You're not the only one who silently laments spending time searching through the Contacts app on your iPhone or other iOS device, hunting for that one person you barely remember yet need to get in touch with for whatever reason. It only gets worse when you realize their information is either incorrect, outdated, or not where you thought you saved it. Whether you're looking for a co-worker, a client, an acquaintance, or a long-lost friend you bumped into at a party, it's helpful to keep who's who in order in your Contacts app. And you just might find that the Contacts app is far more powerful when you take the time to get the most out of it. Filling out contact information beyond a person's name, email, and phone number might seem like overkill, but doing so can make Siri a more powerful tool when it comes to connecting with people.

So why does Siri seem so dumb? Why are its talents so limited? Why does it stumble so often? When was the last time Siri delighted you with a satisfying and surprising answer or action? I have an answer for this: when I discovered during the NBA playoffs that Siri can tell you the Vegas betting odds for sporting events. In recent weeks, on multiple Apple devices, Siri has been unable to tell me the names of the major-party candidates for president and vice president of the United States.

Welcome to Mossberg, a weekly commentary and reviews column on The Verge and Recode by veteran tech journalist Walt Mossberg, executive editor at The Verge and editor at large of Recode. I've been familiar with Siri longer than most people. Way back in 2009 -- two years before Apple incorporated the intelligent digital assistant into the iPhone -- I stood onstage with the inventors of the service while they debuted it at a tech conference I co-produced. At the time, it was just a third-party app on the iPhone App Store. Not long thereafter, Apple bought the company, and the assistant reemerged in 2011 with a splashy introduction as a core feature of the iPhone 4s.