Tehknospace

Although it wasn’t a popular feature, previous generations of the iPhone offered Voice Control, a Siri-esque option that worked sometimes and allowed you voice dial and things like that. It worked, but again, not that well, and wasn’t very versatile, either. Still, I was a user, and I found Voice Control to come in handy when I had to make a phone call while driving or just didn’t want to flip through my seemingly endless contact book.

When Siri came out, I figured I’d try it out, but it just didn’t seem that magical right out of the gate. I think that’s one of the things about Siri that lots of people don’t really understand; you don’t know how convenient it is until you discover all of the opportunities.

For example, today I was working on an article for this site, then I had to go pick up my son at daycare. Since it was a nice day, I plugged in a set of headphones into my 4S and hopped on my bike with a toddler trailer attached, ready to take him for a ride. But before I left, I remembered that I needed to water the plants, which I usually do by setting a hose on this slope in the yard and letting it run in a trickle for about an hour. I hold down the home button and say to Siri, “Set a timer for 45 minutes.” Done.

As I started off, I held down the mic button on the headphones and said, “Play Death Certificate,” and next thing I knew, the 1991 Ice Cube classic was playing in my headphones. Halfway there, I realized that my wife might be on the way herself, so I asked Siri to “Find my wife,” a cue to open up Find My Friends. Turns out she was miles away, so I was good.

I’m turning into the daycare center and remember that I have to grab some tools out of the garage before I head out tomorrow, but I knew I was going to forget. “Set a reminder for 9 pm tonight.” Siri comes back with, “What would you like it to say?” to which I respond, “Grab the tools out of the garage before you go out tomorrow.” Bam — reminder set.

Off on the road with my son now, volume on the headset turned way down so I can hear him if he needs anything, I decide to give my folks a ring to see if we had dinner plans still. “Call my mother on her cell,” and of course, Siri makes that happen. After the call I made a Calendar appointment, and then continued my bike ride.

I did all this while riding a bike down the road, no problem at all.

Although there isn’t yet any way to integrate Siri fully into developer’s apps (at least not that I know of), there are some smart people out there who have figured out ways to work with the system.

Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about OmniFocus and Siri, and how they can work together via iCloud. If they can figure out how to navigate the system, then maybe other people can as well. And if Apple does open up Siri to new commands from other apps, well that’s going to be huge. Frankly, I think we can consider that an inevitability, and should come out in iOS 6.

Now you may not think that Siri as an app is useful in itself, but how about its stealthy cousin, text dictation? Just pull up any keyboard on an iPhone 4S and you’ll see a little microphone to the left of the keyboard, taunting you to use it. For me, this comes in really handy with sending texts. I can say a whole paragraph faster than I can type it on the iPhone’s keyboard, and I can even do it using the headphones on a bike ride, like I was earlier today.

I do this same thing with emails at times. Again, I just pull up the on-screen keyboard, hit the mic and rattle off whatever I need to send. Facebook updates, Twitter posts — they all can be done by talking, and with as much typing as I do in a day, every little bit helps.