[...] you name it EVERY SOUND is recorded and stored.
That sounds bad. Who's recording us? Where are they keeping these recordings? I mean, the storage requirements must be astronomical, considering we're talking about billions of devices recording 24 hours a day. What are they doing with the recordings?
Considering there's a microphone in my laptop, my phone, my wife's laptop, her phone, and her iPad... and that's just in OUR house -- multiply that by literally BILLIONS of devices and that seems like an awful lot of material to wade through. Especially considering it's audio, not text, so it has to be transcribed at a relatively slow rate (how fast can a recording be sped up before it's unintelligible?) before the bots can even BEGIN to analyze it. I'm glad *I* don't have to handle the logistics on that!
Whoever it is that's listening in is obviously REALLY committed to the task, because it's a hell of a job. But I suppose it's worth it, because in the end they wind up with... sorry, I missed that part. What is it that "they" have to gain from this exercise?
Holy shįî. I hope someone from the company is paying attention to this stunning conversation.
I think we may may be in the midst of a Trumpster-level mindshift in the Apple faithful. I am sensing a serious sentiment shift.
It'd be great if Apple actually DID pay attention, but I don't see evidence of them doing so in any meaningful way. Siri has been around for a rather long time, and yet many of us out here feel like Apple hasn't pushed forward and made it great. If they are working to improve it with their various acquisitions and hiring additional personnel, that work has yet to be realized. I'm underwhelmed by their performance, as are many on this forum. For once, it'd be great if Apple actually listened to their customers on an issue and actually did something to fix it. Siri has a long way to go to actually be a Digital Assistant.
Of course they're paying attention. Every time execs like Schiller or Federighi appear in an interview, you hear them echoing and addtressing specific blogosphere criticisms point by point. Correcting the knds of things in this thread are non-trivial matters. Ritchie and Gruber had an interesting exchange on Siri in the last Talk Show; worth a listen. I can't point to minutes, but it was medium-early in the show.
If the people of Apple are really paying attention, why is it that I can ask Siri on my iPhone, "What song have I listened to the most?", and Siri fails to tell me the answer, but will take me to the iTunes Store instead? We already know that iTunes keeps track of play counts. We also know that there's a preprogrammed "Top 25 Most Played" playlist in iTunes. Why is it that Siri is unable to go to that playlist, see what song I've listened to the most and then tell me, with the option of playing it right then and there? It's things like this that truly disappoint me about Siri. This is information I KNOW is on the phone, and yet Siri can't access it, and has no idea what I'm talking about. I have many more examples of ways Siri disappoints me with lack of results, but this one example will suffice for now. The Siri team has a lot of make up to do before I'm going to be happy with it.
My favourite siri "mistake" is when I asked her to play "number of the beast" by iron maiden for her to phone my mother in law. To be fair it's an easy mistake lol.
Many of the Alexa Echo praisers here are jokes. Alexa Echo is a very expensive device at $179. They skipped this fact. Further, Siri can be used to control the iPhone like asking Siri to turn on and off the wifi which Alex Echo can not do. May be these jokers are just fandroids?
Since Echo understands what I say 95% (even at a distance) vs. 30% with Echo I'm delighted with Echo the way I was with the my first iPhone. And that makes it worth it. Apple isn't known for being inexpensive either, in fact they seem to be raising their prices on lots of products.
Blah blah blah rant. I remember when Jobs added products every day of the year.
Shit, he didn't. I guess you don't consider the AirPods a product.
I consider AirPods an accessory item.
1) They are an accessory and they are a product. These aren't mutually exclusive.
2) While Watch can be used most of the time in an independent fashion, it's also an accessory product. Why is Watch a failure because it's an accessory and AirPods aren't for being in the same category?
1. I consider the Watch a product because it has an OS that can run APPS.
2. I don't consider the Watch a failure. I never used the word "fail" anywhere. But the initial OS wasn't good. They seem to have fixed how the watchOS works with 3.0. I do think that they need to carry forward with developing it, but not as frequently as yearly so other products get updated. It may take 3-6 years but I think the watch will eventually have a Cell/LTE modem and then it will be a compelling replacement for the iPhone.
the narrative that Apple is falling behind in voice-first services because its rivals have some superior features (like Google's conversational processing) or product offerings (like Amazon's Echo speaker appliance) is massively delusional.
Apple and Microsoft are graded on a different curve than companies like Amazon and Google. Anything Apple or Microsoft releases is expected to be a best-in-class product, and if it isn't, these two companies are mercilessly pounded by the pundits and bloggers. Google on the other hand can slap "Beta" on everything it does and the experiments that fail, and there are many, get quickly brushed aside and forgotten about. One reason that Google and Amazon can get away with failures that would cripple Apple or Microsoft is because Amazon and Google have massive revenue generating capabilities that are completely isolated from the many experiments and betas. Everything Apple puts out there biases their stock price up or down within minutes of release.
In truth, with the massive cash hoard and strong product lines that Apple has in place they should be afforded the same ability to "intelligently learn from taking risks and making mistakes" methods that are so often brandished as best practices in business strategy writings. Even Siri was labeled as a Beta when first released but that made no difference. For some reason nobody granted Apple the right to explore and experiment that Google and Amazon get by default. Why is this the case? I believe part of the challenge for Apple is the Jobs Culture which echoed some of the "faster horse" sentiments of Henry Ford with regard to not asking your customers what they want. Many people and especially those with narcissistic tendencies, I.e., most bloggers, pundits, and serial tweeters, don't take kindly to anyone not listening to them - whether implicitly or explicitly. The entirety of blogging and tweeting is wrapped around the notion of "hey everyone, shut TF up and listen to ME" so it's understandable why Apple gets no slack in such situations. Facts, figures, science, truths, lies, objectivity, and empathy don't matter in the blogosphere and twittersphere, it's only about feeding the insatiable needs of the scorned or empowered narcissistic.
I'd be happy if Apple finally cleaned up the iTunes interface.
I'd be even happier if they would make it WORK. The many problems with iTunes on my new MacBook Pro have sucked all the fun out of the acquisition.
Anything specific?
Oh man, lots. I spelled it all out in a lengthy post on another thread, but I don't remember which one now.
The biggest one is it barfing up a hairball when presented with an mp3 file. When I select a song and hit play, if the file is in AAC format it plays immediately. If the file is an mp3, I get 10-15 seconds of beachball before it finally plays.
It also refuses to read certain metadata in mp3 files. I use the "Grouping" field to manage playlists. iTunes on this machine refuses to recognize anything in that field if the file is in mp3 format (AAC files are fine). I can look at the files in a metadata reader and see that the information is there, but iTunes doesn't see it.
So, bad files, right? Wrong. The same files work perfectly on my Mac mini and my wife's old MBP. All three machines are working with the same files and the same version of iTunes on the same OS version, yet for some reason it all goes sideways on the most expensive laptop Apple sells. Go figure.
It also won't play any video file with a DTS audio track. I don't mean it won't decode DTS, I mean if there's a DTS track present, even if PCM and Dolby and AAC tracks are also available, this machine ignores the file as if it's corrupt. Again, the same material plays fine on our other Macs. If I take the offending file and remux it with the DTS track removed, it plays fine.
There are other issues related to syncing with my iPhone -- files not copying, repeatedly "Copying artwork" for the same group of files over and over again, artwork missing from thousands of songs, losing track of existing video files when trying to add new ones -- I don't even remember all the peculiarities going on there off the top of my head, but that part seems to be more of a problem with iOS than iTunes on the Mac. I had those issue with the old machine, too.
The iPhone sync stuff is annoying as hell but not the end of the world. The file format issues are show stoppers.
Holy shįî. I hope someone from the company is paying attention to this stunning conversation.
I think we may may be in the midst of a Trumpster-level mindshift in the Apple faithful. I am sensing a serious sentiment shift.
It'd be great if Apple actually DID pay attention, but I don't see evidence of them doing so in any meaningful way. Siri has been around for a rather long time, and yet many of us out here feel like Apple hasn't pushed forward and made it great. If they are working to improve it with their various acquisitions and hiring additional personnel, that work has yet to be realized. I'm underwhelmed by their performance, as are many on this forum. For once, it'd be great if Apple actually listened to their customers on an issue and actually did something to fix it. Siri has a long way to go to actually be a Digital Assistant.
Of course they're paying attention. Every time execs like Schiller or Federighi appear in an interview, you hear them echoing and addtressing specific blogosphere criticisms point by point. Correcting the knds of things in this thread are non-trivial matters. Ritchie and Gruber had an interesting exchange on Siri in the last Talk Show; worth a listen. I can't point to minutes, but it was medium-early in the show.
If the people of Apple are really paying attention, why is it that I can ask Siri on my iPhone, "What song have I listened to the most?", and Siri fails to tell me the answer, but will take me to the iTunes Store instead? We already know that iTunes keeps track of play counts. We also know that there's a preprogrammed "Top 25 Most Played" playlist in iTunes. Why is it that Siri is unable to go to that playlist, see what song I've listened to the most and then tell me, with the option of playing it right then and there? It's things like this that truly disappoint me about Siri. This is information I KNOW is on the phone, and yet Siri can't access it, and has no idea what I'm talking about. I have many more examples of ways Siri disappoints me with lack of results, but this one example will suffice for now. The Siri team has a lot of make up to do before I'm going to be happy with it.
Your phone has so much information about you that to expect Siri to be able to surface all of it is a very high standard. No AI voice assistant is even close to being this smart.
That said, I think you're on to something. Apple should be striving for something like this. Just like Apple has made it a priority to consider accessibility during the development of every major iOS feature, they ought to be considering Siri integration for every major feature. In fact, Siri integration is actually kind of an accessibility feature.
Mark Gurman had a report a couple of months ago that makes me think Apple may actually be working on something like this:
Apple is researching new ways to improve Siri on iPhones and iPads, two people said. With an initiative code-named “Invisible Hand,” Apple hopes to give users the ability to fully control their devices through a Siri command system within three years, one of the people added. Currently, the voice assistant is able to respond to commands within its application, but Apple’s goal is for Siri to be able to control the entire system without having to open an app or reactivate Siri.
This would be a massive leap if they could actually pull it off.
This article can talk about sales as much as it likes. That still doesn't change the fact that Siri is still the worst performing of the voice assistant technologies out there! I gave up on it for Google Now a long time ago. That doesn't stop me from periodically going back to it to if it has improved at all. But it never does! GN just seems to work better for me for much more of the time.
I don't think anybody would argue that Siri needs significant work, and that it is probably Apple's worst service from a "perception perspective". I use it in the vehicle, doing a few tasks on the Apple Watch, and for dictation for larger inputs (where it is quicker to edit afterward - required a lot:). But in general, since it is not accurate enough, if I have the phone in my hand, I tend to do most things via touch input.
I haven't done a comparison between Siri and Google Now ( or Google Assistant which is very new), and Amazon Echo is not available for sale here. What I have read online in some respectable sources is that Siri does come in behind Google overall, but not by a lot, and leads in some categories. Both need a lot of work to be truly useful.
I don't doubt that due to having a dedicated device with multiple mics, power source etc - that Echo is better at voice recognition & parsing. We have nothing from Apple to compare that against. However, beware "hype" around anything. In this case, the Echo/Dot are relatively new and people are very enamoured with them. CES always grabs onto something, however it rarely turns out to be a big thing.
"Apple is doing what it needs to do"? Sorry, that is totally incorrect. Apple has fallen flat on their face. The potential of SIRI was promising, but now lacks badly.
Homekit is nice in concept, but Apple has lost the possibilities of what it could of been.
I am a die hard Apple fan and have been since the early 90's. But once home automation came around I kept waiting for Apple to have a similar product to Alexa. But there is a point where a customer can not keep waiting. I can now control all my home lighting from Amazon's Echo with just my voice. I don't have to pull my phone out of my pocket. I also have access to 10 million music tracks that I can summon at a whim.
At this point, my music purchases are no longer through iTunes, as I can get them from Amazon then import them into iTunes with little effort. Lost revenue for Apple now.
My spouse is not super savvy with technology, but with Alexa the transition was seamless and extremely convenient for her. We now have three Echo's in the house and it is like Star Trek, where you can just walk into a room, adjust the lighting and play music, even if your hands are full. I can get the weather while waiting for my coffee without pushing any buttons or having to look at a screen.
Sorry Apple, you are far too late into the game for me to switch over to a hypothetical Siri alternative. You have lost market share from my family as far as personal assistants, services and music.
rob53 said: As for Amazon and Google, their business is selling people's information to others.
They don't sell your info, they use it for their own benefit. Why sell your personal data when they can make more money just selling ad targeting as a service? Google doesn't want their advertisers to have your information because then they wouldn't need Google's services. Google wants them to continue buying the service not the information itself.
As for the Echo only turning on when it's summoned, can you prove this?
I like many of the task that can Siri aid me. Two things I don't like about Siri:
1. The grammar is restrictive and sometimes confusing. For instance, while turn off timer</<em> works, what about done with time</<em>, or shut of timer</<em>. Additionally if there is an audible alarm going off, turn off alarm</<em> turns off all alarms.
2. Siri's result for many straight forward results ends website references while Echo will actually speech the results. For instance, Siri generates web references for the question, "Who holds the world record for the mile?" That's a simple enough to give me a definitive answer.
As a long time Apple fan and with major investment in the eco system over the last 15 years I have to say I am worried about the direction they are now going in. I would always defend Apple when attacked as I truly believed the products were the best available and worthy of the premium price. This Christmas I received an Amazon Echo Dot and I am amazed by this little device. The Alexa voice recognition capability is so far ahead of Alexa it concerns me greatly - it feels much more natural and responsive than Siri ever has.
I use it to listen to the radio (used to use my phone), set timers and alarms when cooking (used to use my phone), play music (used to use my phone), query the weather, ask questions on subjects from Wikipedia etc etc. This little device costing £50 is astounding.
I have cancelled my Apple Music subscription and am trialling the Amazon Music Unlimited service free for 30 days - this service is also amazing and integrates superbly with the Echo devices (I link mine to a bluetooth speaker for better quality sound although the speaker in the dot is not terrible by any means). My daughters are using a couple of the unlimited music licences and they love the Amazon music service too on their iPhones/iPads.
I bought my Dad an Amazon Fire Stick for Christmas - absolutely loves it. £30.
Apple needs to get it's arse into gear and start moving faster - words largest profit machine yet everyone else seems to be able to move faster and more responsively.
Apple is going to have to rebrand Siri to even get me to think about using it again. It's a POS. And Maps. There seems to be a construction zone down the street from me that's never there.
Yeah, the new version of Maps has become a bit of a visual mess, hasn't it. Can't even see the Interstate icons any more, for instance! And too many pop-up boxes all over the place that hide actual map info.
Just piling on here at the end - all apple since '87. I got an echo this year and it is absolutely amazing. you can talk lightning fast and fix query mistakes in a second. To even attempt the same on Siri takes forever and is so incredibly frustrating I almost never use it - just super basic stuff in a quiet room.
The echo is at least 5 years beyond Siri if not more. I am extremely disappointed in Siri - it is bad and the voice is the same sorry voices bundled with the mac since the days before OS X.
If amazon can add this to a phone/app and link it to the other echos it will be a very compelling echo-system (pun intended).
Apple - watch out - you are getting lapped in AI, PC hardware and innovation. Cook needs to go where Gil Amelio went - I just don't know who can replace Jobs.
Comments
Considering there's a microphone in my laptop, my phone, my wife's laptop, her phone, and her iPad... and that's just in OUR house -- multiply that by literally BILLIONS of devices and that seems like an awful lot of material to wade through. Especially considering it's audio, not text, so it has to be transcribed at a relatively slow rate (how fast can a recording be sped up before it's unintelligible?) before the bots can even BEGIN to analyze it. I'm glad *I* don't have to handle the logistics on that!
Whoever it is that's listening in is obviously REALLY committed to the task, because it's a hell of a job. But I suppose it's worth it, because in the end they wind up with... sorry, I missed that part. What is it that "they" have to gain from this exercise?
And that makes it worth it. Apple isn't known for being inexpensive either, in fact they seem to be raising their prices on lots of products.
2. I don't consider the Watch a failure. I never used the word "fail" anywhere. But the initial OS wasn't good. They seem to have fixed how the watchOS works with 3.0.
I do think that they need to carry forward with developing it, but not as frequently as yearly so other products get updated. It may take 3-6 years but I think the watch will eventually have a Cell/LTE modem and then it will be a compelling replacement for the iPhone.
In truth, with the massive cash hoard and strong product lines that Apple has in place they should be afforded the same ability to "intelligently learn from taking risks and making mistakes" methods that are so often brandished as best practices in business strategy writings. Even Siri was labeled as a Beta when first released but that made no difference. For some reason nobody granted Apple the right to explore and experiment that Google and Amazon get by default. Why is this the case? I believe part of the challenge for Apple is the Jobs Culture which echoed some of the "faster horse" sentiments of Henry Ford with regard to not asking your customers what they want. Many people and especially those with narcissistic tendencies, I.e., most bloggers, pundits, and serial tweeters, don't take kindly to anyone not listening to them - whether implicitly or explicitly. The entirety of blogging and tweeting is wrapped around the notion of "hey everyone, shut TF up and listen to ME" so it's understandable why Apple gets no slack in such situations. Facts, figures, science, truths, lies, objectivity, and empathy don't matter in the blogosphere and twittersphere, it's only about feeding the insatiable needs of the scorned or empowered narcissistic.
Could these very old threads be locked, please?
I haven't done a comparison between Siri and Google Now ( or Google Assistant which is very new), and Amazon Echo is not available for sale here. What I have read online in some respectable sources is that Siri does come in behind Google overall, but not by a lot, and leads in some categories. Both need a lot of work to be truly useful.
I don't doubt that due to having a dedicated device with multiple mics, power source etc - that Echo is better at voice recognition & parsing. We have nothing from Apple to compare that against. However, beware "hype" around anything. In this case, the Echo/Dot are relatively new and people are very enamoured with them. CES always grabs onto something, however it rarely turns out to be a big thing.
Finally
Homekit is nice in concept, but Apple has lost the possibilities of what it could of been.
I am a die hard Apple fan and have been since the early 90's. But once home automation came around I kept waiting for Apple to have a similar product to Alexa. But there is a point where a customer can not keep waiting. I can now control all my home lighting from Amazon's Echo with just my voice. I don't have to pull my phone out of my pocket. I also have access to 10 million music tracks that I can summon at a whim.
At this point, my music purchases are no longer through iTunes, as I can get them from Amazon then import them into iTunes with little effort. Lost revenue for Apple now.
My spouse is not super savvy with technology, but with Alexa the transition was seamless and extremely convenient for her. We now have three Echo's in the house and it is like Star Trek, where you can just walk into a room, adjust the lighting and play music, even if your hands are full. I can get the weather while waiting for my coffee without pushing any buttons or having to look at a screen.
Sorry Apple, you are far too late into the game for me to switch over to a hypothetical Siri alternative. You have lost market share from my family as far as personal assistants, services and music.
I use it to listen to the radio (used to use my phone), set timers and alarms when cooking (used to use my phone), play music (used to use my phone), query the weather, ask questions on subjects from Wikipedia etc etc. This little device costing £50 is astounding.
I have cancelled my Apple Music subscription and am trialling the Amazon Music Unlimited service free for 30 days - this service is also amazing and integrates superbly with the Echo devices (I link mine to a bluetooth speaker for better quality sound although the speaker in the dot is not terrible by any means). My daughters are using a couple of the unlimited music licences and they love the Amazon music service too on their iPhones/iPads.
I bought my Dad an Amazon Fire Stick for Christmas - absolutely loves it. £30.
Apple needs to get it's arse into gear and start moving faster - words largest profit machine yet everyone else seems to be able to move faster and more responsively.
Worried.
No one cares.
The echo is at least 5 years beyond Siri if not more. I am extremely disappointed in Siri - it is bad and the voice is the same sorry voices bundled with the mac since the days before OS X.
If amazon can add this to a phone/app and link it to the other echos it will be a very compelling echo-system (pun intended).
Apple - watch out - you are getting lapped in AI, PC hardware and innovation. Cook needs to go where Gil Amelio went - I just don't know who can replace Jobs.