“Apple has triumphed in an Advertising Standards Agency investigation,” Luke Johnson reports for T3.
“Complaints of underperforming Siri functionality have been overthrown by the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) as the demands of some British users of the voice commanded personal assistant were deemed to exceed those of the ‘average consumer’ in the UK,” Johnson reports. “The recent case, which called into question a Vodafone advert for the iPhone 4S, was deemed not to have oversold the abilities of Apple’s beta voice assistant Siri despite a number of the services key features not being available to UK users.”
Johnson reports, “The ad was not deemed to have misled users and falsified information as it included the suffix: ‘Siri may not be available in all languages or in all areas, and features may vary by area.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We would’ve complained about that goofy male voice. Siri is female and should be the world over.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
Agree with the MDN take. I’m English but live in the states. The English Siri version works better with my accent but he sounds goofy and won’t work with American information.
In all fairness there should be both male and female versions once the rollout to different parts of the world is completed.
I’d be interested in the reasoning behind having both female and male voices. What is the “fairness” issue?
For those people of a different persuasion, of course.
That’s the way of the world in these times.
What about a transgender voice, for the rest of us.
The choice should be user selectable in Settings.
Select one . . .
1. Female
2. Male
3. Goofy Male (English)
4. Pat
The “fairness” issue should be obvious. Since you asking, I must assume that you are male and take a male-dominated society for granted. Generally, when there is only one gender-related choice, it will be the masculine version.
The answer to your question is that some women would prefer a feminine Siri voice and some males would prefer a masculine Siri voice. I believe that Apple will eventually offer a choice and I hope that people are patient and give Apple some time to mature the Siri software and incorporate those choices. Too many people are willing to sue at the drop of a hat.
As another example of the fairness issue, my daughter recently came in second in the 200 IM at the short course champ meet. The graphics on her medal included a person swimming – naturally, it was a male swimmer. All of the medals showed a male swimmer. The swim teams are pretty evenly split male/female. In fact, there are likely more female swimmers. So one could reasonably ask, if you have to choose one gender, why not use a female swimmer on all of the medals. I doubt that has even happened…and that will hopefully help you to understand the gender “fairness” issue.
It’s not all one sided. Take for example “Lady Liberty” and “Lady Justice”. Those are slightly more important than a kids track medal, and I’ve never heard of anyone taking offense from it. But, I will grant that a trophy or medal which pertains to either sex should be designed gender neutral. It wouldn’t be that difficult.
Siri is still in beta also
Probably still doesn’t work too well if you’re Sco-ish ;^)
And, as we all know…
If it t’isn’t Sco-ish, it’s crap!
😉
Unfortunately, the Sco-ish don’t know crap when they eat it.
Good one, Siri, er, um, Apple.
If only the US had enforceable standards of truth for advertising, both commercial and political…
I DON’T want a male voice with Siri. Why, just because I live in a different country, should I have to have a voice setting I do not want? I have a female voice on my GPS app, and I want Siri to be female as well. C’mon, Apple, this should be a fundamental part of Siri, as it comes down to cultural as well as personal preferences.
Any man is going to prefer hearing the voice of a female.
Unless it’s his wife.
I do agree with your stand. Siri should be selectable as the user wishes, however, it is still in beta. Perhaps, these wishful preferences should best be comments directed to the Apple site and not here in MDN.
Where is the investigation of the overblown BS voice commands from Android/Google/HTC/LG/Shamesung?
Siri should have the voice of Margaret Hamilton and end every reply with, “…and your little dog, too.”
I wonder, if water could melt the Wicked Witch, then could she drink anything? And, what happened when she peed? I’ll bet she stunk so bad she couldn’t give it away to a flying monkey.
This isn’t a smack down of the whiners so much, as it is to the salivating Class Action attorneys with big fees in the eyes.
The male Siri reminded me of “Jarvis,” the automated butler in the “Iron Man” movies as played by Paul Bettany. In the comics, Jarvis was a human. It was a great idea to represent him as a computerized assistant in the films, and the British, male Siri just seems to have a greater cool factor to me for that reason.
If someone in Saudi Arabia has an iPhone using Siri to get directions while driving, would they get 100 lashes for letting a female voice explain how to get somewhere?
OK, just terrible….