Hands on with iOS 6: Siri

Macworld - Your favorite virtual assistant now knows a lot more than it ever did before. Beyond merely knowing answers to more kinds of questions, Siri in iOS 6 gains new functionality, simplifies some common tasks, and provides more useful results, too. And, for the first time, Siri in iOS 6 works on the iPad as well--provided the iPad in question is a third-generation model or newer.

Sports

The new Siri should be a hit with sports fans, thanks to its newfound skill at handling sports-related queries. You can ask Siri all kinds of natural-language questions about sports, including: "What was the score of the last Eagles game?" "Who do the Eagles play next?" "How tall is Kobe Bryant?" "Who's taller, Kobe Bryant or Michael Vick?" "Which quarterback has the most passing yards?" "Is anyone on the Yankees injured?""

Results (powered by Yahoo) are displayed clearly with nice visuals; unfortunately, those results can't be tapped to get more details. Siri can currently answer questions about football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and hockey.

Movies

In addition to its sports savvy, Siri has also picked up some Hollywood knowledge. Powered by the movie-review site Rotten Tomatoes, Siri can now provide information about showtimes, along with trailers, reviews, and general filmography-style information. Among the kinds of queries Siri can now handle: "Where is Spiderman playing?" "Is My Cousin Vinny a good movie?" "Who starred in UHF?" "Who won Best Actor in 2010?" "What are Tom Hanks's best movies?"

You can tap on Siri's results to view trailers, tap the Tomato Rating to read review snippets, tap on showtimes for more information, and tap on theaters to see where they're located in the Maps app.

Restaurants

Siri was already something of a foodie; it was able to suggest restaurants when it launched. But its restaurant-related answers have gone decidedly haute in iOS 6.

You can ask Siri to help you find restaurants by location, cuisine, price, outdoor seating, or a combination thereof: "Show me cheap Italian restaurants with outdoor seating near here."

You can then tap on a query result to see more details about the restaurant in question, including its price-range, description, hours, phone number, Yelp review average, website, and address. And it's all tappable: Tap on the restaurant's star rating to see review snippets. If you tap on a review snippet, the Yelp app will open to that review. (If you don't yet have the free Yelp app installed, Siri will prompt you to go grab it from the App Store.) And of course, tapping on the phone number places a call; tapping on the website launches it in Safari.