News, Quickies October 13, 2011

Ask Siri anything…as long as you’re in the US

Having trekked down to the Apple Store this morning, I had no trouble picking up my brand new white 64GB 4S. The feature I was most interested in trying was Siri, the “Personal Assistant” included with every new 4S, but unfortunately between the US and the rest of the world, everything is not equal.

Asking Siri to find the closest petrol station greeted me with this unexpected rebuff:

Having had a look through the Apple Australia website and rewatched the Siri section of the keynote (link), I can’t find anywhere that it says that business listings are not available outside the US. In fact, the screenshot on the Apple AU website would imply otherwise:

The other features of Siri are pretty cool to use, and so far seem to work surprisingly well, but it would have been nice to know upfront that not all these features are available outside the US, whether you speak English or not.

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About Mitchell Oke

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Mitchell Oke is a 23 year old Bachelor of Creative Technology (Digital Video Production) from Sydney, Australia. He's previously worked for News Ltd as a Multimedia Producer, and currently works as a freelance editor and videographer. He has a great love for gadgets and cars, always wanting to have the latest and greatest phones, notebooks and other electronic toys. He is a huge fan of Star Trek, Top Gear and Seinfeld, citing them as his favourite TV shows. In December 2006 he became a Mac convert, having used Windows since he was 5.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Kapila-Wimalaratne/644233716 Kapila Wimalaratne

Thought that much was obvious. Siri gets this kind of information via Yelp – an American service (so far - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/20/yelp_launches_in_aus/).

However, Siri is still a beta and I’d expect other services to be integrated in the future.
Anonymous

“…but it would have been nice to know upfront that not all these features
are available outside the US, whether you speak English or not.”

From Apple, right on the iPhone page:

“Some features, applications, and services are not available in all
areas. See your carrier for details. Application availability and
pricing are subject to change.”
http://twitter.com/visitken kenhong@LG

This limitation is probably obvious to 5 percent of iPhone owners outside the US but certainly not the iPhone owners I know here in Korea. Sure, it’s in the fine print but it would have been more responsible and transparent had Tim mentioned this in the news conference, given that millions of non-US residents were also interested in details the next iPhone.