Thursday, June 27, 2013

Siri Learns How to Pronounce Names in iOS7


If you're an avid Siri user, you've certainly come across some contacts' names that Siri insists on not recognizing and//or reading aloud the wrong way. It isn't easy dealing with names, particularly foreign name that even us humans might need some training to say correctly. In iOS you can already add a phonetic name entry into your contact list, but in the upcoming iOS7 Siri will be intelligent enough to ask for your help to learn how to say those strange names.

Considering most of the time we use Siri to send call someone or send message to someone, correctly detecting who we're talking about is one of the most important aspects. I was forced to change some contacts names in order for Siri to work properly - as it sometimes got "stuck" in deciding between two different contacts with the same first name (and when she asked which one I wanted, she would get back into telling me she had two contacts, and so on, and so on).

Hopefully that won't be the case with iOS7 - even though what I really would like to see was Siri finally expanding into lots more languages... such as Portuguese. Apple seems to forget that since it introduced Siri with the iPhone 4S nearly two years ago, lots of international customers haven't yet been able to take advantage of it, unless they're willing to speak english, german or french. Even Google, that got to the party later on has already introduced lots more voice recognition languages (including portuguese) and offers weekly improvements on Google Now - we're now getting the latest news and movie info on our nearest cinemas.

Apple really should remember there's a "rest of the world" whenever it launched lots of "new features"... that only work in the US.

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