Inside iOS 9: Siri brings new smarts to sports, weather, photos, and more in iOS 9

With Siri replacing Spotlight in iOS 9, Apple's personal digital assistant has received a new brain that lets her retrieve information sports and weather, find photos, look inside apps, and more.

Sports and weather have previously been available via Spotlight and Siri, but iOS 9 expands their usefulness. Entering just the name of a baseball team is enough to retrieve the score of their last game, along with their upcoming schedule and related websites.

Weather is now more detailed, showing hour-by-hour forecasts along with current conditions.

Siri now seems to have basic math skills baked in, no longer relying on Wolfram Alpha for unit conversions or simple equations. Typing in "8 cups" will instantly provide a conversion to liters, for instance.

Searching for contacts brings a new quick-access layout, with buttons to initiate a FaceTime call, message session, or phone call with people in the search results. Previously, users had to tap on a search result and were brought to the Phone app to complete the action.

Siri also gains the ability to search within apps, and link directly to content within those apps. For example, users who recently searched for flights to Maui via the Kayak app could search for "Maui" using Siri and be taken directly to the Kayak search result.

Additionaly, Siri now comes with more context about users' data. Asking Siri to "show me photos I took in May" will bring the user to the Photos app with only those photos shot in May displayed, while saying "Remind me about this tonight" will automatically create a context-aware reminder — Â for instance, Siri could prompt users to revisit an email later on.

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30 Comments

roake

said about 8 years ago

[quote]With Siri replacing Spotlight in iOS 9, Apple's personal digital assistant received a new brain[/quote] Frokenstein! Eets, alive! ALIVE! It scares me so!

MacPro

said about 8 years ago

I was really hoping to see Siri coming to OS X in the new version. It doesn't seem so.

mike1

said about 8 years ago

It would be nice if some of Siri's functions were baked into the phone. There's no reason Siri should have to reach her servers when I want to call or message a contact that is already in my phone. It would be much faster.

inkling

said about 8 years ago

Quote: "new smarts to sports, weather, photos, and more..." Yet another demonstration that Apple thinks its typical user is an immature twit with nothing better to do than obsess over "sports, weather, photos." It'd be nice if Apple would expend some effort to make their products useful to those of us who work for a living doing the hum-drum but necessary, you know things like a spell checker that's not worthless or the ability to move files between apps and devices without a lot of clumsy shuffling. And yes, I know how Apple got this way. In the mid-nineties, what little market Apple had were: 1. So-called "creative professionals" like me. 2. People too technically illiterate to manage the complexities of Windows hardware. They liked Apple's "just works" mindset and didn't care that almost no business software ran on it because they apparently played and danced their lives away. You see the efforts in market to either of those groups in Apple's ads. The company doesn't even seem to realize that any other sort of customer exists. The world, for Cupertino, consists of artists who don't have to labor much to create and trust-fund babies with lots of money unearned by actual labor. But that was 20 years ago. Apple needs to realize that Windows doesn't own the work-a-day market like it once did. Apple needs to build products that get work done, and by that I don't mean silly stuff like a Siri that's more like a nanny for the clueless than a tool for people who work for a living. People who, for instance, don't obsess over with their heart rate is every blasted second.

daveinpublic

said about 8 years ago

[quote name="Inkling" url="/t/186697/inside-ios-9-siri-brings-new-smarts-to-sports-weather-photos-and-more-in-ios-9/0_100#post_2734521"]Quote: "new smarts to sports, weather, photos, and more..." Yet another demonstration that Apple thinks its typical user is an immature twit with nothing better to do than obsess over "sports, weather, photos." It'd be nice if Apple would expend some effort to make their products useful to those of us who work for a living doing the hum-drum but necessary, you know things like a spell checker that's not worthless or the ability to move files between apps and devices without a lot of clumsy shuffling. And yes, I know how Apple got this way. In the mid-nineties, what little market Apple had were: 1. So-called "creative professionals" like me. 2. People too technically illiterate to manage the complexities of Windows hardware. They liked Apple's "just works" mindset and didn't care that almost no business software ran on it because they apparently played and danced their lives away. You see the efforts in market to either of those groups in Apple's ads. The company doesn't even seem to realize that any other sort of customer exists. The world, for Cupertino, consists of artists who don't have to labor much to create and trust-fund babies with lots of money unearned by actual labor. But that was 20 years ago. Apple needs to realize that Windows doesn't own the work-a-day market like it once did. Apple needs to build products that get work done, and by that I don't mean silly stuff like a Siri that's more like a nanny for the clueless than a tool for people who work for a living. People who, for instance, don't obsess over with their heart rate is every blasted second.[/quote] You seem to have become a member of the entitlement generation. You know, you could use android, windows, or even start your own company if you're so upset with the mentalities of the powers that be.