How Siri’s ultimate killer feature could be remembering

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Photo: Apple
Photo: Apple

Siri does many things, not all of them as well as others. But one thing she’s really great at is reminders: Tell Siri to remind you to call your Mom on her birthday every year, and you’ll never have to worry about it again.

While Siri is great at reminding you to do things, though, one thing she can’t do is remind you to remember things. But there’s no reason she can’t, and it would make an absolutely killer feature.

Over on Reddit, Redditor GoodNewsNobody suggests that Siri, as part of her duties as a virtual assistant, should be able to remind you of scraps of ephemeral knowledge that you might otherwise bury in Notes, never to find again.

Some of the examples he lists are:

• “Siri, remember my wife’s favorite flower is a Hydrangea”

• “Remember my locker combination is 17,6,3”

• “Remember my printer uses 211XL ink”

• “Remember my niece’s shoe size is 5”

• “Siri, remember the color I painted my room is Silver Sage”

The idea is that instead of trying to find these scattered pieces of information in Notes or a program like Evernote, you could just hit the home button and say, “Siri, do you remember my niece’s shoe size?”

Honestly, I think this is just a fantastic idea, and it seems relatively simple to build out on Siri’s existing Reminders backbone. The issue would be security, of course, but I think that could be safeguarded: For example, if someone tried to tell Siri to remember their Social Security number, Siri could simply recognize the trigger “Social Security number” and refuse.

There’s no proof Apple is working on something like that but, inspired by the thread, many Redditors are already suggesting it as a feature Apple could add to a future version of iOS. Let’s hope we get it. Maybe for 8.1?

Source: Reddit

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