Siri: “I am not capable of love"

[cthulu2016]

How Siri is ruining your cellphone service
By Paul Farhi, Published: January 26

Like a few million other people this past holiday season, we bought an iPhone 4S, with its much-hyped Siri feature. The vocal interface allows users to speak all kinds of commands into the phone (“What’s the weather in San Francisco?”) and get answers from a sultry-voiced robot/concierge.

We’ve used Siri to get directions, to make hands-free mobile calls and to fetch answers to trivia questions. Sometimes we just goof on Siri. “Siri, do you love me?” my daughter asked the other day. (Siri’s heartbreaking response: “I am not capable of love.”) Most ways you look at it, Siri is pretty magical.

But not in every way. Siri’s dirty little secret is that she’s a bandwidth guzzler, the digital equivalent of a 10-miles-per-gallon Hummer H1.

To make your wish her command, Siri floods your cell network with a stream of data; her responses require a similarly large flow in return. A study published this month by Arieso, an Atlanta firm that specializes in mobile networks, found that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S uses twice as much data as does the plain old iPhone 4 and nearly three times as much as does the iPhone 3G. The new phone requires far more data than most other advanced smartphones, which are pretty data-intensive themselves, The Post has reported. In all, Arieso says that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S “appears to unleash data consumption behaviors that have no precedent.”

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/apples-siri-threatens-to-damage-cellphone-service-for-all/2012/01/23/gIQAZ1O5TQ_story.html?hpid=z2

[gateley]

1. Well, it looked good on paper.

[Lawlbringer]

2. So

Siri is a Republican?

[tridim]

3. Well, "It's just test software" according to Apple marketing.

Test software used as a prime selling point in their advertisements, with no on-screen disclaimer.

Can anyone tell me what is wrong with searching Google? Is it laziness?

[tridim]

7. You can dictate google searches with free software.

http://developer.android.com/resources/articles/speech-input.html

Can you not do this on iPhones?

[originalpckelly]

12. "What are some good break up lines when you're out dating a loser?"

"Low priced trojan condoms near me."
"Sexy women with big breasts..."

There are some things we will always want to type, this is true even of a TV.

[Moonwalk]

4. Shrug. All such things start out this way. Look at the first smartphones...

They did exactly the same thing. Or consider how long it took to download pictures, movies, even mail. These things start out clumsy and big...then get sleek and streamlined.

One of four things always happen in these cases. Either the method of sending and receiving such things gets better, or the software that does it gets more efficient, or both. Or the thing itself doesn't prove attractive enough and it vanishes. Anyway it plays out, this is not news.

[REP]

9. Cellular Network Data from my iPhone 4S:

Sent: 28.3 MB
Received: 92.8 MB

I think that's from Oct 14, 2011. But I do live in a Wifi-saturated area

[Moonwalk]

10. Well, if we're talking about using Siri a lot, then I get it and yeah, the "joke" rings true....

It's much easier to vocally ask for things than to type in stuff. Faster, and, especially in a car, a better idea than trying to look at the screen and hit touch keys. And while there is are search engines that allows one to ask things vocally to, say, find out a definition, or make a call, none of them do it all like Siri: send a message, and find a definition, and make an appointment on your calendar, and call a friend--it's the "all-in-one" element that makes Siri attractive. Also the fact that it's undoubtedly going to develop and keep developing--i.e. it should soon be able to launch apps when you ask it to and such. All that's needed are for developers to incorporate it and update.

Given that kind of range, plus keeping kids occupied on a long drive, I can see where Siri would get used a lot and eat up services.

[originalpckelly]

14. The real question is whether or not you should be allowed to even use a distracting device that...

steals attention away from the rolling gun you are driving.

There is another truth too, a new keyboard will make it possible for most everyone to type faster than they speak.

[Moonwalk]

20. Type faster, maybe. Think faster? That's a whole other question....

Sometimes you'd rather talk because you're thinking at that pace and can't go any faster.

As for whether anyone should be allowed to use a distracting device...if the kids are using it in the back seat rather than fighting and distracting the driver, then why not?

[cthulu2016]

11. It appears that Siri does in and of itself consume bandwidth

The point in the article appears to be that Siri maintains a level of data awareness, constantly pre-fetching and updating links and data. That's why she is able to be so smart so fast.

[originalpckelly]

13. The iPhone will be old news soon.

When mesh based phones that provide free phone service arrive, the big carriers won't know how badly they're fucked.

And this is not star trek, most people like this privacy thing, which is why a voice based interface is only so good.

[originalpckelly]

16. The phone will talk to a box that doesn't move around...

then the boxes will talk to each other routing phone conversations over super-wifi, a new long range technology to allow unregulated use of the spectrum around the frequencies used in normal TV broadcasts.

Normal data will come over higher latency wifi connections.

And no one will lose battery.

And phones will have free service.

[originalpckelly]

19. You can build in normal phone technologies for roaming...

but you can have a prepaid plan that never gets used much for normal people who don't live in mole on the ass of the world.

[Rex]

18. But are you capable of taking over the planet?

"Yes".