Siri

Siri is the name of Apple's virtual assistant with a personality straight out of Pixar. You ask Siri questions or ask Siri do to thing for you using your voice, just like you would ask a real assistant, and Siri will get to working helping you stay in touch, on time, and informed. There's even a related service called Dictation that lets you enter text almost everywhere with just your voice. Siri and Dictation are online services, so you need to be connected to the internet to use it.

Siri is still in beta, and is limited in the number of devices languages and locations it supports. Also, Siri is currently limited to the iPhone 4S, though Dictation also works on the new iPad and soon, the Mac with OS X Mountain Lion. Apple has announced, however, that Siri will be coming to the new iPad, along with several more languages, locations, and features with iOS 6.

We'll expand this guide to include all of that, and more, when it becomes available this fall. But here's what you can do right now:

Siri makes for a great personal assistant during the work day for performing tasks like solving mathematical equations and can also be used for entertainment purposes during down time by helping you find things on the Internet. Instead of manually entering Safari or another alternate browser, ask Siri to search the web. If you need the do some math quickly, forget your calculator app and just have Siri use Wolfram Alpha to figure it out for you.

Since Siri is meant to be your personal assistant, it only makes sense to have her schedule and manage your meetings and events. Asking Siri to create an event only takes a few seconds and is much faster than hand entering them. Whether you need her to schedule a meeting, tell you what's on the agenda for today, or move an existing meeting to another time or date, she'll help keep you on task.

Siri was designed to help you get things done, and part of that job description is creating and updating your to-dos and lists of to-dos in the Reminders app. If you need to be prodded to pick up milk on the way home, order that present in time for the big party, or set up that lunch meeting before the end of the day, Siri's there to help.

Apple greatly expanded Siri in iOS 6, adding a host of new features including sports, movies, and dining results, far better language support, and even an Eyes Free driving mode for when hands-free usage is paramount.

But what about Voice Free? Having a conversation with your iPhone or (soon) iPad is something straight out of science fiction. But voice isn't always the best or most appropriate way to query data, and sometimes it's not even possible.

Apple could address a lot of problems by allowing text queries into Siri via the existing Spotlight interface.

Last year, after Apple announced Siri, I wrote about it's long term, potentially game-changing business implications for Apple. Specifically, how Siri wasn't a voice control system, but a powerful, Pixar-coated way For Apple to both intermediate and starve their biggest rival, Google, and gain the most valuable data in modern business -- customer insight.

iOS 6 was announced at WWDC today, including a new version of Siri with a heavy emphasis on sports, restaurants and movies. You can now ask for and receive tailored information about sports scores and stats on players.

If you've been waiting for Siri on the iPad as much as we have, you'll be happy to hear that Apple's voice-activated virtual assistant should make its way to the iPad at the expected iOS 6 announcement at WWDC 2012 this week.

During the D10 Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked about Siri, the iPhone 4S virtual assistant, and why it seems to alternate from working almost like magic to not working at all. Walt Mossberg pressed Cook about Siri being a beta, and asked if Cook was satisfied with its performance so far.