 5th generation iPod touch. I expected Siri on the iPad to be more than a simple port of the iPhone version; but that’s exactly what Apple’s done. I’ve had a similar complaint with Notifications Center on the iPad as well. Apple’s entire argument with the iPad was that apps get a bigger canvas and developers can do a lot more with the extra screen real estate. But with Siri, Apple does not seem to be making good use of that space at all. You get the same-sized UI from the iPhone, and after one query, you’re left scrolling away to glory to keep track of your results.
It could have been helpful if Siri had a slightly more optimized UI to leverage the added screen space afforded by the iPad. Just as an example, I tried to get Manchester United’s team roster, and low and behold, I was scrolling forever to get through that list. At the very least, they could make the UI taller so that it displays more information. Apart from that, I do not have any major gripes with the way Siri works on the iPad, and it’s definitely a welcome addition.
105 Comments
View All Comments
CharonPDX - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
You state that it's a new features that the status bar can be changed by apps, and specifically call out Twitter as one that can add status messages to it.That was in iOS 5. It annoyed me when Twitter would put a status update in the status bar, because the status bar then lots its "tap to go to the top" function until Twitter's update went away.
Second, you state that the main Photo Stream and Shared Photo Streams are exclusionary, an either/or proposition. I beg to differ. My photos still get dumped into my main Photo Stream, while I can have multiple Shared Photo Streams (either invite-only or public.)
The_Kristoffer - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link
When are you going to publish the rundown of Haswell? I've been waiting for, what feels like, forever!videogames101 - Tuesday, October 9, 2012 - link
I believe a full sphere measures 4pi steradians.raok7 - Thursday, September 5, 2013 - link
absolutely 4s will be better but i think very soon 5 is going to introduce so its will replace the market of 4s...http://www.jupiterelectronics.com/
http://www.steelrange.com/heavy-duty-racks.html
http://www.bajeria.com/
http://www.genesis-gifts.com/
http://www.opportune.in
http://www.fivebrosforgings.com/
http://www.aimaxprovider.com/index.php/magento-web...
Aboss - Thursday, February 27, 2020 - link
Yes you are correct.https://www.bargaintents.co.za
https://www.bosstents.co.za
https://www.cheaptents.co.za
https://tentsonline.co.za