Dear Friends,
I thought some would be interested in the below article. the article below
was taken from cnn headline news this morning.
thought it would be helpful for those using an Iphone to know what is
happening. with our beloved voice interaction program.
Siri leaves beta, enters manhood
Heather Kelly, CNN
By Heather Kelly, CNN
September 17, 2013 -- Updated 2300 GMT (0700 HKT) | Filed under: Mobile
The updated Siri can adjust iPhone settings, do Bing searches for
The updated Siri can adjust iPhone settings, do Bing searches for
"wombats" and look through Twitter.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Apple is updating its Siri voice assistant feature on Thursday
Siri will get an optional male voice and will integrate Twitter and
Wikipedia results
Siri faces stiff competition from Google's Voice Search, which can
also be used on the iPhone
As part of the overhaul, Siri is no longer labeled a "beta" product
(CNN) -- When Siri, the voice "assistant" on the iPhone, made its
debut in 2011, it was welcomed as futuristic way to interact with our
gadgets. You could ask it simple questions, banter and flirt, or
launch applications with one push of a button and without slogging
through touchscreen menus.
Two years later, Apple is giving Siri a major overhaul as part of
Thursday's upgrade to its iOS 7 mobile operating system, and it's
marking the occasion by finally dropping Siri's "beta" label. (Calling
software beta usually means it is still a work in progress and that
the company is ironing out any bugs.)
What else has changed in the full-fledged, non-beta Siri? The most
obvious update is that it has added an option for a male voice. iPhone
owners in the UK already had a male Siri voice, but this is the first
time it will be available in American English and German, with more
languages expected to get their own male versions in the near future.
Hands-on impressions of the new iPhones
The voice gender can be swapped on the phone by going to Settings >
General > Siri. The female voice has also been improved to sound a
little more natural.
Though Siri's new male voice is a few octaves lower, the words and
answers seem to stay the same. Guy Siri still has the same canned
responses to joke questions like "What are you wearing?"
("Aluminosilicate glass and aluminum. Nice, huh?") and the phrasing of
its answers to real questions doesn't seem to change between the male
and female settings.
Visually, Siri has been overhauled so its design on the phone's screen
is more in line with iOS 7's flattened look. Instead of a dark gray
background sliding up from the bottom, it throws a translucent blurred
background over whatever screen is on your phone when you launch Siri.
It shows a single wavy line that moves as it registers your voice.
Siri has added Twitter and Wikipedia integration, so you can ask to
see recent tweets about a hot news story or see the Wikipedia entry
for something specific without leaving the Siri interface. You can ask
to see what's trending on Twitter, tweets for a specific hashtag, or
simply, "What's going on?"
New iPhone hardware, software a boon for gamers
Siri has also expanded its powers to include control of common iPhone
settings, something that was noticeably missing in beta Siri. You can
now turn settings like Bluetooth and Wi-Fi on and off, change your
screen brightness, turn on Do Not Disturb or view a specific app's
settings. If you use the new iTunes Radio feature, you can vocally
express your enthusiasm or displeasure with specific songs to
customize music stations.
One of the biggest challenges facing new Siri is some serious
competition from Google.
Slowly and with less fanfare, Google has been building up its own
powerful natural-language voice search in recent years. Although it
lacks a catchy anthropomorphic name, Google Voice Search takes on many
of the same tasks as Siri. In addition to typical Google search
results, it pulls answers from Gmail, Google Calendar and other Google
accounts the way Siri does from the e-mail, contacts and calendar apps
on the iPhone.
Google Voice Search is less chatty, but by cutting out extra words it
is sometimes faster to return an answer. It cannot be used to control
phone settings or launch applications on an iPhone, but if you are a
Google Account user it is a legitimate alternative for tasks like
calendaring.
The competition between the two companies helps explain the new Siri's
most unfortunate change. Siri has dropped Google as its default search
engine of choice and switched to Microsoft's Bing. When a question
can't be answered by Siri itself or a Wikipedia entry, it will pull up
web results from Bing directly in Siri. Unlike in Safari, there's no
way to switch the default search engine to Google.
Keeping answers in Siri does save time, however. Previously a Siri Web
search would launch Google in Safari, requiring you to unlock the
phone.
But don't dismay, Google fans. You can still ask Siri to "Google"
something, and it will launch Safari and do a regular Google search.
- - - -
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