“Siri does many things, not all of them as well as others. But one thing she’s really great at is reminders: Tell Siri to remind you to call your Mom on her birthday every year, and you’ll never have to worry about it again,” John Brownlee writes for Cult of Mac. “While Siri is great at reminding you to do things, though, one thing she can’t do is remind you to remember things. But there’s no reason she can’t, and it would make an absolutely killer feature.”
“Over on Reddit, Redditor GoodNewsNobody suggests that Siri, as part of her duties as a virtual assistant, should be able to remind you of scraps of ephemeral knowledge that you might otherwise bury in Notes, never to find again,” Brownlee writes. “Some of the examples he lists are: Siri, remember my wife’s favorite flower is a Hydrangea; remember my locker combination is 17,6,3; remember my niece’s shoe size is 5.”
“The idea is that instead of trying to find these scattered pieces of information in Notes or a program like Evernote, you could just hit the home button and say, ‘Siri, do you remember my niece’s shoe size?'” Brownlee writes. “Honestly, I think this is just a fantastic idea, and it seems relatively simple to build out on Siri’s existing Reminders backbone…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Siri, remind me to…” is invariably the #1 thing for which friends and family use Siri.
If we do not destroy ourselves, The future is going to be magical.
I just use Notes. The first line of the note is what Siri keys on.
So I just say “Find me a note about passwords” and several relevant notes come up. I think, for now, this is an acceptable solution.
Siri, remind me to smack rosswell upside the head.
How would she comprehend that?
And why should she want to? Because he shared his way of using a piece of Apple technology that we all share?
“Just use Notes” is what a lot of people on Reddit were saying the other day.
This misses a lot of the potential that a Siri personal relational database could provide.
“Where is my car parked?” Could provide you with the location on maps, the info card for the garage company (hours, phone number, etc…), stall number, how long you’ve been parked, what it’s costing you, and even a photo.
All of this could be part of what’s recorded with “Remember where I parked”.
There are other examples too where you’re not trying to make a note of something you want to know, but rather telling Siri things that you want it to remember about you.
“Remember, I hate Chinese food” can result in a change of restaurant listings to reflect that.
Until Siri gets Google’s level of parsing and understanding sentence context based on past queries and what it knows about you, “Remember, I hate Chinese food” will only be useful for the query “What food do I hate?”
And that’s exactly why this could be a killer feature… adding this ability instead of saying, “just use notes”.
In the comments, Matthew Green describes how he & Siri maintain a grocery shopping list. Simple and effective
Yeah it sounds relatively simple and it’s probably really complicated as hell.
But…. I thought Apple can do anything! Lol
No one said Apple couldn’t do it, only that it would be difficult.
Assuming you can use Siri w/o unlocking the phone I would think there is a need to restrict certain queries from being answered for privacy/security reasons. e.g. password reminders, birth dates of loved ones, etc. that may directly or indirectly lead to security breaches via phishing and other social engineering hacks.
The less Siri knows about me, the better. Turning Siri into Big Brother is just as evil as Google tracking your every move, photographing your house without permission, and reading all your mail. If any of this was done in person, people would be creeped out and would call the police. But when Apple or Google does this, you people are as complacent as can be. Amazing.
I assume you don’t use email or cell phones or give your credit card to any merchants and instead use only land lines and cash, right?
It’s a tradeoff. You can be off-grid as much as can be, or you can trade some aspects of privacy and get all kinds of features and functionality that make life easier/better.
For the most part, that anyone knows that I prefer crunchy instead of creamy peanut butter doesn’t really bother me. It’s valuable data that results in targets coupons and ads, but the convenience of being able to scan an almost empty jar and have a new one on my door step in a couple of days is worth that.
The same goes for pretty much anything else along those lines.
Remember what?
Shit, I wish I could remember…damn aging.
Siri needs to understand things like TV shows, concerts and theater events and other local events. It should know my TV listings. I should be able to say “When is Halt and Catch Fire on?” Or “What happened on “Trueblood”. Right know I can ask Siri what’s playing at the local movie theater. I should be able to say “Buy me two tickets for the 7pm show. I’d like to be able to say “Make a reservation for two at Petrossian.” Siri would ask when. I say “8”. Siri comes back and says “There aren’t any tables available at 8, but there is a table available at 8:30. Is that okay? No, would you check 7:30? I have reserved a Table for two at Petrossian at 7:30 tonight.
Your reservation example could be applicable for any event that requires an appointment like having a hair cut, getting a physical at a doctor’s office, or performing routine automobile maintenance, etc. Apple could provide the API’s and proprietary scheduling systems could tie-in. I think Apple might have a patent which covers something similar to this.
Fantastic until three years from now when Apple arbitrarily drops Siri because it no longer fits it’s relentless move toward mediocrity. All that info gone.