Dates and Times With Siri ⇥ leancrew.com

I love this collection of examples by Dr. Drang of how Siri handles date and time questions. In some instances, its understanding of context is remarkably good; in a few, it’s disappointing. The key point, for me, is something Drang writes at the end:

The upshot is that Siri can be good at date and time math, but it needs the right syntax. Not surprising for a computer program, but not how Siri has been promoted by Apple.

I was chatting with a friend about this. Make no mistake: Siri is far better at parsing different variations of sentence construction than traditional voice control systems. But users must still learn some syntactical tricks to ensure Siri understands the precise intention and context of what is being said.

I also wonder how much of this is because of the English language; many other languages create more rigorously-structured sentences.