Voice Control
Voice Control is a bit like an answer to a question that no one asked. The basic premise is that Apple has given 3GS owners the ability to control their phone via simple voice commands, relayed through a glitzy Voice Control homescreen (which is accessed by holding down the home button for a few seconds). As you issue commands, the screen provides fly-bys of possible actions, ostensibly to make the process a bit easier on those with a blown short term memory. In practice, the application performed admirably when we made specific requests, whether it was dialing contacts, or playing a particular band -- though it wasn't without its hang-ups. The first problem we encountered is that it would sometimes just mishear us altogether, for instance, we asked it to "play M83" and it thought we wanted to listen to a playlist called "Pre" (oh the irony). Another irksome behavior is that you can ask Voice Control things like what song is currently playing, but after telling you, the app closes itself, forcing you to reopen if you want to change the track or perform another action. This seems like weird UI design to us -- why wouldn't Voice Control stay open until we were ready to close it? We also discovered that the range of options for voice activated functions are quite limited -- if you want to do anything beyond controlling music playback or making calls, you're pretty much out of luck.
There's clearly a lot of use for something like this when driving or working on something which keeps your hands away from your phone, though you still have to engage the app physically, so we're not sure how much you'd get out of it in those situations. The whole concept seems something very much in the vein of Cover Flow -- a really impressive component for the phone that just doesn't have a ton of practical use. Yes, your friends will think it's pretty cool, but as a pragmatic group of gadget nerds, we don't see a tremendous need for this functionality. Perhaps Apple will give it a little more undercarriage work in future versions of the OS, because we see lots of interesting places they could take it.
Voice Control is a bit like an answer to a question that no one asked. The basic premise is that Apple has given 3GS owners the ability to control their phone via simple voice commands, relayed through a glitzy Voice Control homescreen (which is accessed by holding down the home button for a few seconds). As you issue commands, the screen provides fly-bys of possible actions, ostensibly to make the process a bit easier on those with a blown short term memory. In practice, the application performed admirably when we made specific requests, whether it was dialing contacts, or playing a particular band -- though it wasn't without its hang-ups. The first problem we encountered is that it would sometimes just mishear us altogether, for instance, we asked it to "play M83" and it thought we wanted to listen to a playlist called "Pre" (oh the irony). Another irksome behavior is that you can ask Voice Control things like what song is currently playing, but after telling you, the app closes itself, forcing you to reopen if you want to change the track or perform another action. This seems like weird UI design to us -- why wouldn't Voice Control stay open until we were ready to close it? We also discovered that the range of options for voice activated functions are quite limited -- if you want to do anything beyond controlling music playback or making calls, you're pretty much out of luck.
There's clearly a lot of use for something like this when driving or working on something which keeps your hands away from your phone, though you still have to engage the app physically, so we're not sure how much you'd get out of it in those situations. The whole concept seems something very much in the vein of Cover Flow -- a really impressive component for the phone that just doesn't have a ton of practical use. Yes, your friends will think it's pretty cool, but as a pragmatic group of gadget nerds, we don't see a tremendous need for this functionality. Perhaps Apple will give it a little more undercarriage work in future versions of the OS, because we see lots of interesting places they could take it.
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق