Need A Tip Calculator? You Don’t Need An App For That, Just Use Siri

When you’re done eating at a restaurant and it comes time to pay, the last thing you feel like doing is figuring out how much the tip should be without giving way too much or stiffing your waiter. Even though there are plenty of apps that will do it for you, using Siri is probably a lot easier. The only downside is you have to announce to the world that you can’t do basic math in your head.

To get an accurate tip quickly, all you have to do is ask. You can ask Siri the question like a simple math problem. For example, what is 20% of $34.52? Or you can give Siri the literal math and get the same answer, like asking for “15% times 60.” However you ask, Siri will get you the right answer and report back with the answer  from WolframAlpha.

You’ll most likely have your iPhone with you in a restaurant, rather than an iPad, but this little Siri trick will work with the iPad and iPod touch as well.

This is also a perfect example of how Siri can replace entire classes of applications on the App Store. The more services are built into Siri, the less we’ll have to purchase a bunch of applications to do simple one-trick-pony tasks.

So long tip calculator apps, it was nice having you around for a while.

Kaylie lives in Ottawa and got her first Mac in 2007 and is now a fan for life.