Gadgetory

everybody it's Michael with pocket now this is the new iPad and it's running a beta build of iOS 6 which includes support for Siri previously only available on Apple's iPhone we're gonna take it for a spin on the iPad see how useful it is on a tablet and then we're gonna have a little talk off between it and the Samsung Galaxy s3 is s voice let's jump in hi Mei is gonna do a full review on iOS 6 in a forthcoming video but what we want to answer here with this video is how useful is Siri on the iPad that is how useful is voice control on a tablet judging from Apple's recent ad spending on Siri it's clear that they see it as more than just a hobby so let's dive in and check it out now Siri on the iPad is a lot like Siri on the iPhone on initial launch you're given the small dialog box containing examples of what you can say to Siri after that first use just a long press on the home button will suffice to call her up she's been optimized for iPad using only a little pop over window here instead of the whole screen let's try a little bit of classic functionality wake me up tomorrow at 7 a.m. do I need an umbrella so there we have a little bit of a bug that I'm gonna go into in more detail later do I need an umbrella what are the colors of the visible spectrum a lot of information there from WolframAlpha about the visible spectrum a lot of information what's Facebook's stock price now despite the samuel l.jackson Apple commercials airing every three minutes on TV Siri doesn't know what gazpacho is how do I make a swatch oh but she does know how to take a break pretty well you can take the night off so Siri seems to do pretty well on the iPad in iOS 6 with its classic functionality installed but what about some of her new features so the new Siri has a lot built in she can tell us sports scores make us dinner reservations find us movies to watch open apps and tweet for us let's give some of that a shot what was the score of the last Celtics game no that's a sad update when's the next Red Sox game I want to find a restaurant with outdoor seating I want to reserve a table 7:00 p.m. tapping make reservation will jump you right into open table obviously I don't have that installed quite yet let's go back to something else where is Prometheus playing checking for movies matching prometheus okay here's Prometheus playing nearby I want to see a movie with Christian Bale that's pretty cool who directed the Dark Knight Rises even cooler who directed American Psycho American Psycho alright so you have to tap just tell her which one you're talking about Thank You Siri that's pretty awesome so that's pretty cool but don't let Siri fool you she's still pretty limited Apple's only adding one category of new abilities at a time so who wrote the book American Psycho see womp womp okay that's enough of that let's see if we can launch some apps spoiler alert she's really good at this open Facebook open Twitter open Safari open binary mag lock open pad Belgium I haven't gotten Siri to fail at launching an app once even with my geeky array of weird third-party apps let's try some social media tweet I'm dying for some mozzarella sticks comma period any delivery volunteers question mark send all right let's update Facebook update Facebook this status update won't make any sense until this video comes out period post okay I posted it that brings me to another useful feature dictation sometimes it's easier to talk than it is to type I've used dictation software to write quick notes or catalog long lists of items but what about emails as you can see there there's not any punctuation so you still have to call out every specific piece of punctuation there is as you can see comma you still need to tell the software where to put your punctuation period but even though it sounds awkward to the ear the end result is pretty excellent exclamation point so as I mentioned this is a beta build of iOS 6 and Siri is not delivering perfect results just yet for example Siri seems to try hard to link your current request to your previous one and the results aren't always great here let me tell Siri I want to see some Theatre in Boston I want to see theater in Boston now the results right now the results are gonna be movie theaters which you know hurts my little actor heart I was looking for a legitimate theater but movies are what most people will be searching for I get it nobody sees theater the problem comes when you drop a non-sequitur bomb on Siri let's say I don't want to go to either of these movie theaters let's say I want to eat first watch this I'm hungry see so it's trying to link my current request with the previous one and it's actually found me a movie called I'm hungry but not any restaurant listings so to get there I have to leave Siri and then relaunch it which is what you saw me doing before I'm hungry okay so she's not perfect but let's see how she measures up against the new kid on the block Samsung's s voice on the galaxy s3 now both these devices are on Wi-Fi so let's see how they do we'll stick to stuff available in the first version of Siri since we know s voice won't be able to give us sports scores or anything like that here we go open camera okay s voice is a little slower there this is difficult because the devices will pick up on each other's beats so it's not the easiest test environment what is Facebook's stock price okay so Siri had finished giving me all the information I wanted before s voice had even opened the browser at least s voice did that who was the first man on the moon okay so we've got all the information available on the Armstrong over here on the iPad and there's s voice coming back with it okay so you can get the same information just at a slightly different speed if you're having a rough night at trivia let's try this again let's try something else here the last thing what's the weather like today Sirius just flying now that's nice s voice gives us a little bit more detailed information even though it took longer to even recognize what I asked it then Siri did so over just about a day of use I've found s voice to be slower and prone to more bugs than even the beta version of Siri Siri does have her own bugs but the additional usefulness she brings to the table counters that makes me prefer her over s voice so will you use Siri now that it's come to the iPad as usual I can't answer that question for you some of you will use it every day others will dismiss it as a novelty item for me I tend to think the more input methods the better sometimes I don't want to shuffle through my recently used apps list to launch Netflix I just want to tell the iPad open Netflix and often I prefer dictating my tweets and texts rather than typing them so will I use Siri on the iPad absolutely and you can be sure I'll be using it a whole lot more often than I'm using s voice currently we've got feature articles and videos on s voice Siri iOS 6 and pretty much anything else you can think of at pocketnow.com visit us there leave a comment on this post if you have something to add to the discussion give us a thumbs up here on youtube if you like what you saw be sure and follow us on twitter pocket now tweets for pocket now official account and captain two phones for me till then stay tuned it'll be another video coming up soon we'll see you next time