What is the best smartphone ever?
When asked, iPhone's Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) was responding to that question with - gulp - iPhone's competitor Nokia Lumia 900, discovered TNW last week.
How embarrassing.
Well, Apple has now addressed this "bug", reports The Verge.
Apparently, Siri is highly dependent on Wolfram's Alpha, an answer engine developed by Wolfram Research.
Wolfram bases its choices on a phlethora of factors, and The Verge says it chose the "Lumia 900 as the best smartphone due to a catalog of four different five-star reviews."
So NakSec colleague Anna just asked her new iPhone, and Siri replied in its deadpan stylee "Wait, there are other phones?"
Um, ya Siri, there are.
And apparently, Nokia is now accusing Apple of "overriding the software" after the quirk was noticed, writes the BBC.
I think this is rather odd thing for Nokia to suggest. After all, Nokia, I imagine, has received some great PR on the back of this, so why would it point out that Apple is tweaking its Siri interface? Of course it is. As if Nokia wouldn't have addressed this "issue" had the tables been turned.
But, whatever happens next, I just love stories like this. They make my day.
mirror image courtesy of Shutterstock
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Pssst... Carol... "Um, ya Siri, there ARE." There ARE phones... phones ARE.
And sure - there are other phones. It is just that none of them matter. ;)
Funny thing is, when I first got my iPhone 4s, Siri's response to that question was "Wait, there are other phones?"
So, I'm not sure when it changed to start using Wolfram's data for that question, but I see this as Apple reverting back to the original response.
I doubt this even happened. I never heard Siri say that. Sound like another urban legend to me.
Hehehe I just tried it and Siri said, " Wait there are other phones?"
Pity is that Siri makes it sound like a statement rather than a question.
Siri is nothing but a slave, a marketing ploy for Apple. A useless virtual personal assistant. Supposed to be the voice counterpart of search engine queries. Simply shows you can't rely on this piece of junk. Too much already for Apple's reality distortion field.
I'm just impressed that Apple managed to fix this vitally important issue so quickly, considering how long it took them to roll out the Java patch to Mac OS X users...
Graham -- because in this case, it was a single line in a single server, not a new version of a major piece of software.
When I ask her "what is the best smart phone?" she now says "I think you have already answered that question, Melissa"
I don't like this. Deliberately overriding factual-based answers feels deeply dishonest.
Well nothing about Siri's easter egg are factual. They are meant to be "funny." Is the answer to life really 42?
Actually since day 1 (literally) Siri was given the "there are other smart phones" response. Also "you are holding it" & a couple of others. It was a pre-programmed response, not a wolfram alpha link. The glitch must have been when those links failed.
"best", by definition, implies an opinion. Siri thinks it the iPhone. You people that say apple is overriding factual information are a little over-the-top.
People! Get a life! Why so serious? Siri is entertainment. Anybody can see that. Please don't take everything so seriously. You surely will have a heart attack before you are old.
as Nokia runs an MS OS I am surprised best and smartphone could be put in the same sentence.
No the question was, "What's the best cell phone ever?"
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/05/15/apple_iphon...
two hours later: http://www.reghardware.com/2012/05/15/apple_iphon...
The best is HTC One X!