I’ve been making grocery lists but there has to be much more to it.

shopping lists for sure. sometimes adding appointments to my calendar. occasionally sending a text while driving.

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"Success isn't about how much money you make. It is about the difference you make in people's lives."--Michelle Obama

"Hey Siri. Set a timer for ____ minutes."

Placing phone calls, I haven't manually dialed a number in a while.

I use it for making phone calls, setting basic timers and alarms and starting workouts, and occasionally for a coin-flip or dice-roll.

I keep hoping that each OS update will fix its ability to make calendar entries without scrambling the fields or set multiple timers or answer all but the simplest math questions or read the result of a web search out loud or provide a contextual answer to a follow-up question or answer a history/biography question in plain words instead of providing useless web-links. Doesn't happen. Sometimes it seems that Siri is LESS useful after most OS updates, for example, recently it's been requiring me to unlock my iPhone before it provides a response.

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When I try to make a phone call it wants me to turn on location services if it’s a business, even if it’s in my contacts. Edit: Siri is all over the map for phone calls. I guess I’ll need to tweak my contacts to match what it hears.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2022 07:50PM by Dennis S.

Don't really use it. Last few times, I asked it a simple question and it couldn't answer it. Last time I think I asked it what time the sun set that day in our city. Typed in exact question to google and got a bunch of hits with the correct answer.

Quote
wurm
"Hey Siri. Set a timer for ____ minutes."

this, setting a timer is what I ask for most often. Also used frequently for getting directions in the car, quick calculations and checking the weather forecasts in various places.

Phone calls, texts, and emails.

“Hey Siri; What’s the driving distance from my current location to _______”

Although Apple Maps has improved, Google STILL does a better & more reliable job with directions.

Patience. Sometimes.

I would like to use it for a couple of things, but I have a strict "no eavesdropping" policy with my devices. I don't trust that they stop listening just because I think they did.

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Mostly for odd-ball stuff: When I want a quick answer to something I could look up but would take too long for the current purposes; to make a phone call; ... I use Siri perhaps 3 times a month.

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Ed (modelamac)

I think I will just put an OUT OF ORDER
sticker on my head and call it a day.

#1 - Controlling my lights.

Then setting GPS destinations.

Then sending a text or making a call when mobile.

Rarely, ask a question, since Siri isn't all that smart, and Alexa does most of that far better.

I'd like to use Siri for selecting music on my HomePod, but she's not much good at that.

(Really, Siri in the HomePod is pretty bad.)

I'll have to look into making shopping lists with Siri, as I'm always getting home and then remembering something that I was suppose to get at the store.

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I am that Masked Man.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

Most frequent use of Siri in our household? As an object of derision since it can't seem to find anything useful much beyond the score of a game.

Most utility?
"set an alarm for some oclock repeating someday with label reminder why I set this alarm"*

followed by
"set a timer for x minutes"

Semi-related, I am a huge fan of using Reader Mode in Safari coupled with the Speak Screen item with AssistiveTouch enabled for certain websites (particularly arstechnica.com ) - if I could just say "siri open the next page on ars and read it to me" boy that would be awesome... but try as I might I haven't gotten anything useful like that to work.

* I do this instead of calendar items because I find iCal's alerting for upcoming events to be wholly inadequate. So if there's something I really need to do next Thursday at 4:25PM I really want some active alerting from my phone. A little buzz alert tends to get ignored if its perceived at all... I wish it were possible to have calendar items to trigger alarms.

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g=

As said before, it takes a couple steps back after updates and gets clunky, but using it for a while gets “her” back in shape in my experience.
I probably use it the most for timers and working the door lock and lights. News, music, weather, sometimes directions, equivalences, “how does my day look like?”, tell me a joke, play forrest or sea sounds…
I love Siri.

Quote
rich in distress
News, music, weather, sometimes directions, equivalences, “how does my day look like?”, tell me a joke, play forrest or sea sounds… I love Siri.

Me, too. In addition to what I wrote earlier, I forgot that I often ask my Siri (who is a Mister) to do little useful things like convert measurements when my hands are occupied with cooking. To send a text when I'm driving. To define a quick word (like "charabanc" just yesterday), or translate a phrase into another language. To flip a coin, or roll the dice. To find the latest college football score (I don't follow sports but live in a football-mad area and it helps to know when everyone will be in a bad mood at the office). To tell me a joke, or a bedtime story (my grandkids especially like this one!).

Once upon a time he told me the absolute best joke ever, when I asked him to go to sleep. I would mess it up if I tried to repeat it, but suffice to say it involved dreaming of electric sheep...

Alexa is who handles my timers because they can be named and more than one can be running at the same time.

She doesn't get to set alarms because I can't seem to control alarm volume separately from other volumes, and Echo alarms are just too loud.

Alexa also does any unit converting that I need because she can handle so many units (LOL).

As I also have two Echo Shows, I see responses on a screen as well, so her volume can be kept fairly low, and the information is still available without taking off the headphones or turning down TV or music.

Siri so often wants me to look at my phone.

---

I am that Masked Man.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

"Remind me in 20 minutes that I have to [whatever]" or "set a timer for xx minutes"

"add [xx] to my grocery list" is probably the one I use the most.

I use it for almost nothing else anymore, because it went from answering questions to just giving me web search results when I'd ask things.

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Quote
RAMd®d
Alexa is who handles my timers because they can be named and more than one can be running at the same time.

Alexa also does any unit converting that I need because she can handle so many units (LOL).

As I also have two Echo Shows, I see responses on a screen as well, so her volume can be kept fairly low, and the information is still available without taking off the headphones or turning down TV or music.

Yes, Alexa is much more useful to me for the above tasks. I have a round desk spot next to my computer. It's used frequently for how do you spell, what's the temperature out, convert X to Y, show me my carport camera, or how many miles between here and there.

I also find the Alexa or Ask Google tend to answer questions more usefully than Siri and tell me the answer. More often than not Siri will refer me to a webpage to read myself.

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"Success isn't about how much money you make. It is about the difference you make in people's lives."--Michelle Obama

Timers can be named now. There’s also a setting to allow your requests be heard by a human, like the other assistants.
But most importantly, Siri is not a replicant. She just told me…

Shazam!
Set timers and alarms.
Call someone when I'm driving or too lazy to go into the contacts.