News - Apple iPhone 4s speaks with forked tongue

[HEXUS]

Siri, what’s the best smartphone?

Read more.

[mikerr]

Siri is only allowed to give "Apple Approved"(tm) answers now.

[anselhelm]

For some reason, I'm imagining that Siri is now like the big brain from Futurama (The Why Of Fry):

"Siri, who killed the dinosaurs?"
"MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

[Andi-C]

"Siri, Why are Apple products so over priced ???"

[crossy]

"Siri, Why are Apple products so over priced ???"

And Siri's reply would probably be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj4ArncwMNE
(Steven King ATM scene from Maximum Overdrive)

[DDY]

Samuel L Jackson should be the voice of Siri for the sole purpose of telling you off saying a certain word.

[Monkeysweat]

it's funny how the media blows this out of proportion, people only heard of wolfram alpha because of apple, I have used it before siri and it does not always give you the same answer and siri does not always output what wolfram does, it uses a combination.

in fact, if you read the output for best smartphone or best cellphone, it currently gives the HTC- Trophy as #1, then apple 4s then apple 4 then the nokia 900 - but if you read the top it says 'according to best buy reviews' - and really that is the place where I trust all my reviews come from /sarcasm

I think it is honestly Nokia's desperate attempt to try and get apple to acknowledge them in some flattering way. I'm sure coke always talks highly of pepsi.

[Smudger]

it's funny how the media blows this out of proportion, people only heard of wolfram alpha because of apple

Really? Techie users will have heard of WA well before Apple started using it, and non-techies probably don't care where the info comes from.

[crossy]

Really? Techie users will have heard of WA well before Apple started using it, and non-techies probably don't care where the info comes from.

Agreed, in fact that Apple/Siri uses Wolfram Alpha was news to me. As search engines go I've always found WA very "entertaining".

I think it is honestly Nokia's desperate attempt to try and get apple to acknowledge them in some flattering way.

I'm not sure by what convoluted logic you come to that conclusion.
According to the story WA (independent of both Apple and Nokia) was returning a Nokia device as the reply to the "what's the best phone inquiry". So unless you're going to claim that Nokia's either paid Wolfram for placement, (unlikely) or they've managed to "game" the search results in some manner, then your accusation against Nokia seems baseless.

And yes, I do claim to be a Nokia fan, so admit to a slight bias towards them.

[mikerr]

What this story demonstrates is apple's control of having all Siri queries going through apple servers first,
then being passed onward to Wolfram etc if apple servers have no default answer.

All well and good for situations like this where they can quickly fix a PR issue,
but can we trust the results when they are so willing to replace genuine computed results with their own,
and it might be less obvious in the future.

Their phone, their rules I supose - but imagine if google started redirecting searches to from iphone to android...