When a one-year-old Australian girl suddenly stopped breathing, her mother panicked. Fumbling with her iPhone as she rushed into her daughter’s bedroom, Stacey Gleeson dropped the device on the floor. But instead of picking it up, she left it there as she began CPR on the child — and used Siri, its voice-activated assistant, to call an ambulance hands-free.
“Saving me the trouble of having to physically dial emergency services was a godsend,” Ms Gleeson told the BBC this week. “I had played around with Siri, I thought it was a fun feature. Now I have that feature turned on all the time and it will never be turned off again.”
Many iPhone users still share Ms Gleeson’s first impression of Siri — that it is little more than a bit of fun. While they have used it to ask questions, get directions or send a text message without having to type, the five-year-old service has struggled to live up to its original promise of making a smartphone as simple to use as having a conversation with a friend.