Siri and the Phonetic Name Fields

Simon Evans on the phonetic name fields in Address Book/Contacts:

What they didn’t mention is that adding information to these fields will almost certainly mess up the sorting of your contact list.

To understand why, you need to understand their intended function.

They are there to aid with the sorting of Japanese and Chinese names. That’s why they don’t show up by default when using English as the system language. (Oddly, they can’t even be added if you’re using British English.)

Yeah, seems like a nice idea to use these fields to aid Siri, but it’s not what they’re there for.

★ Monday, 24 October 2011