At Apple’s WorldWide Developers Conference Monday, Apple showed off new Siri capability, including in CarPlay.
Siri will be improved with Apple’s next software update, iOS 10, due this fall as a free upgrade for all most Apple devices.
The company has opened up Siri’s APIs to developers so that Siri will have control over numerous apps, which will make Siri more useful as you drive.
If you want to verbally message a friend you can give commands like “Send a WeChat to Nancy saying I’ll be 5 minutes late.” Or, “WeChat Nancy that I’ll be 5 minutes late.” You can say the same sentence in many different ways and work with other messaging apps including WhatsApp. Or you can use online pay services by voice command to send payments.
Apple SVP of Software Engineering Craig Federighi said, “It works great with CarPlay. You can now safely send your messages and make voice calls all inside the CarPlay environment with your favorite apps.”
Apple Maps is also now open to developers with improvements for use in CarPlay. Nearby restaurants and gas stations are shown in Maps telling you the time it takes to drive to each. It also gives you suggestions on destinations (eg. It will take you 10 minutes to get to work) and you can now pan and zoom on the map during navigation.
Apple also improved music, calling and general messaging. It opened up messaging to developers so you will get special camera affects and animation within messaging, new stickers and also online payment within iMessage.
The public Beta release for iOS10 is in July followed by the full release this fall.
Photo: Apple SVP Internet Software and Services Eddie Cue shows off Apple Maps.
