Apple Siri Wish List – Top 10 Most Wanted Features

Siri: Your Personal (iPhone 4S) Assistant

Apple’s virtual personal assistant for the iPhone 4S, Siri, has been creating a stir among tech enthusiasts and is by far one of the company’s greatest accomplishments. Many other companies have tried and failed earlier with voice-powered operating systems, but Apple owes full credit for creating a comprehensive, helpful, and even funny artificial intelligence (AI) tool that adds a brilliant new feature to the already awesome iPhone experience.

On their website, Apple describes Siri this way:

“Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much, you’ll keep finding more and more ways to use it.”

And to be honest, Siri delivers and once you start using it, there is no turning back. It’s already incredible what Apple’s virtual personal assistant Siri can do: Siri can write and send texts and e-mails, dictate notes, set alarms and reminders, call friends, answer difficult and context-sensitive questions, play songs and surf the Web. But at the very same time, she has the potential to do a lot  more.

Here is a list of top 10 things we’d wish to see Siri do at the next:

1. Siri with a better text-to-voice:

While most of us would agree that Siri is already good enough, it can be improved… a lot. The current voice is so last century! And a more ‘natural’ human-like voice would make Siri so much fun to use.

2. Siri could read information on-demand:

Who wouldn’t love to hop in the car and tell Siri to read the top news headlines of the moment?While we are at it, it would be great if we had a configuration panel to select the types of news headlines we are interested in (e.g. Worlds News, Economy, Politics, Sports, Technology, Gadgets, Science Etc…)

3. Siri could call 9-1-1 Emergency:

If you ask Siri to, “Call 444-3535.” it will start dialing the number for you. But, if you say “Call 9-1-1,” Siri starts dialing the number, and then responds back, “I’m sorry, I cannot call 9-1-1.” What is more weird is that, if you ask “Call the police,” Siri starts calling 9-1-1, but then responds with the same message saying that it can’t dial that for you. This is a super-huge disappointment. Perhaps, Apple has blocked Siri from calling 9-1-1 for liability reasons, but to not be able to use Siri to call 9-1-1 during an emergency is such a shame!

4. Siri could change iPhone 4S Settings:

It is no more a mystery that iPhone 4S  lacks SBSettings. It would greatly help if Siri could “Turn off WiFi” or “Reduce brightness” on user’s voice command.

5. If Siri had better listening capabilities:

Agree or not, right now, Siri is NOT a great listener all the time.  Of course, she can listen to ‘natural languages’ but she still struggles often with popular acronyms, common foreign language words, more-than-average background noise and certain voice commands. For instance, if you ask Siri to call you an ambulance, Siri will reply, “OK. From now on, I will call you ‘An Ambulance.’ What the hell? In the time it takes you to leave all hopes on Siri and and start over manually, you may have died due to heart attack!

6. Siri could read emails:

It’s a mystery why Siri can read/write text messages (SMS), but while Siri can write an email message, it can’t read an email! It would be awesome if Siri was able to search emails and read specific ones as per your command.

7. Better Social Media Integration:

Siri can call, text and e-mail for you, but can’t post to Facebook or Twitter, despite Apple’s claim that iOS 5 would have “deep Twitter integration.” It would be nice to have Facebook and Twitter streamlined directly into the Siri OS, given that the two social media platforms are two of the most-used apps for any smartphone user.

8. If Siri could reserve Restaurant tables for me:

The original Siri app had integration with OpenTable to check restaurants for reservation availability; not so with the current version of Siri on the iPhone 4S – leaving us to wonder why Apple decided to take away the awesome capability out of Siri! Wouldn’t you be thrilled to be able to reserve tables at your preferred restaurants by asking Siri something like this – “Make a reservation for two at Tamayo for 7:45 Friday evening“?

9. Health Care Integration:

Imagine having Siri integration with apps such as WebMD, and being able to hold a conversation about symptoms before getting a list of possible conditions. Or asking what the side effects of a certain drug are, and having Siri read back a list of those effects. Cool, right?

There are not enough doctors to do the work that needs to be done, but Siri could potentially change that. IBM’s Watson supercomputer has this technology but not for consumer use.

10. Shopping, on-demand Movies and Music:

How about being able to shop online with Siri? Imagine how nice it would be if Siri could automatically find the lowest available price for whatever you’re looking for. Extending this idea further, for a fun evening you might want to buy tickets at a local movie theater.

Adding the ability to pick a movie time by asking “What time is ‘Real Steel’ playing near here?” and getting a choice of times, then saying “5:30 show at the Express Avenue, and I need two tickets” to have Siri purchase those tickets would be a time saver. While we are at it, how about some sort of IMDB interface?

Siri can play any music genre, playlist, or artist, but it’s paused the next time you activate Siri to give it another command, even if you just want to play the next song. Also, if you’re in a mixed playlist, there’s no way to tell Siri to play more songs by the artist you’re listening to. Being able to fully accommodate the user’s listening experience would be a key improvement in Siri.

What are some of your ideas for “serious” integration of Siri into your daily life? Leave your comments below.