Chapter 5

Taking Control of Your iPhone

In This Chapter

Controlling your iPhone with Control Center

Calling Siri

Determining what you can say

Editing mistakes

Dialing by voice

How could you not love Siri? The intelligent voice-activated virtual personal assistant living like a genie inside the iPhone 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 when you choose U.S. English as the default language) — 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 used to be available as a free third-party app; Apple bought the startup company behind this neat technology and incorporated the magic inside what was then the latest iPhone model, the iPhone 4s. Siri has been on the iPhone ever since, and also appears on the third-generation iPad and beyond.

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 a she, 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 another feature that helps you control your phone, the aptly named Control Center, which is a mere swipe away.

Controlling Control Center

As its name suggests, Control Center is a single repository for the controls, apps, and settings you frequently call upon. We briefly wrestled with holding off on the discussion of Control Center until Chapter 14, where we go deeper into the iPhone settings. But we quickly dismissed that idea because we think you’re going to want to take advantage of Control Center as much as we do. 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 5-1 and you’ll get an immediate handle on all the things that Control Center lets you get at right away.

We start our Control Center tour on the upper row and move from left to right. You see controls for airplane mode (see Chapter 14 for more), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, the Do Not Disturb feature, and the screen’s orientation lock.

Now drop down to the next line. Here you can slide a controller to increase or decrease the brightness of the screen.

Move down another row to access play controls for any music you might be playing at the time, with the artist and the title of the song displayed (“Slovonic Dance, op. 46: No. 3 in A-flat” in Figure 5-1). Slide the volume slider to make that tune louder or softer.

Next up are 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. By contrast, 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.

At the bottom of Control Center, you find one-touch icons that lead to the iPhone’s built-in flashlight, timer (part of the Clock app), calculator, and camera. Apple assumes that you’ll use these apps and utilities frequently.

And we figure that you’ll be spending a lot of time with Siri, so kindly read on.

Summoning Siri

When you first set up the iPhone, 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 to on, meaning green rather than white is showing. (If you do turn off Siri, you effectively turn on Voice Control.)

Having Siri on is a prerequisite to using the Dictation functionality on your phone, discussed later in this chapter.

You have a few ways to call Siri into action. 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 the screen, as shown in Figure 5-2. You can start talking.

An iOS 8 feature lets you summon Siri by merely saying, “Hey Siri.” And yes, this is Apple’s answer to the “OK Google” voice command on Android phones. However, you have to connect your phone to power to take advantage of the “Hey Siri” feature.

On handsets without iOS 8, you can bring the phone up to your ear, wait for a tone, and then talk. Siri responds also when you press a button on a Bluetooth headset. For this to work, the Raise to Speak feature must be enabled inside Siri’s settings.

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 and try again.

Siri relies on voice recognition, artificial intelligence, and, of course, an Internet connection. She (or he) will respond in a conversational (if still slightly robotic) manner. But using Siri isn’t entirely a hands-free experience. Spoken words are supplemented by information on the iPhone screen (as you see in the next section).

And 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 coming sidebar.

And Siri can also open apps, Apple’s own as well as third-party apps. Indeed, from your contacts, Siri might be able to determine your spouse, coworkers, and friends, as well as 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 ask, “Find a good Italian restaurant near Barbara’s house,” and Siri will serve up a list, sorted by Yelp rating. Siri can even let you make a reservation (via Open Table).

We think it’s pretty darn cool that Siri now teams up with one of our favorite apps, Shazam (see Chapter 17), to identify the name and artist of the musical track that’s playing. Just ask Siri what song is playing and she’ll tell you (assuming that she can identify the song). When the song is properly identified, you even get a chance to buy it.

As noted, Siri requires Internet access. In addition, many factors go into its accuracy, including surrounding noises and unfamiliar accents.

Figuring out what to ask

The beauty of Siri is that you don’t have to follow a designated protocol when talking to her. Asking, “Will I need an umbrella in New York tomorrow?” as shown in Figure 5-3, produces the same result as “What is the weather forecast around here?”

If you’re not sure what to ask, tap the ?-in-a-circle to list sample questions or commands, as shown in Figure 5-4, or remain quiet after summoning Siri to eyeball various choices. You can tap any of these examples to see even more samples.

Here are some of the ways Siri can lend a hand, um, voice:

• Phone: “Call my wife on her cellphone.”
• Music: “Play Frank Sinatra” or “Play iTunes Radio.” “What song is this?”
• Messages: “Send a message to Nancy to reschedule lunch.”
• Calendar: “Set up a meeting for 9 a.m. to discuss funding.”
• Reminders: “Remind me to take my medicine at 8 a.m. tomorrow.”
• Maps: “Find an ATM near here.”
• Mail: “Mail the tenant about the recent check.”
• Stocks: “What is the Dow at?”
• Web search: “Who was the 19th president of the United States?”
• WolframAlpha: “How many calories are in a blueberry muffin?”
• Clock: “Wake me up at 8:30 in the morning.”
• Sports: “Who is pitching for the Yankees tonight?”
• Trivia: “Who won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 2003?”
• Twitter: “Send tweet, Going on vacation, smiley-face” or “What is trending on Twitter?”

Using dictation

In many instances where you’d use the iPhone touchscreen keyboard, you can now use Siri instead. In lieu of typing, tap the microphone icon on the keyboard and speak. Tap Done when you’re done. Dictation works as you search the web, take notes, compose messages, and so on. You can even update your Facebook status by voice.

Voice isn’t the solution to everything. Putting Siri to work typically involves a combination of using voice, touch, and your eyes to see what’s on the screen.

Correcting mistakes

As we point out, Siri is good but sometimes needs to be put in his or her place. Fortunately, you can correct 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 it or fix what Siri thinks you said. If a word is underlined in blue, you can use the touch keyboard or your voice 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! will be added.

Making Siri smarter

You can tell Siri in which language you want to converse by going to Settings⇒General⇒Siri. Siri is available in English (United States, United Kingdom, or Australian), French, German, Chinese, 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.

And as we mention earlier, you can change Siri’s voice from female to male or vice versa.

If you’re concerned about Siri intruding when you raise the phone up to your ear to make a call, head to Settings as well to turn off the Raise to Speak feature.

As noted, you can call upon Siri even from the Lock screen. That’s the default setting anyway. Consider this feature a mixed blessing. Not having to type a passcode to activate Siri is convenient. On the other hand, if your phone ends up with the wrong person, he or she would be able to use Siri to make a call, send an email, or send a message in your name, bypassing whatever passcode security you thought was in place. If you find this potential scenario scary, tap Settings⇒Touch ID & Passcode on the 5s, 6, or 6 Plus (Settings⇒Passcode on earlier models). Then enter your passcode — a fingerprint on the 5s, 6, or 6 Plus won’t cut it here — and under Allow Access When Locked, change the Siri option to off (white rather than green is showing). For more on Settings, read Chapter 14.

Voice Dialing

Most cellphones of recent vintage let you dial a name or number by voice. Bark out “Call Mom” or “Dial 212-555-1212,” and such handsets oblige. Your engaging virtual personal assistant, Siri, can do that too. And Siri can return calls too.

You can take advantage of voice calling (and some other functions too) when you have Siri disabled too. It’s all part of a feature called Voice Control. You have two ways to summon the Voice Control feature:

• Press and hold down the Home button until the Voice Control screen shown in Figure 5-5 appears. The screen displays wavy lines that move as you speak. Scrolling in the background are some of the commands you can say out loud (Previous Song, Call, and so on). Don’t blurt out anything until you hear a quick double-beep. The iPhone will repeat the command it thinks it heard.

  

• Press and hold down the center button on the wired headset. Again, wait for an audible cue and then tell the iPhone what you have in mind.

Voice Control works quite nicely with the wired headset included with your iPhone. It works also with some Bluetooth headsets and car kits. If you use a wireless headset that’s not supported, you’ll have to hold the phone up to your lips if you want it to respond to voice commands.

You definitely want to wait for voice confirmation after you’ve spoken. In our experience, Voice Control isn’t perfect, especially in a noisy environment. So if you’re dialing a name or number, make sure the iPhone is indeed calling the person you had in mind. There’s no telling what kind of trouble you might get into otherwise.

Wait for the tone and speak clearly, especially if you’re in a noisy environment. You can dial by number, as in “Dial 202-555-1212.” You can dial a name, as in “Call Bob LeVitus” or “Dial Ed Baig.” Or you can be a tad more specific, as in “Dial Bob LeVitus mobile” or “Call Ed Baig home.” Before the phone dials, an automated voice repeats what it thinks it heard.

If the person you’re calling has multiple phone numbers and you fail to specify which one, the voice will prompt you, “Ed Baig, home, mobile, or work?” Tell the iPhone which one to use, or say “Cancel” if you decide not to call or are offered the wrong name.

When the Voice Control screen appears, let go of the Home button before speaking a command. Otherwise, your thumb may cover the microphone, making it more difficult for the iPhone to understand your intent.