Chapter 14
In This Chapter
Using Control Center
Calling Siri
Determining what you can say
Editing mistakes
Using dictation
Making Siri better
How could you not love Siri? The intelligent, voice-activated virtual personal assistant living like a genie inside the iPad minis and in iPads since the third generation not only hears what you have to say but also attempts to figure out the intent of your words. Siri then does her darnedest to respond to your wishes. She — yes, it’s a female voice (at least until you change it) — can help you dictate and send a message, get directions, call a friend, discover who won the ballgame, tell you when a movie is playing, ID the song playing in the background, arrange a wake-up call, search the web, find a decent place to eat, and lots more. Siri talks back, too, sometimes with humor and other times with attitude. When Ed told Siri he was tired, she responded with, “That’s fine. I just hope you’re not doing anything dangerous.”
Siri isn’t perfect. Sometimes Siri mishears us, occasionally more often than we’d like, and other times she doesn’t quite know what we have in mind. But blemishes and all, we think she’s pretty special — and she’s become smarter along the way.
Come to think of it, we should probably stop referring to Siri as she, even though she, um, started that way. You can now choose a male or female voice to represent Siri — and yes, we’ll resist making any other transgender references. We’ll also resist saying much more about Siri until later in this chapter because we want to get to one of the most helpful features on your iPad, Control Center, which Apple correctly points out is merely a swipe away.
As its name suggests, Control Center is a single repository for the controls, apps, and settings you frequently call upon. Indeed, you will almost certainly spend a lot more time in Control Center than in Settings.
To access Control Center, swipe up from the bottom of the screen — any screen. The beauty of Control Center is that it’s always available when you need it.
Now, take a gander at Figure 14-1 to get an immediate handle on all the things that Control Center lets you get at right away.
We start the Control Center tour on the upper row and move from left to right. You see controls for any music you might be playing at the time, as shown in Figure 14-1. The song can be playing on the iPad’s own Music app, or through a third-party app such as Spotify — which is, in fact, how the song is playing in this example. Next, you see icons for airplane mode (see Chapter 15 for more), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Do Not Disturb, the screen’s orientation lock, along with a brightness control.
Drop down to the bottom row, and you have the volume control on the left. Next, you may see controls for AirDrop and AirPlay. The former is a way to share pictures, videos, and other files wirelessly with folks nearby who have recent iOS 7 or iOS 8 devices of their own and Bluetooth turned on. AirPlay is a way to stream music and movies wirelessly via Wi-Fi to Apple TVs and to compatible AirPlay-enabled speakers and receivers. We discuss AirPlay in greater depth in Chapter 8. And on the bottom right are icons for the timer (part of the Clock app) and the camera.
When you first set up the iPad, you have the option of turning on Siri. If you did so, you’re good to go. If you didn’t, tap Settings⇒General⇒Siri, and flip the switch on so that green is showing.
You can call Siri into action in a few ways. The traditional way is to press and hold down the Home button until you hear a tone. Pretty simple, eh? The question, “What can I help you with?” appears on-screen, as shown in Figure 14-2. Start talking, and your question appears on-screen.
Siri also responds when you press a button on a Bluetooth headset.
What happens next is up to you. You can ask a wide range of questions or issue voice commands. If you didn’t get your words out fast enough or you were misunderstood, tap the microphone icon at the bottom of the screen and try again.
Siri relies on voice recognition and artificial intelligence (hers, not yours). The voice genie responds in a conversational (if still ever-so-slightly robotic) manner. But using Siri isn’t entirely a hands-free experience. Spoken words are supplemented by information on the iPad screen (as you see in the next section).
Just where does Siri get that information? By tapping into Location Services and seeking answers from the web using sources such as Bing, Wikipedia, Yelp, Yahoo!, Open Table, Twitter, and WolframAlpha, which you can learn more about in the nearby sidebar.
And Siri on the iPad can open apps — Apple’s own as well as third-party apps. Indeed, from your contacts, Siri might be able to determine who your spouse, coworkers, and friends are, as well as knowing where you live. You might ask, “How do I get home from here?” and Siri will fire up Maps to help you on your way. Or you can say, “Find a good Italian restaurant near Barbara’s house,” and Siri will serve up a list, sorted by Yelp rating. Using Open Table, Siri can even make a restaurant reservation.
The beauty of Siri is that there’s no designated protocol you must follow when talking to her. Asking, “Will I need an umbrella tomorrow?” produces the same result as, “What is the weather forecast around here?” (See Figure 14-3.)
If you’re not sure what to ask, tap the ?-in-a-circle to list sample questions or commands, as shown in Figure 14-4. You can tap any of these examples to see even more samples.
Here are some ways Siri can lend a hand … um, we mean a voice:
As we point out earlier, as good as Siri is, she sometimes needs to be corrected. Fortunately, you can correct her mistakes fairly easily. The simplest way is to tap the microphone icon and try your query again. You can say something along the lines of, “I meant Botswana.”
You can also tap your question to edit or fix what Siri thinks you said. You can make edits by using the keyboard or by voice. If a word is underlined, you can use the keyboard to make a correction.
Siri seeks your permission before sending a dictated message. That’s a safeguard you come to appreciate. If you need to modify the message, you can do so by saying such things as, “Change Tuesday to Wednesday” or “Add: I’m excited to see you, exclamation mark” — indeed, I’m excited to see you and an ! will be added.
All iPads from the third generation on offer a dictation function, so you can speak to your iPad and the words you say are translated into text. It’s easy and usually works pretty well. Even if you’re a pretty good virtual-keyboard typist or use a Bluetooth keyboard (see Chapter 17), dictation is often the fastest way to get your words into your iPad.
You can enable dictation without enabling Siri and vice versa.
When you want to use your voice to enter text, tap the microphone key (see Figure 14-5) on the virtual keyboard that appears in the app you’re using. Begin speaking right away. You’ll see the wavy lines as you talk.
The first time you tap the microphone key, a dialog appears asking if you want to enable dictation. Your humble authors are never shy about using our voices, so we happily agree. But why might you choose otherwise? Your voice input, contacts, and location are shared with Apple, which makes some people uncomfortable.
You can always enable or disable dictation later. Go to Settings⇒General⇒Keyboard and tap to turn the Enable Dictation switch on or off. When you disable dictation, you will no longer see the microphone key in the keyboard until you enable dictation again.
Some apps don’t display the microphone key on the keyboard. If you don’t see a microphone key, the app doesn’t accept dictated input.
Tap Done to end the dictation. Older iPads may cogitate for a moment before your words magically appear. On the latest iPad models, words appear more quickly.
From Settings, you can tell Siri which language you want to converse in. Siri is available in English (United States, United Kingdom, Canadian, or Australian), as well as versions of Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish.
You can also request voice feedback from Siri all the time, or just when you’re using a hands-free headset.
In the My Info field in Settings, you can tell Siri who you are. When you tap My Info, your contacts list appears. Tap your own name in Contacts.
With iOS 7 and iOS 8, you can even choose whether Siri has either a male or female voice.