Earlier today, Apple revealed their next round of updates via WWDC. Sorry, folks. There is no Apple-branded television panel just yet, but Siri did receive a significant upgrade and so did the MacBook Pro which has a ton of people excited. With the latter mostly being a retina display on top of the expected hardware changes, the following paragraphs will focus on the more unique changes with Siri which are actually pretty cool.
The big news of the conference is that the iPhone 4S guide will indeed be coming to the new iPad which implies that users of the product will not have to wait until next year’s product cycle refresh for a tablet that utilizes the feature. This was seen as a knock against the voice controls’ overall usefulness when Apple left it out of the device at launch. Perhaps this was because the hardware giant realized that Siri would not be missed as is, and its addition to the product line was seen as rather pointless which brings us to the new Siri.
Siri can now launch apps and work with social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. More interestingly though is that the AI’s database has also been enhanced to answer questions pertaining to movies, sports, etc. Of course, all of this was seen coming a mile away, but what was slightly unexpected though is that Apple will be partnering with several car companies including GM to integrate Siri controls into steering wheels thus creating an eyes free experience.
Beyond that, Siri looks to also assist in the freshly announced turn-by-turn navigation compliments of Apple’s new map app. This is something that Android phones have had for years, and now it is finally coming to iOS. Siri’s part in all this is mostly just seen as bonus as the utility of turn-by-turn navigation is fairly major in itself.
It looks like people in the tech industry are very happy with these changes even though the feature’s algorithm appears to be untouched from its initial state, but feel free to sound off if you disagree. Do these changes make Siri less of a novelty, or just a deeper toy that still has no real room in the typical mobile user’s life?