Oliver Haslam·

Siri Gains New Personal Update Briefing Feature With iOS 14.2

Apple has released iOS 14.2 to the world and with that, it’s also brought a new feature specific to Siri – Personal Update. The feature is similar to one that’s already been available for Alexa for years and allows users to ask Siri to provide their update – essentially a list of things that might be important at that specific time.

For most people that will include things like upcoming calendar events, the weather, travel time to events, and reminders. Users will also receive regional news as well with the BBC, CNN, and more sources providing that data.

The feature should also provide the update specific to the person requesting it, too. Personal devices like iPhones and iPad will obviously provide the data that they have, while HomePod and HomePod mini devices will offer data based on the voice they detect when the request is issued.

The Personal Update feature is part of iOS 14.2 and devices – including HomePods – will need to be updated for the new feature to work. We’d expect the HomePod mini to come with HomePod OS 14.2 installed out of the box, though.

The new speaker went up for pre-order yesterday and will be available from November 16.

This latest update is another example of Apple making improvements to Siri, although it does still have a fair way to go to catch up with the best of the best – Amazon’s Alexa.

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