I’ve talked about my simple (yet essential!) Siri task to help me not screw up tea on the Mac Power Users. (“Set a Timer for 4 minutes.”) Listener Bob White, wrote in to explain that he sets these timers as alarms. Specifically, you can set the alarm name with Siri syntax. “Set the Oolong Tea Alarm for 4 minutes.” The phone will create a new alarm in 4 minutes called “Oolong Tea”. The advantage of doing them as alarms over timers is that you can set multiple alarms at once but just one timer, as The Doctor explains. Indeed, going back and reading Dr. Drang’s post I realize he also explained how you can name the alarm with Siri. Hmmm.

As a complete aside, if you are interested in tea, I recommend the end of MPU 168 where I talked at some length about how I make tea and Katie Floyd was stone-cold silent. Never has a silence been so judgmental. It might be one of my favorite segments of the Mac Power Users.

Dr. Drang, that consummate multi-tasker, one-upped me today showing how to set multiple timers with Siri. Even though I rarely run multiple timers, Dr. Drang’s method of using reminders is better than mine so I’m going to try it out.

It is interesting to see which parts of Siri people use. While Siri certainly is not that end-all-be-all solution that the hype implies, using it intelligently can up your game.

∞
 

Lex Friedman’s got an article at Macworld demonstrating useful Siri phrases. With respect to Reminders, I’d add lists. I’ve got several, such as “Groceries”, “Home Depot”, and (of course) “Apple Store”. I can say “Add spicy carrots to my grocery list” and Siri does the rest.

Maybe it’s a lawyer thing but I quite frequently need to calculate dates. For instance, I need to figure out what day is 30 days after I serve documents on somebody or how many days elapsed between date X and date Y. 

I was thinking this would be really convenient if I could do it with Siri but the Siri documentation doesn’t say anything about calculating dates. After a little experimentation, however, I stumbled upon the necessary syntax:

“What is X days from Y date.”

For example,  “What is 30 days from June 1, 2013.”

It also works in reverse.

“What is 30 days before June 1, 2013.”

Figuring out days between dates also requires a specific syntax.

“How many days between June 1, 2012 and July 1, 2013?”

As you can see, this search returns a Wolfram Alpha page, which isn’t as pretty but includes more details. Once you internalize the syntax, you’ll find there is no faster way to calculate dates than with Siri.