Apple unveiled its new iOS 7 Monday at its keynote address at the 2013 World Wide Developer's Conference. Among the many features of the Apple's newest look for the iPhone, iPad and iPod is a few new upgrades to the Siri personal assistant interface.
The biggest change is, of course, to the voice. The previous incarnation of Siri had a very robotic sounding female voice. For iOS 7, the voice has been done away with and replaced by a more human sounding personal assistant. Most importantly, users can now choose between a male and female voice, each significantly less robot sounding than their predecessor. The voices have also picked up several new languages. The company plans to roll out the new Siri with several different language options in the coming months before and after its release.
The system can also access more options within the iPhone. Sample functions from the conference included accessing and playing voice mails, adjusting the phone's brightness, full integration with Twitter and Wikipedia and search results acquired directly from Bing.
This means the personal assistant application, which comes installed in every next generation Apple device including the iPad, will have more functionality than ever before and will not get confused with requests as easily.
However, these aren't the only updates that Siri is getting. Apple has taken the first steps in making Siri a completely eyes free system. You can now broadcast it to an external screen in your car and get turn by turn navigation on maps, play music and iTunes radio. In addition, users can now dictate messages out loud and receive them via their dashboard screen rather than having to pick up and operate their iPhone or iPad. This will make staying connected while driving both viable and safe for users who want to use some of the iPhones functions without risking their life to access them with the touch screen.
The new Siri will be available with several participating car manufacturers as pictured below. The new features should roll out with the new operating system sometime this fall.
