Why Siri Still Sucks

(But also, sort of doesn't)

Siri sucks and we can't get rid of it.  There, I said it. I never use voice commands because for some reason Siri can never understand me.  I have a very flat British accent, so I should be easily understood, but apparently not. Siri, for me is just a waste of time, battery and processing power.

Also, when my phone is locked, Siri can't do anything anyway, so I have to unlock the phone first. If that is the case, then I can just go ahead and do what I need to do anyway, without Siri's assistance.  After all I now have the unlocked phone in my hand ...

But there is something that is worth having and that is the shortcuts.  Now I am all about the process improvement.  Lets six sigma that shit - in other words I am lazy and want to click as few things as possible so investing in automation pays back in time.

And this is what short cuts can give us.  Now I don't have that many short cuts, but the ones that I have created are very useful.

Now I will say that the Gallery and Automations in Shortcuts are useless.  Nothing in there fits what I do, but here is what I have created.  Most of these are really very simple, and I have the organized as follows:

• Mobile - Shortcuts I use primarily on my iPhone
• Settings - Shortcuts for use primary on the iPad
• Blogging - just some blogging shortcuts
• German - shortcuts to assist in my German Language studies
• Apps - A bucket for other general shortcuts

Lets take a look at some of the shortcuts. The first one I want to look at is Scooter.  I used to live in downtown Denver and there are a lot of scooters in that area.  The Scooter short cut turns on Bluetooth, and opens all of my scooter apps - Bird, Lime, Lyft, Razor and Spin.  This way I don't have to hunt for the app I need, its already open and BT is ready to connect.  It saved me a little time when I needed to get a scooter.

Another app from that group is the Music shortcut.  It turns on Bluetooth, opens Spotify and makes sure the volume on the iPhone is set to max.  I use this if I am driving - it gets me connected to the car sound system quickly and efficiently.

The other use case I have is for the email shortcut in Settings.  As I have mentioned previously, I prefer to use the web version of Gmail and not email apps.  This shortcut opens up Gmail in Safari in one click instead of opening Safari, finding Gmail in my bookmarks and selecting it to open. 

Most of my shortcuts are exactly that; simple and quick shortcuts but they allow me to organize my desk top the way I want it, and find what I need efficiently.

So Siri and the voice commands suck ass.  Siri is supposed to learn to make suggestions but none of the suggestions ever make any sense what so ever.  However the shortcuts have been pretty useful, and I suspect as my needs change over time, so will my short cuts.