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Siri should be banned !!! (or not)

I had to endure two hours of annoying distraction from a Siri using passenger on a recent train journey.

I have long been of the opinion that talking to your phone (as opposed to talking to a human through your phone) is a gimmick. I dismissed the voice search capability of my Android phone after no more than five minutes of playing with it and that train journey convinced me that Apple's secret Siri sauce has not made the experience of talking to a machine any more palatable. It was bad enough that we other passengers had to endure the Iphone user's loud and often misinterpreted commands to their phone but they had set up the device so that every single response was also relayed in an annoying computer voice even to the point of reading entire emails aloud.

It was late, I was tired after a day of business meetings and despite Hollywood stereotypes we Irish are not a confrontational lot so I did my best to ignore the distraction and catch a bit of sleep on the journey home. When we arrived at our destination I looked around for the offending passenger to glare a bit of bad karma in their direction.

That is when I noticed the dark glasses and white cane.





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Comments

Eutheos said…
... which still does not explain why the person did not use the headphones?
... hm, probably because they needed to hear information about upcoming stations...
5:19 am
mbp said…
Headphones would certainly have made things more pleasant for other passengers but I still feel kind of bad for thinking ill of a blind person.
7:23 am
Gankalicious said…
Perhaps Hollywood took their inspiration for their stereotypes from the Limerick bus station :)
5:58 pm
mbp said…
Lol. Well we must make a special exception for our Limerick Brethren.
8:17 pm
Cap'n John said…
On the train several weeks ago I watched a young lady who was visually impaired use her iphone to try to call her parents, sister, check her voicemail, etc., all without bothering her fellow passengers with loud Sir-like announcements.

She held her iphone right next to her ear and used her index finger to tap the on-screen buttons to make the phone do whatever she needed.

Unlike us sighted people, removing her phone from her ear and placing it in front of her face in order to see the onscreen buttons was pointless, and she appeared to have become quite adept at touching the correct on-screen buttons with the phone held next to her ear.

Being visually impaired does not mean your passenger was not being an arse and using their disability to divert any criticism.
7:12 pm
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