Apple iPhone 4S' Siri says the craziest things

The new Apple iPhone 4S can do more than just check e-mail and make phone calls. It's also turning into a new — sometimes sassy, often entertaining —digital friend for millions of consumers.

The most touted new feature, the Siri personal digital assistant, has, hidden in the software, dozens of humorous responses to silly questions.

Consumers are asking Siri for dates, marriage, sexual advice, math equations and even crazy stuff like where to hide a dead body.

To their surprise: Siri usually has an answer.

Comedian Stephen Colbert opened his Colbert Report Tuesday night on Comedy Central asking Siri, in jest, to write his show for him. Musician Jonathan Mann wrote an online duet this week with Siri, which has burned up the YouTube charts so far with more than 400,000 views.

Apple declined to comment. But Apple engineers apparently thought of every possible answer in programming Siri. "If you mention sex in any way, it takes you to an escort service," says Mann, who used about every potential Siri answer to comedic effect in his Duet with Siri. Pretty funny.

Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies, figures Siri has "tens of thousands" of answers to choose from. "Siri is linked to a very powerful set of databases," he says.

The response from consumers to Siri was to be expected, he adds. "I would have been shocked if they didn't respond this way. People are curious, and they say curious things."

USA TODAY told Siri it loved her. The answer: "Oh stop."

Meanwhile, availability for the new iPhone 4S is still elusive. Apple sold 4 million of the phones worldwide last weekend, but phones have been hard to come by since. Availability through Apple's online store promises a wait of one to two weeks for delivery. The wait is much longer with the wireless carriers. Verizon has waits that range from Oct. 28 to Nov. 4 for iPhones, while AT&T promises delivery in 21 to 28 days. Sprint is totally sold out of the 16-GB model, which sells for $199 with a two-year contract, but promises delivery of the more expensive 32-GB model for $299 in two weeks.

Getting to know Siri

All sorts of questions, and more, were hurled this week at Siri, the talking personal digital assistant for the Apple iPhone 4S. The consensus: Siri is a little bit Hal from the epic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, mixed with humor from Apple engineers.

Phone users went beyond the usual requests for weather forecasts, setting up meetings and dictating text messages. Many just had fun with Siri, asking silly questions simply to see the responses. We asked USA TODAY readers to chime in with some of their Siri stories. Here's what they had to say.

Riddle me this

"I asked Siri how much wood could a woodchuck chuck if it could chuck wood, and it answered," says Ryan Fettig, 25, of Bismarck, N.D. "It was hilarious." Said Siri: "A woodchuck would chuck as much as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood."

Entertaining conversation

"If I'm bored and sitting in traffic, I can goof around and have a conversation with something that's not a person, something witty that can keep me entertained," says Charles Badics, a South Lyon, Mich., software engineer. "I asked what it was wearing, and it said 'aluminum body with a glass front and back.' "

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David Hulings, a Michigan-based motivational speaker, says he uses Siri while driving. It "answers e-mails in paragraph form. The accuracy after you learn it is amazing."

Deep stuff

Amit Ghandi asked Siri the age-old question: "What is the meaning of life?" Answer: "Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try to live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations."

Some questions OK; others, not

Asking "When does Daylight Savings Time begin?" results in Siri's voice giving the exact day, date and time, says Tom Eisenman, 58, of Springfield, Mass. But ask: "When does Daylight Savings Time end?" Siri's answer: "You don't have anything on your calendar for Daylight Savings Time." Eisenman's verdict: "Siri can be a time waster because you never know whether you'll get a useful response, even when the question is similar to something she has answered helpfully before."

Trouble with dialects

"She doesn't like me," says Gareth McCusker, a New York bartender originally from Northern Ireland. "It won't pick up my accent. It's a bit annoying."

New iPhone 4S camera sharp

The camera features of Apple's new iPhone 4S are one of the two standouts that differentiate the new model, along with the voice-activated personal assistant, Siri.

But are the pictures and videos so much better that they'd make you want to upgrade?

They are substantially better, especially the video. Whether that's worth investing in the iPhone 4S and a new service contract is up to you. It's certainly a big improvement over what was already a pretty nice point-and-shoot camera in the iPhone 4.

Here's a closer look:

•The iPhone 4S has an 8-megapixel image sensor, up from the 5-megapixel camera of the iPhone 4. The extra resolution means you can make larger blow-ups for your prints and crop more liberally.

•The lens has a wider 2.4 F-stop opening to let in more light. That will produce much better photos in low light and indoor situations.

•Also, the image processor for the iPhone 4S is the same chip that's used for the iPad 2. Apple says that means the camera operations will run faster.

•You now have the ability to move the camera in more for close-up macro shots.

•Snapping photos can now also be done on the volume-up button, which allows for steadier shots.

•Video resolution has improved to 1080p high-definition, up from 720p.

Eight megapixels is a step up, but the average point-and-shoot camera now has 14 megapixels, says Chris Chute, an analyst at researcher IDC.

Two more features you'll miss if you opt for an iPhone 4S instead of a point-and-shoot: There's no optical zoom, which is a flaw that needs to be addressed in future models, and the flash is greatly inferior to what you'll find on a stand-alone camera.

The reality about camera phones is that most have produced lousy images over the years. People still use them because they always have their phone.

So this souped-up camera in the iPhone is most welcome.

•The added oomph from the wider lens opening produces better color and a brighter image. This is more noticeable for inside photos rather than outside ones in lots of light.

•Despite Apple claims to the contrary, there is still shutter lag. How could a point-and-shoot not have it? If you're hoping to take pictures of your kids running through the backyard, making an important baseball pitch, jumping off a diving board — odds are you could miss the perfect shot.

Bottom line: The iPhone 4S is not the first phone to offer an 8-megapixel sensor. The Motorola Droid Bionic and Samsung Galaxy S II both already have it. Nor is it the first to have 1080p HD video such as that available from the Samsung Galaxy S. But then again, neither of those devices is the beloved iPhone, the most popular and coveted smartphone in the world.

That said, the images on the new iPhone are substantially better, but I wouldn't want to leave my point-and-shoot or DSLR camera at home for an important occasion, such as a vacation.

Overall, the biggest improvement is in the video. The footage it captures looks crisper and sharper, thanks to the wider lens opening, improvements in the lens itself and image stabilization. If you watch the video, which I shot in Hermosa Beach on roller blades, you'll see that it looks almost as though it was made on a steadicam. I'm impressed. This is the best video quality I've seen on a point-and-shoot.

Apple gets edge with use of voice-recognition technology

Executive Phil Schiller speaks about the voice recognition app called Siri during the company's presentation on Tuesday.

The voice-driven Siri virtual personal assistant that Apple touted as a major feature in the brand new iPhone 4S says a lot about how far speech recognition in phones has come.

Siri not only recognizes what it is that you are asking — "wake me up at 6:30", "any decent sushi restaurants around here — but it understands the intent of your words and can respond accordingly.

Siri relies on artificial intelligence and is tightly integrated with the various apps on the phone. Results are tailored based on your location and through partnerships with the likes of Yelp.

Mike Thompson, who heads up the mobile business at Nuance Communications, called the Siri news "an exclamation point on the mainstreaming of the technology." Adds Dan Miller, senior analyst at Opus Research, "I'm calling it an inflection point of sorts."

As a leader in the field, Nuance has partnerships with Apple (and Siri), and several other companies, and is the outfit behind Dragon Naturally Speaking speech-recognition products for computers and mobile.

Analyst Shyam Patil of Raymond James estimates that Apple is paying Nuance a recurring $5 million to $10 million in revenue every quarter over the life of an estimated two to three year contract. "If anyone can get speech right, its Apple," he says.

Of course Nuance is by no means alone. A veritable who's-who of tech companies including Google, Microsoft and IBM spend a lot of time on speech-related research, as do startups such as Vlingo.

"Our vision is complete ubiquity of this type of technology," says Mike Cohen who leads the speech technology efforts at Google. That means on every application, webpage, social network, in the car and so on. Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has said that 25% of Google searches on Android phones are triggered by voice. Along with voice search, Android users can employ voice actions ("note to self -- grocery list: banana, milk, eggs, pizza") to get things done.

Until its inclusion as part of the iPhone 4S, a version of Siri was available on iPhones as a third party app. Apple bought the Siri startup in April 2010.

Though the app disappears, the promise of the Siri approach is in the way it is tied into the very fabric of the 4S and the way in which you can pose a question. For example, "do I need an umbrella today?" yields the same result as "what is the weather like today?"

"Its not that you get to use your voice, but you get to talk in a way that you feel comfortable with," Miller says. "The systems themselves are less robotic, it doesn't seem as gimmicky. There is a true Star Trek effect."

Good as it has gotten, voice recognition is far from perfect. Apple says Siri on the iPhone 4S is in beta. Siri isn't completely hands-free either. Though it can help cut down on certain steps as you navigate tasks, a typical Siri interaction may involve a combination of using your voice, looking at results with your eyes and touching the phone.

Thompson says: "We're in the 4th inning—the rate of change and innovation is faster than ever before in speech. The accuracy and performance is getting better. (In the) next five innings we'll see greater and greater natural language."