Take an iPhone 5 and an Android phone, side-by-side, and open their respective personal assistant programs. Siri will be fast, fluid, and responsive, like an assistant should be. If you ask Iris a simple question, such as "find and play Lenka's newest song", it will probably give you coordinates of the nearest Chick-Fil-A or February 7's TV schedule for Community. That's how Iris feels: dumb and flawed.
And frankly, Iris is a good representation of Android in general. It is a stolen product, with most features directly taken from the iPhone. Iris is the proof for the Android statement: No matter how much they steal and copy from the iPhone, they will never come close to living up to the genius that is Apple.
So I have been playing with iris a little and had high hopes after using Siri on my friends iphone and I have been very disappointed. It seems to be more like chatbot with a tude than a helpful tool.
ReplyDeleteI asked where I should go to lunch today and it told me I should stop being selfish and thing of poor hungry people first. I was hoping to get a list of local restaurants.
I asked where I can order a pizza and it told me to do a web search and look it up. I was hoping for a list of pizza places close to me.
I asked where a good Chinese restaurant is and it told me "right where it should be"
I do appreciate wise ass humor but I was hoping for something a little more useful.
What experiences has everyone else had with iris? Does it do anything useful or just talk smack?
The repeated response to my command is driving me crazy. Clearly this application isn't ready to be used not even in beta stage. I'll stick to Google.
ReplyDeleteI decided to give IRIS a go even though I've been happily using BusSG. Gave up on the useless SBS app after inaccurate timings led me to miss my bus a few times. SBS is engaging in monopolistic behaviour by withholding info from 3rd party developers.
ReplyDeleteSpeakToIt works pretty well for me on my TBolt. It gets updates pretty frequently. It works as advertised. I'm hoping for some expanded functionality but if you don't wander too far off the reservation it is actually pretty useful. Go outside its comfort zone and you get the "I'm not sure how to do that yet" message. It also works with SVOX and Loquendo TTS voices so you're not stuck with the stock Pico TTS voice.
ReplyDeleteVoice Actions also seems to work well. I've been using that one for almost a year and it seems to respond better than other ones I've tried. Ask for the nearest pizza place and it open Google Maps and searches for you.
ReplyDeleteActually Iris can be helpful when you ask real questions, since it is powered by ChaCha
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