iPhone: The Missing Manual, 6th Edition

Chapter 4. Speech Recognition—and Siri

Steve Jobs, a famous perfectionist, disliked features that only sort of worked, and speech recognition was one of them. On its Android phones, Google installed a tiny microphone button next to the space bar, right there on the onscreen keyboard, so you can speak instead of type—but the accuracy isn’t anything to type home about.

So Apple held out, resisting this most obvious solution to the “on-screen keyboards are awful” problem, until it could play its favorite game: leapfrog.

On the iPhone 4S and 5, you can dictate anywhere you can type, exactly as on Android. But you can also command Siri, a voice-controlled personal minion.

Siri is, to be blunt, amazing. You can say, “Wake me up at 7:45,” or “What’s Chris’s work number?” or “How do I get to the airport?” or “What’s the weather going to be like in San Francisco this weekend?”

You can say, “Make a note to rent Titanic this weekend.” Or “How many days until Valentine’s Day?” Or “Play some Electric Light Orchestra.”

In iOS 6, you can also ask questions about movies (“When is the next showtime of Jurassic Park 4?”), sports (“Who won the Yankees game yesterday?”) and restaurants (“Where’s the closest diner?”). In each case, Siri’s responses are visual and detailed—for restaurants, you can even make a reservation with one tap, courtesy of Open Table.

In each case, Siri thinks for a few seconds, displays a beautifully formatted response, and speaks in a calm voice.

This chapter covers all three iPhone ...