Siri in the car is awesome

15 Oct 2015 22:11 | apple | iOS

I’ve always been fairly cynical about Siri. It seemed more like a gimmick than something people would use seriously in their day to day lives, but I’ve recently discovered how wrong I was.

I don’t have a CarPlay stereo in my car, because I didn’t want to be tied into Apple’s apps. Maps is nowhere near as good as TomTom (which I also paid good money for) and TomTom doesn’t yet have Siri integration. But I never even considered that Siri would work with non-CarPlay stereos. Turns out, as my friend and colleague Paul mentioned to me in passing, that it does. I have a Kenwood aftermarket stereo and if I hold the Call button on the unit, it activates Siri.

It seems to know I’m in the car, so lots of potentially useful requests are denied with “Sorry Mark, I can’t do that while you’re in the car”, which is a bit annoying, but on the whole it’s very useful. Things that work include:

• Playing music (playlists, songs etc)
• Playing podcasts (only works with the official Podcasts app)
• Switching between music and podcasts
• Reading emails/messages
• Sending emails/messages
• Setting reminders
• Navigation (but only with apple maps)
• Making calls

Just the ability to set reminders while I’m driving, or text my wife when I’m nearly home, is magical.