At Apple’s annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), significant updates to Siri were announced, making the digital assistant more natural, relevant, and personal. Here’s an overview of the new features and enhancements:
Enhanced Siri Features
- New Look and Feel:
- Revamped Icon: Siri now features a redesigned icon with a glowing light that wraps around the edges of your device’s screen, providing a modern and dynamic visual cue.
- Improved Understanding and Context Handling:
- Speech Handling: Siri can now better handle speech stumbles and understand context, leading to more accurate and relevant responses.
- Typing to Siri: Users can now type their queries to Siri, offering an alternative to voice commands and improving accessibility.
- Device Usage Questions: Siri can answer questions about how to use various features on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
- Onscreen Awareness:
- Contextual Actions: Siri can perform tasks based on the context of your interactions. For instance, if a friend sends you their address, you can ask Siri to add it to a contact card.
- Cross-App Actions: Thanks to the new App Intents API, Siri can take actions within and across different apps. For example, you can ask Siri to enhance a photo and then add it to another app.
- Deep Capabilities:
- Photo and Data Handling: Siri can find specific photos, extract information like your ID number from a photo of your license, and enter it into web forms, showcasing advanced data extraction and integration capabilities.
Developer Integration
- App Intents API: This new API allows developers to enable Siri to take actions within their apps. This means users can ask Siri to perform complex tasks that involve multiple apps and data sources, making the assistant even more powerful and versatile.
Availability
- Release Timeline: While some features might roll out with the upcoming OS updates, the exact timeline for the availability of all new capabilities has not been specified. More details are expected to be revealed as WWDC continues.
Summary
Apple’s updates to Siri are aimed at making the assistant more intuitive, responsive, and capable of handling complex tasks across various apps and contexts. With these enhancements, Siri is set to become an even more integral part of the Apple ecosystem, providing users with a seamless and powerful digital assistant experience.
