Apple Watch Review Diary - Siri


Apple is on its third major iteration of Siri and the improvements seem apparent. While I use Siri on occasion for my phone, it's a critical component for the Apple Watch with no keyboard. So the Apple Watch should have made Siri an urgent priority for Apple. On the Apple Watch Siri is quick and responsive. It basically works as well as I'd hope, and given how the Apple Watch is tethered to the iPhone and past experiences using Siri, it's pretty impressive to me.

Siri can be launched either by holding down the digital crown or the voice prompt "Hey, Siri" while the watch is active. Both work well, but the voice prompt works particularly well when driving or on the go. Just raise your wrist up to face you and start talking.

You can use Siri for basically the same things you can do with the iOS, but if an answer isn't baked in, Siri you'll direct you to your iPhone to do a web search. I've used it for unit conversions in the kitchen and general playing around. The form of the Apple Watch makes Siri pretty neat.

Another function that I've found very useful is using Siri to launch apps. For some reason I struggle to find apps on the home screen. I'm not sure if I'm just not familiar yet with app location and/or I tend to read app names more than icons on iOS. Since many app icons have similar colors and designs, without realizing I probably do more memorizing of app locations and tend to look more for app titles than icons. Launching apps using Siri is fast and easy, plus again handy when on the go when I don't want to be looking at a screen.

The last big area I've been using Siri is for text input. This is biggest feature and it works well. When writing texts you can either use an emoji, canned response, or Siri dictation. You can also send a recording of your message, but I prefer not to do that. You can disable this option to skip over that prompt when sending messages. Siri dictation is also a big part of what's making apps pretty cool. Evernote will do note dictation from the watch, which is pretty slick. The dictation isn't perfect, of course, but the workflow is nearly completely voice controlled from calling up Evernote, pressing the big "+" button on the watch, and then start talking. Similarly, I've been using it to create new items in OmniFocus and Trello. I'm sure there are countless other similar inputs that I'll be exploring.

All of this makes Siri a major player for me with the Apple Watch. Siri has been a big feature for the iPhone with the promise of making input quicker and easier. By design, the Apple Watch is forcing a transition to a voice experience rather than a keyboard experience. Siri seems to be working well and it will be interesting to see how developers continue to utilize the voice-driven experience.