TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Shawn Blanc:

My first impression of Siri is that Siri is to the GUI what the GUI is to the command line. Meaning, using Siri is a far easier and quicker way to navigate certain tasks than using iPhone’s multi-touch user interface.

That’s a smart way of describing how big of a deal Siri is. Even in its first incarnation, it’s incredibly useful—being able to send and reply to texts and emails, and create calendar events, reminders and alarms all by voice makes these tasks much, much easier. I tend not to set reminders for myself because it’s too much of a pain to go through each task and set it up, but doing it by voice would make it almost effortless.

Sometimes it’s easy to forget how far we’ve advanced in five years. In 2006, my best mobile device was a color iPod with a scroll wheel that had no WiFi, let alone apps; in 2011, it’s a touch-screen, 3G device that can browse the web, hold all of my media, communicate with anyone, and now I can accomplish tasks just through voice. That’s mind-blowing, and makes me wonder just how far from here we’ll be in another five years.