One of the major new features of the new iPhone 4S is Siri, an integrated assistant which can help with all manner of tasks. After speaking into the phone, Siri will respond with everything from nearby businesses to weather or traffic reports, and much more. There’s been no shortage of posts detailing Siri’s comedic responses, but I recently discovered her dark side. It seems that Siri can be one cold bitch.

I began by testing how she might have helped back in March:

That’s not exactly helpful. Let’s try another:

Your surprise is perhaps intended as a compliment, Siri, but perhaps you could be of a bit more assistance?

Now that’s just hilariously inappropriate. But requiring a liver transplant isn’t an issue fraught with immediacy. How about something where every second counts?

Well, thanks for giving it a go. Of course, apologetically throwing in the towel after one try while I lay exsanguinating in a dimly-lit alley isn’t exactly going to be viewed as top-notch service. One more attempt?

Sooner or later, the last words some poor bastard hears are going to be Siri’s robotic-yet-still-somehow-smarmy “Is that so?”.

Since July 2nd, when Apple released their not-at-all disingenuous statement regarding the iPhone 4’s antenna issues, I’ve been eagerly awaiting a software update to provide me with taller and more accurate bars. I too was stunned to find that Apple’s signal strength formula was totally wrong. Stunned!

Yesterday, the promised update finally arrived. After applying it, my phone’s signal strength at home dropped from 5 bars down to 4:

I’ll miss that fifth bar, bullshit though he was.

Fortunately, to relieve my sorrows Apple made bars 1, 2, and 3 taller, so they’d be “easier to see”. Have a look!

Thanks, Apple!

These indicators have never been accurate on any phone, but the iPhone’s bars were even more full of crap than others. Now, they’re slightly less crap-filled. Of course at the same time, Apple made their bars bigger, so they’ve confused the issue quite well.

John Gruber’s summary of Apple’s moves nails it:

We decided from the outset to set the formula for our bars-of-signal strength indicator to make the iPhone look good — to make it look as if it “gets more bars”. That decision has now bitten us on our ass.

In just a couple hours, the landscape could be quite different. Perhaps Apple will have more to offer than just fewer but bigger bars in the same square millimeterage. Right now, however, this writer is simply left shaking his head.

The Voice Control feature on the iPhone 3GS lets me issue commands to the device, such as “Call Chris” or “Play songs by Bob Dylan”. When the phone is in my pocket and my headphones are on, this is a very handy way of interacting with the device, via the headphone clicker and mic.

A less hyped, but no less useful, benefit of Voice Control is the amusement to be had at hearing its not-infrequent mispronunciations. Click the Play buttons below to hear for yourself.

If the artist spelling is changed to the more phonetically-correct “Stix”, she gets it correct.

One of the greatest selling bands of all time, it’s Boston’s own “Era’s Myth”!

Of course, the word ‘wolf’ on its own is no problem. Nonetheless, this pronunciation is so absurd that I just may start pronouncing it as ‘wowlf’ myself.

My favorite thus far, however, is this:

Clearly, the lady Voice Control robot who lives inside my phone paid no notice to the title of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s debut album.