Siri experts

[JonathanRyan]

Any way to make it actually useful?

I just u/g to High Sierra so now I have Siri on my iMac. Before I find out how to disable it, is there any way to make it actually useful?

E.g. I can ask it a share price, as long as the shares are traded on the NYSE. I wanted an office 365 subscription but first it made me manually turn on my Wifi so it could figure out where I was (um, on the desktop in my house.....) then it suggested stores 80 miles away rather than M$'s website. I can ask it a question without touching the keyboard or mouse.....right after I press a button on the screen with my mouse which kind of defeats the point.

Finally, does its voice recognition get better as it learns your speech? Or is that it? Because the difference between Siri on my Mac and OK Google on my phone is just ridiculous.

 

[chuckles]

How long have you been associated with computers now? And you're asking these questions.... at best it's good for a bit of banter when you're lonely (IMVHO)

 

[srichards]

I turn siri off on everything. I tried it a few times. It's slower than just googling for whatever it is you want.

Writing emails/messages or asking it to set reminders are moderately useful on a phone. Asking it to read out messages can be useful but again it's quicker to just read it. I haven't found anything it does better than me yet.

 

[Phil V]

How long have you been associated with computers now? And you're asking these questions.... at best it's good for a bit of banter when you're lonely (IMVHO)

This.
The most ‘use’ its been was when I activated it on purpose and exclaimed ‘f*** off siri’ which Siri answered with ‘I hope we can still be friends’.
Which cheered up my day. other than that, there’s nothing.

 

[Eloise]

Yippppeeeee ... glad to find somewhere where people find computers with speech recognition as useful (okay useless) as I do.

 

[JonathanRyan]

How long have you been associated with computers now? And you're asking these questions.... at best it's good for a bit of banter when you're lonely (IMVHO)

Yeah, I've got used to checking the weather on my phone via Google Voice but don't really use it for much else. I guess I hoped that I could walk into the room where my Mac is sleeping and say "when do I have to leave here for my next appointment?" and get a sensible answer. It's one of those questions that a computer should be able to parse faster than me (open diary...check next appointment....find location....Google drive time....factor in traffic....tell me I'll need sunglasses/raincoat.....remind me that I need something from the shop I will pass on the way............).

Maybe next OS X

 

[Brazo]

It’s an auto switch off thing for me.

But it has proved useful on Apple car play for reading out txts and stuff.

 

[Neilc28]

Most of the time all I get from Siri is "Here's what I found on the web", it had a lot of potential when it was first debuted but it's simply a barely functional mess as far as I'm concerned...