Seriously...
Hey dudes, I've pretty much knocked the writing on the head these days, but all this stuff about the new iPhone with KITT transplanted into it - otherwise known as Siri - has summoned me to my keyboard once more.
OK, so voice recognition I get. If I could just sit here and gob-off at my PC, and have it write all that stuff down instead of me having to type it, then that would be great, because I'm a busy bloke, you know what I mean? But I've never looked at my phone and thought "touching the icon to open this app is such a drag, if only there was some way of getting this hassle out of my life."
Then again, I wasn't necessarily lusting after a lot of the stuff you can now do with a smartphone five years ago, but still happy it's there. And Apple gives people what they didn't know they wanted better than any other company, so maybe it's got a point with Siri too.
Because I'm busy, and even if I wasn't I'd have better stuff to do than stand on the street with a bunch of zombies just to get the chance to shell out a grand on a phone, I haven't had a chance to try out Siri yet. But I've been looking around at what people who have, have been saying about it.
There has been plenty of the standard, brainwashed "wow, this changes everything" nonsense, but there has also been a surprising amount of people totally taking the piss. On Twitter I spotted some serious lip from developers, analysts, and even media moguls, but this one from my man Rory Reid cracked me up so much I thought it was worth showing in full.
From what I've read, there's nothing wrong with the voice recognition, it's the AI that's a bit mental. I like Scott's comparison to HAL 9000 and, of course, there's that bit in the Terminator when Skynet loses the plot, but I keep coming back to Knight Rider - especially that time when KITT got a strop on.
Apple will presumably improve Siri - and it better, otherwise people might think Apple's not so perfect after all - but I have to wonder if it hasn't just taken a step too far in trying to make the iPhone do everything. I mean, it's already a phone, PDA, camera, satnav, handheld gamer and web-browser, now Apple wants it to be your best mate!
And for that matter, how many devices do we actually need? Apple reckons we need a computer for work, a phone for when we're out of the house, and a tablet for when we're sat in front of the telly. What about when we're on the bog, an iStrain?
I think we all need to chill a bit with all this, man. Your phone is never going to be your best mate, no matter how much disturbing AI you cram into it. And queuing for days for a gadget is just not cool, in any way. Sorry.
