Dave Caolo on his use of Siri:

Siri is handy in the kitchen. I often use it to set timers. I also have Siri turn my alarms on and off before bed. In those instances, a verbal request is faster than swiping and tapping. Unfortunately, I don’t use it for anything else. Many people say it’s a great way to read and respond to text messages. In my experience, Siri reads incoming texts well but often fails when transcribing my words.

I too haven’t found myself using Siri as often as I thought I would. But, I do still use it often enough to find it incredibly useful. I also use Siri to set timers and actually didn’t know that it was capable of turning on alarms. But, the real use case for me is in sending text messages while I’m driving.

While I don’t drive very often, usually just to and from work, I like to let my girlfriend know when I’m heading home. She likes to have dinner ready for me when I get there (her choice, not mine) and appreciates the heads up so that she can have it on the table when I walk in the door. This way we’re not eating right before we go to bed. Siri is perfect for this. I jump in the car hold the home button and use Siri to text message my girlfriend.

I haven’t found the transcription of my words to be much of a problem. Siri always seems to have an easy time figuring out what I’m saying, at least compared to my girlfriends experience with Siri. She’ll often use it to try to look something up while we’re at the dinner table and it just fails at understanding what she’s saying. I then try it on my phone and Siri almost always recognizes what I’m saying right away.

Transcription is a tricky technology and works well for some while others are left correcting it by hand. I’ve had a lot of luck with Siri’s ability to understand what I’m saying and that’s likely why I use it more often then others.