It turns out the star of the iPhone 4S was not the phone itself but rather Siri, the device’s new speech-controlled personal assistant.  Unlike traditional voice-recognition of the past that made you bark commands; Siri understands natural language, the same language we use to talk to the world.

Unlike earlier voice-recognition applications, which users came to hate, Siri and other new applications understand natural speech. When you tap the new iPhone you enter a world of instant information & interaction. Ask Siri a question and you get an answer, how cool is that?  The best part is you don’t have to remember keywords or specific commands. Use Siri to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls and fire up applications, the more Siri gets to know you the more helpful she becomes. Research director for Gartner, Michael Gartenberg said “What sets Apple’s efforts apart from what has gone before is that I don’t have to learn commands. It uses natural language processing and has enough connection to external databases. It lives up to the demos and hype and makes life easier”

This very well be the game changer we all have been waiting for. They may come a time when we no longer have to search for an app or web service we will just ask a personal assistant and it will be done for us.