Siri

[HarryT]

Just bought an iPad Retina Mini, and, although I've used iPads and iPhones for many years, this is the first one I've had that supports "Siri". I'm absolutely blown away by the range of things it'll do, and how well it works. Speech recognition is nigh-on perfect, and it almost always returns the information I'm after, or does what I tell it to.

Anyone have any useful "Siri tips" they'd like to share?

[mXb]

...I also bought the mini and will be interested in any Siri tips.....

I don't have any tips, but I totally agree, Siri is awesome! I've been using it on my iPhone 5 for several months. Actually I do have one tip, sort of. If you need to conserve battery for some reason, turn off Siri when not using it. It greatly increases battery life when you do.

[JTravers]

Probably the most common tasks I use Siri for are setting timers, setting alarms, and looking up currency conversions.

[MeSue]

I changed mine to a male voice so I can boss him around. I just used it to look up a definition while listening to an audiobook. One of my favorite things is when my eyes are getting droopy from reading, "Wake me up in one hour."

[HarryT]

How do you look up the definition of a word with Siri?

Originally Posted by HarryT

How do you look up the definition of a word with Siri?

To define onomatopoeia say, "Siri define onomatopoeia."

[HarryT]

Thanks!

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by MeSue

I changed mine to a male voice so I can boss him around. I just used it to look up a definition while listening to an audiobook. One of my favorite things is when my eyes are getting droopy from reading, "Wake me up in one hour."

I like that one as well, but you know lately she has not been behaving and instead of "in one hour" she interprets that to mean "at 1pm" or "at 1am" which is just a bit annoying/

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Just bought an iPad Retina Mini, and, although I've used iPads and iPhones for many years, this is the first one I've had that supports "Siri". I'm absolutely blown away by the range of things it'll do, and how well it works. Speech recognition is nigh-on perfect, and it almost always returns the information I'm after, or does what I tell it to.

Anyone have any useful "Siri tips" they'd like to share?

Have you asked Siri what she can do? You'll get an almost complete list with subsets.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

Have you asked Siri what she can do? You'll get an almost complete list with subsets.

She? Mine's a man . Came that way out of the box.

Thanks for the suggestion - I'll try that.

EDIT - thanks - that's a very helpful list. Looking at my Siri configuration options, I don't have a choice of male or female voices. Does it simply depend what language you select? ie, is a British English voice always male, and an American English one female?

[49Kat]

I haven't used Siri very much. When we were in the city, though, I asked Siri to find nearby pizza places. I was provided with a list of 15, based on my location. I can't remember if they were presented in order from nearest to my location or not. We did end up going to the closest one, anyway. I got a real kick out of that. I've never thought of using Siri for anything else, but I probably will figure it out over time.

[HarryT]

It's great just for looking up facts - eg "what's the capital of Uzbekistan?", "When did Beethoven die?", "How far away is Sydney Australia?" - that kind of thing. It'll also do all kinds of useful calculations for you - "How many days is it until 1st August?". "What's 1.3kg in Pounds?".

[Jessica Lares]

"Ok Glass"

[HarryT]

Yes, it has some nice lines of its own. Have you tried "Why did the chicken cross the road?" or "What's the meaning of life?"