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Home / News / My Gadget Life – Siri’s Jon Briggs

My Gadget Life – Siri’s Jon Briggs

The voice of Siri talks about talking to himself, the future of Siri and seeing double at the wheel

I didn’t know I was the voice of the iPhone 4S

The first I knew of it was when Rory Cellan-Jones demonstrated it on the BBC. The Siri voice is part of a package called Daniel that

I recorded about six years ago. There are no real words in it; it’s made up entirely of the sounds that construct them.

I have an iPhone 4S

But I try not to talk to myself too much. The nicest thing about Siri is that it has a sense of humour. It reminds me of a verbally controlled voicemail service called Wildfire that used to be on Orange phones. It would moo like a cow if you said the right thing to it.

Talking to gadgets will soon feel natural

We’re already used to touching screens or using Kinect to manoeuvre things on a screen without touching it. That all seemed like sci-fi when Tom Cruise did it in Minority Report.

I’m an early adopter

I’ve got cupboards full of redundant tech. I owned an Apple Newton when it was first out and was amazed by it. I started my business on Apple computers because they would network properly. You could plug one into the other and it just understood.

I’m a total petrolhead

I drive a Range Rover Evoque. I love the automatic parking and the dual screen that allows the driver and passenger to see two different things. Funnily enough I’m the sat-nav voice on it – the worst thing about it is when it gets the intonation wrong.

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About

Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website.  Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.

Areas of expertise

Computing, mobile, audio, smart home