This is Technology Bytes, episode 173, for June 28, 2026.
Technology Bytes is a microcast, where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week I’m talking about Siri AI, and that means that I finally got in.
I am off the waiting list, and I have been given access to what people are calling Smart Siri.
And so I thought I would give you some feedback.
I’ve had it now for, well, let’s see, almost a week by the time you listen to this.
I got it on Father’s Day in the afternoon.
Didn’t get to play with it too much then, but have spent some time with it.
And it’s always funny, it’s like, I’m waiting to get this, I’m waiting to get this, and then I get it, and I’m like, now what do I do with it?
So I’ll talk a little bit about what I tested and what I did and what worked and what didn’t.
One of the things that the Siri AI provides is access into your personal information on the phone.
So as you know from previous microcasts, I talked about the amount of time it took indexing my devices.
And all of that was necessary so that this new Siri could be smart.
And it took a lot of time, but I think everything was worth it.
So one of the things that I tried was to see what Siri knew about me.
And so I did some health data searching, and it knew quite a bit.
But one of the things that I asked it was, how many walking workouts have I done this week?
No, sorry, have I done this year?
And it came back and told me how many miles I had done and how many miles I averaged per day in my walking workouts.
But it did not tell me how many workouts I had finished.
And so I said, no, I want to know the number of walking workouts that I did.
And Siri came back and said, I can’t tell you that information.
So there’s some holes there, right?
And then I thought, so then I said to Siri, what kind of car do I drive?
And Siri came back and said, I don’t know the make and model, but this is where you parked it last.
So I thought that was kind of interesting.
So it just doesn’t know everything.
And then I said, when is my car payment due?
And there’s an email in my email that tells me that my car payment is due on a given day.
And Siri came back and said, your car payment for your EV6, your Kia EV6 is due on this date.
And of course, Siri was correct.
And now it told me what kind of car I drive.
I think I should have gone back and said, now do you know what kind of car I drive?
But I didn’t.
So I don’t know what it would have done in that instance.
The other thing that Siri does is just general world knowledge.
So we all know that I can show you that on my iPhone response that we get all the time.
And it’s frustrating beyond measure, I guess.
And so I did some basic world knowledge things.
So I’m going to California this weekend.
And I said, where’s the last place to buy gas in Arizona on your way to California?
And so it gave me three options.
And then it told me what services were available at those three stops, the last three stops heading out of Arizona.
And then it says, you’re probably making a pretty wise choice because gas prices in Arizona are generally quite a bit lower than those in California.
So I thought that was pretty cool.
The other thing that happened this week is my refrigerator broke.
And so I asked, I gave Siri the, let’s see, some background there and said, look, my refrigerator is not cool and it’s not staying cold.
But my freezer works and all the things in my freezer are super solid, frozen, no issue there.
And Siri came back and said, well, if your freezer is working, then it’s not your compressor and it’s not Freon.
What it probably is, is your circulating fan because the refrigerator works in a manner that takes the cold air from the freezer and pushes it into the refrigerator and then recycles that back to the freezer to make it cold again and so on and so forth.
So I thought that was pretty cool.
And then I said, okay, I need that fan and this is the model number of my refrigerator.
And Siri came back and said, okay, here’s your part number.
And then gave me a link to Amazon to purchase it.
So general world knowledge, pretty impressive.
I’m trying to remember where it fell down.
I think I asked it something and now I can’t remember, but it’s like, yeah, I don’t know that information.
So obviously still some holes.
The other thing that we have is the visual intelligence, which we’ve had prior to Siri AI, but obviously this is probably going to work better.
So I thought I would test that when I took the freezer apart and had the fans out.
I just held the phone up and chose the Siri option.
So now it’s like video, photo, Siri, then other options in your camera app and pointed it at the fan and basically said, what am I looking at?
And it knew I was looking at an electrical component, but it really didn’t know what it was.
So a little hole there.
But I don’t know what my expectation was.
I haven’t used it much beyond that.
Also, Siri AI is screen aware of what is on your screen.
And so one of the things that I did on my iPad was did a Amazon search of the part that I thought I needed.
And then I just circled it on the screen, captured a screenshot and then circled it.
And it came back and told me all kinds of things about that device.
So that was pretty cool as well.
So I was pretty satisfied with that and still recognize there are some improvements that will be made in hopefully the not too distant future.
The other thing that Siri is doing now that really didn’t do well at all in the past is image creation.
And there are some limitations.
It won’t make historical figures or something like that, but they are way more photorealistic images from what I’ve seen.
But I have not tried this function yet in the Siri AI world.
The other thing that I thought I would look at is and did some research and some searching on.
I guess I should have asked Siri AI what the capabilities were, but I was looking at in the Apple suite of productivity things like can you make a spreadsheet for me?
Can you create a Word document?
Some of those things.
And one of the things that Siri can do is I think paste data into a given spreadsheet.
So it’s like, hey, look at all of my electric bills in my email over the last three years and put my monthly charge in the spreadsheet, this spreadsheet that I have open.
And it’s supposed to be able to do that, but I haven’t tried that either.
So I want to do that because I do keep all my bills, but I haven’t spent the time typing numbers in.
So I think there is some productivity thing, obviously writing and help in writing and some of those things that it’s done before maybe a little bit better now.
But I think there’s still limitations in the productivity aspects of what Siri AI can do.
But I do need to do some more testing and I’ll give you feedback as I learn more.
But just in the week that I’ve had it, clearly it is way better than it has been in the past.
There are still holes.
I use Claude a lot at work, but Claude is tied into all my work data, so it’s a little bit different.
I don’t generally have conversations with Claude about my personal life or things like my broken refrigerator, although I’m sure that Claude would be fine with that.
But the cool thing is, is I can use Siri AI and I’m not concerned about who’s seeing my data.
That is staying local on the device.
It is happening to me only.
The other thing that’s really cool is that all of the conversations that I’ve had show up on all my devices.
So my phone, my iPad, my iMac, my MacBook Air, and I can start from where I left off and start those conversations right from that point.
And I did that in a couple instances and just ask another question, not saying, hey, before you told me this or whatever, I just asked the next question.
And Siri AI picked it right up and kept the conversation going.
Very well done.
Access to it is fairly simple, swiping down from the middle on your devices.
There’s buttons on the Mac.
I haven’t used it on the Macs all that much yet, although I did do some.
Overall, super excited about the future that Apple has presented here.
I know it’s in beta.
Even when it releases in the fall for everybody, it’s still going to be with a beta label.
But I think they’re in the right direction.
And if they continue to grow from there and be smart about how it’s presented and the security and the personal information, I think they are on the right track and well on their way to getting a lot of people to use Siri again after having written her off.
Oh, may not be a her.
It?
Whatever.
So that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merrickfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together, taking another bite of technology.
