On October 4, 2011, iPhone 4S was presented to the world and, at the same time, one of the first vocal assistants in the world as we know them today: Siri.
Although at the time of the launch had many limitations and a functional spectrum certainly not very wide, Siri marked a revolution in the world of consumer technology. His worthy competitors would only appear long afterwards: Amazon Alexa in 2015 and Google Assistant in 2016.
However, in this closing of 2018, it seems now clear that Apple’s voice assistant has lagged behind its competitors, at least in the European market and especially if we look at the world of smart home devices.
Let’s see together the current state of health of Siri.
An almost perfect integration
The main strength is the perfect cohesion with Apple devices: Siri has been available for a couple of years not only for iPhone, but also on iPad and Mac. This allows the user to manage their tasks without having to put their hands at the keyboard and regardless of what is in front of it.
If we add the “continuity” function, which allows us to pass phone calls, messages, documents in process with the productivity suite of Apple (Pages, Keynote, Numbers) transparently between our devices, we have in Siri and in the Apple ecosystem the perfect partner.
“But how, and Google is not?” – Yes, Google allows us to do pretty much the same things, but it has at least a limit on you are Apple users: it is not integrated natively. You can not, therefore, say “Ok Google” without first at least open its dedicated application on the iPhone. Who uses Android obviously does not have this problem, but here we are not comparing the assistants, we are talking about Siri.
At home
As long as we remain in the world of Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Watch, Mac) we have no problem; but the world does not stop there and, in this case, we begin to experience the first problems.
In Italy neither HomePod nor the integration of Siri with Apple TV are available: this does not allow us to fully exploit the possibilities of the voice assistant in the home world; also making HomeKit, in my opinion, an incomplete product.
“Ok, but you have Apple Watch” – True, Apple Watch helps us in this sense: you can give orders to Siri through the microphone of the smart watch and from there to control our HomeKit devices. Very good, but you have to be willing to spend about 300 euros for this device, which has however a strictly personal use.
Some final considerations
Until our needs remain to manage our agenda, our phone calls and messages, Siri is an excellent solution: integration with the Apple ecosystem makes it, of course, the perfect assistant because he decided to marry totally the solutions of the bitten apple.
On the other hand, when we want to extend the scope of Siri to our home life we are not fully supported: not so much for voice management, when instead for the lack (in Italy) of devices that allow us to support the assistant correctly to the housewives need.
Given the aggressiveness of Amazon and Google’s response, Apple could lose the pace and stay behind. The design of the products and the target users will not always save Apple: it is probably time to adjust the policy of release of its devices in non-US countries.
Stay tuned!
Diego
