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.
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melgross - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
That's not actually true. The only thing you're limited to buying from Apple is apps. Everything else can be bought elsewhere and read, or played. That's true for books, music, video of any kind, including Tv shows and movies, PDF's, etc.reuthermonkey1 - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Assuming that Apple continues to allow those 3rd party apps to exist in their App Store...GSRennie - Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - link
I would rather buy Apps from the Apple Store and have some confidence that the products have been reviewed for functionality and are virus-free. I gave up on Windows years ago after adding up the time I was spending on malware control using the mix of products that you seemed to need to do a complete job. Add to that the item and money spent to get rid of viruses on various family computers (the kids weren't as cautious as I was). No doubt the Windows world is much more secure these days but I'm not going back. I run the occasional Windows program on Parallels on a laptop (with virus protection). Other than Apps for iPhones, iPads, iPods (all Apple devices), I don't see what outside content I'm blocked from getting by Apple. I can buy any software I can run on OSX and run any Windows software using Boot Camp and a Windows installation or Windows emulation options. As to the agency pricing model Apple and its partner publishers were pushing for textbooks, lets wait for a court ruling on whether that amounts to collusive price fixing. Apple wasn't setting the prices, and the publishers (with some considerable support from authors) were making the case they needed more revenue than derived from Amazon discounted sales to survive. I'm not trying to take sides on that issue until I hear more on the merits of both positions.Sufo - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
lol, instead of teaching your kids how to not bork a computer you simply ran away from the problem. If you can afford a mac, you could have afforded to buy them their own shitty laptop, which they could infect to the point of failure and then learn how to deal with the mess themselves... or not. Seems the typical mac user is a lazy parent as well as user!robinthakur - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
I think we are coming to the point where a computer should not be easily bork-able because it is essentially just an appliance which is reliable and easy to operate. This means things like OS drives and system files should be hidden to end users, but this would drive us technical types round the bend.The solution to most infections is simply to reinstall and restore/repoint data, and buying them a shitty laptop which may get infected constantly will simply waste time that they could otherqwise spend doing something more useful. Unless you teach your kids how to reinstall Windows also, that's a lot of wasted hours.
Also quite a bit of how you don't get infected is not necessarily teachable, which I realised recently trying to explain it to someone les technical. I was downloading a link from Zdnet and on the page there were loads of ads and download managers that looked like the download button but when you clicked them they tried to install some stupid software. The actual download link was fairly hidden. This and the dangers of pop ups/cookies/add-ins is not an easy subject to teach, its something we have learnewd and now take for granted.
If my Windows 7 or 8 pc (self-built I might add) kept getting infected with malware in a way which was difficult to defend against using the standard approaches, I would 100% look at moving to another infrastructure. Not everybody has the knowledge or time to deal with the problem as we would. It does not denote laziness, simply different priorities than you own. If a curated app store does get around the danger of malware from unsafe install locations, it's not surprising that its incredibly popular with regular users and is now being adapted by most of the companies out there. Even Android only trusts known safe download locations by default.
steven75 - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
Ah the classic "blame the user" mindset instead of the fact that Microsoft Windows is a perilous platform to use when it comes to security.MykeM - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
The choice to shop where goods are sold cheaply is all good but it's not without downfall. But as someone pointed out your fury is bit misguided. With the exception of Apps, I can load onto my iPhone movies, books and songs that I got elsewhere. iTunes doesn't differentiate from items bought from its store or downloaded off Google Play- as long the format is compatible.The irony to finding cheaper price elsewhere is that media whether it's from Google Play, Amazon or iTunes, are priced equally. So there's hardly any truth in that argument.
crankerchick - Thursday, September 20, 2012 - link
Your last statement hasn't quite been my experience, at least on the content I purchase. I do don't do a lot of video purchases, but the few I have purchased have generally been cheaper on Amazon. I also routinely find music to be cheaper on Amazon, along with more specials to be had.Also, Apple may allow you to install media purchased from other sources, but it sure doesn't make such options a desired thing to do. Unsupported media formats require third party apps (for a price) along with the archaic way of transferring that content one-by-one, app by by, using iTunes, instead of allowing a true sync, as with supported content.
It is infinitely easier on Android to put the content you want on your device and consume it as you desire.
Again, not nitpicking, as your statements are accurate, but just point out that while Apple may "allow" something, they certainly don't make those "allowed" things something appealing to do.
Petri - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
I have a mac and an iphone and regularly buy content from Amazon - you're right, it is generally cheaper than itunes. It's also very easy to do, since Amazon supply a downloader for the mac which neatly places all your downloaded content directly in iTunes for you.Of course once the content's in itunes, it syncs with the iphone as easily as anything else does.
Stas - Sunday, September 23, 2012 - link
What a can of worms that is. People are surprisingly easily manipulated. The pen is built around them, and they don't notice or care. Thus the the term - iSheep. But it's our nature, I suppose; not inherent to just iFans. Look at our country and "our" government...