Siri: I'm Vegan


Apple's iOS 6 has finally made Siri useful in the UK...but not for UK vegans... The biggest problem for UK vegans is that Siri can't understand the word vegan unless you say VAYgan in some mid-atlantic twang. If you say VEEgan like we do here in England (and where the word 'vegan' was coined, let's not forget..) it thinks you're saying 'Feagan' which is a surname. Even if you put that in context and say 'Show me local vegan restaurants', it hears 'Show me local leading restaurants'. It's like it's wilfully trying to mishear you.


The nearest vegan eats to Nottingham...26 miles???
Siri also works with Apple's new Maps service which replaces Google Maps on iPhones... but here it goes from bad to worse. When we did a local search for vegan restaurants in Nottingham (we had to say VAYgan again) it didn't find anything...but helpfully showed us vegetarian restaurants in Leicester, Birmingham and Wigan. Even the vegetarian curry house in Leicester was 26 miles away... For the record, Nottingham caters pretty well for vegans...have a look on Google Maps.

Siri finds a handy local vegan restaurant...
but Google Streetview suggests this place might not be vegan after all...
The results are are sometimes factually incorrect too. When we tried a different form of words we were told that the 'Vegas Curry House' is a vegan restaurant... but a quick check on Google Streetview (not on an iPhone, obviously) reveals that this is in fact... a kebab house... Getting Vegan and Vegas mixed up could only happen in Apple's odd little world...



There doesn't seem to be a way to correct Siri's hearing problems, but there is a great way to help put vegan friendly establishments back on the map, and we encourage you all to use it. Tucked away on the flip panel behind the map view is a little 'Report a Problem' link. This is the official way to add missing locations onto Apple's map system. Simply click on the link, choose 'Location is missing', drop a pin in the location of the business, then add the details on the following page. So now you know... go and add your favourite vegan friendly places to Apple Maps...and make your own town look like a vegan mecca.

And if you know of a way to help Siri be more vegan friendly...let us know




Web: veganoo.net   Twitter: @veganoo   Facebook: fb.com/veganoo.net   Flickr: veganoo


No comments:

Post a Comment

We love to hear from you! Links to other vegan or related sites are welcome in the comments.

ANONYMOUS COMMENTS ARE CURRENTLY TURNED OFF DUE TO THE AMOUNT OF SPAM WE'RE GETTING.