So where is TellMe going to go next?

[Rich Edmonds]

As long as it doesn't turn into Siri I'll be happy. I can't be bothered to have my phone ask how I am or explain to me what the weather will be like. Basic commands is all we need, like setting alarms, adding calendar events, setting status, posting tweets, emailing, mapping, etc.

 

[Pronk]

As long as it doesn't turn into Siri I'll be happy. I can't be bothered to have my phone ask how I am or explain to me what the weather will be like. Basic commands is all we need, like setting alarms, adding calendar events, setting status, posting tweets, emailing, mapping, etc.

I couldn't disagree more. If you want WP7 to have greater appeal and to have feature parity with other platforms, it needs to have a natural language interface like Siri does. Android will doubtless have something like it soon enough, but WP7 has a possible big advantage here by being able to roll it out to all phones AND already having TellMe as a basis to build on.

Learning commands and barking very specific orders phrased in a very specific way at your phone will be a massive turn off for huge swathes of non-techy people. They're the people the iPhone sells to, because it's simple and elegant and intuitive. And so is WP7, so it deserves an equally elegant voice interaction system - not some Android-esque clunker which will only tell you the weather if you phrase your sentence exactly the way it requires you to.

 

[Major]

I have Siri in the house via my wife's iPhone 4S. I can find the answers faster by typing the question into Google than wording and re-wording and re-re-wording the question until Siri finally understands what I'm asking. I think it's more in Alpha than in Beta.

Its best use right now is for laughs.

 

[starblade876]

Here's what my friend to Facebook about Siri and he's an iPhone fan:

Siri is not my friend! At times, the iPhone Siri service can get a bit sketchy which leads to a good deal of frustration on my part. It should come as no small surprise, then that I lose my temper from time to time and revert to calling the damned thing names. However, unlike most other less capable systems, Siri responds to verbal criticism with the sort of smarmy remarks one might hear from June Cleaver: "[user]! Language!" or "[user], if I could blush I would"--annoying!

Honestly, I would hate it if WP7 also integrated these "fun" easter eggs. They might be funny the first time, but I'd definitely get annoyed by it after a while. I don't want it to talk to me like it's a person; I'd only want it to get me the information I asked for.

That's what I think Rich Edmonds meant, Pronk. Enhanced speech recognition is great; the inane responses are not.

 

[aubreyq]

I think it's interesting how, during the October keynote, Apple made it clear that Siri was a beta, but the commercials/marketing don't mention that caveat.