Siri iPhone App, Personal Assistant

Hello and welcome to yet another post on Accessories for iPhone.

Today we are going to do another review of an app which is fairly new, and one which we took great advantage of before Valentines Day weekend.  The app in question is called Siri, a personal assistant for the iPhone as they like to call it.

When we first read about Siri briefly from other forums, we thought it would be fairly similar to the Google App.  While being similar in that it has voice recognition, it goes one step beyond the Google App.  The voice recognition aspect of the app also happens to be the same one that is used in Dragon Dictation.

With Siri, when you first start it up, you are asked to fill in some information, such as your name, email, and phone number.  If you do not know why they are asking, you may forgo wanting to fill it out.  However, the reason behind asking you to fill it out is quite good, and really what makes Siri such a great application for the iPhone.

To give you a real world example of how Siri works, and how we used it ourselves, we would like you to imagine Valentines is coming up (which it already did), and you need to make a reservation to a restaurant.  You open up the Siri app, state the name of the restaurant and location (San Diego for us), and it will do a search for you.  Once it has found restaurant X, you state, “Reservation for two on Sunday February 14, at 6:00pm”.  Since you had previously entered your info before, you have no need to call the restaurant to give name, phone, or email.  They will be notified, and within moments, you will be notified via Siri (and email) of your confirmation.  However, this does not work for all the restaurants, and when it does not, it does suggest to you, “would you like to call said place?”.  You can check out their video below this text:

In addition to this great scenario we just explained, it also does show Yelp reviews of what other people have thought of the business you are interested in visiting.  All in all, we were very pleased with the App, and highly recommend it to anyone.

Until next time.

Accessories for iPhone

Hello, and welcome to another post here at Accessories for iPhone.

As we always do here, we like to comment, write, and speculate on all things iPhone, from its OS, to devices or accessories connected to it, to the competition of the iPhone.  Hence, this piece today is about the answer of Google to the iPhone, and why we firmly believe that while Android is an amazing piece of open source OS, it cannot replicate the ecosystem of Apple’s iPhone; not while it is open source and modified by so many handset manufacturers.

At Accessories for iPhone, we firmly believe that one of the many reasons for the runaway success for the iPhone is not just because it is a “sexy” looking smartphone as many critics will have you think, but because of the amazing ecosystem that Apple has created around the iPhone from device, to OS, to Apps.  PC World recently wrote a piece called Six Reasons to Not Like Like Google’s Nexus One.  We especially have to agree with point Six (which many criticize Apple for), and that is the controlled ecosystem that Apple has created around the iPhone with the App store, one form factor (manufactures handset), and the ease of publishing your Apps to fit one form.  Fitting one form, this is a huge one we believe because unlike Android App developers, iPhone developers really need to only adhere to one screen size, one resolution, and only recently can make certain apps run faster/better in the 3GS models.  When you take a look at the Android Market, the developers there are forced to choose: Will they make apps for the Droid by Moto, Droid Eris by HTC, G2, MyPhone, HTC Hero, or the new Nexus One with the SnapDragon CPU by Qualcomm?  If you have been following Android news, you will see that HTC is coming with a multitude of Android handsets, as is Acer, Motorola, SonyEricsson, and much more.  You would think Android is set to take over the world, and that is indeed what some Android fans believe.  We are not denying that it is indeed a possibility that Android OS may very well become the de facto OS for smartphones.  But, and this is a huge but, will Android be able to deliver the same integrated ease of use, amazing user experience across the board not only for customers purchasing Android handsets, but also giving Android developers an even bigger reason to develop more Apps for Android?   We firmly believe that as it is right now, the answer is no.  Here is a list of why we believe it will not stack up against Apple’s iPhone:

1. 1. Different screen sizes (because different manufacturers trying to outdo the others)
2. 2. Different hardware inside each phone (difficult for App developers to choose from/less success)
3. 3. Confusing Android Market because not all Apps work for all Android handsets
4. 4. Not all Android handsets will run same OS version (Droid 2.01, Droid Eris 1.5, Nexus One 2.1)
5. 5. Restrictions set by Wireless carrier (Verizon forces Bing)
6. 6. Most important of all – Features that need to be enabled makes it a lose for customers!

Point six is actually one that David Pogue wrote about in his NY Times column and got tons of unjust and ridiculous criticism for from rabid Android fans.  If you want a more in-depth analysis and reason for why Android falls short next to the iPhone and its OS, please read Charlie Wolf’s report.

Until next time, thanks for reading, and please send in your comments, rants, or praises.