I'd like to see some of the complainers actually talk to Siri. I don't remember ever seeing a Siri ad that promotes the ability to understand speech impediments. Ive never had a problem with it and I really only use it when Im drunk
This is pretty offensive. You are just assuming that everyone it doesn't work for has a speech impediment?
I find it funny that a product that Apple is supposed to be so disappointed in, is the main feature of the TV ads they are running now with stars like Samuel L Jackson, etc. If Siri was such a big problem, why create more attention to it?
I don't use Siri as much as I could. Part of it is just forgetting what Siri can do, and part of it is that my normal daily workflow is not something which has me needing to walk around asking it questions. As I have used Siri more I have learned how to better ask it questions that it will understand and provide useful info to. And how to speak more clearly when I need to. Siri even works great over my hands-free in the car.
Also the voice recognition is great for note-taking and composing text messages.
The only problem I have with Siri is that whenever I ask her "Who took my french fries?", the only answer I get is "It wasn't Tim Cook!"
Not too mention all that money spent advertising a BETA???
The hobby Apple TV should be that lucky.
I agree Steve J. should have lost his mind over Siri. It does not seem ready for prime time to me. I have an iPhone 4, and picked up my friend's new iPhone 4S to try out Siri, and after a few commands, I was not impressed at all. It did not recognize what I was trying to do or say. I would expect Apple should not have used something in beta, but wait until it's "ready", even if it's later that others. That's what people came to expect from Apple. As much as I love Apple as a whole (I really like their products and customer service, etc.) they sometimes make mistakes. One other mistake in my opinion is how the iCloud rollout took place. It was still too complicated to set up, there was confusion about which ID to use, whether you can have separate IDs from the App Store, etc. Once set up, it just works, and that's good. But there are other aspects of it which don't work well: if you accidentally back up your photos, including your photo stream to iCloud, you quickly run out of space, and keep getting an error message. That's OK for me, I can figure it out and fix it, but a non-technical person, such as my wife, it can be confusing as heck. Hope someone at Apple thinks about all these things.
Steve Jobs would have lost his mind over a product he authorized to ship? Sure. Like he lost his mind over the hockey puck mouse or Mac cube? Siri works now better than it did when it first came out and back then it probably worked better than when Jobs make the decision to label it a beta and ship it.
What would drive Steve Jobs nuts is people posthumously using his name to booster their credibility. He's gone. Let it go.
Indeed. I find these 'Steve Jobs would have..' despicable, narcissistic, hubristic, self-righteous, and just down-right wrong.
Either way when the guy doesn't have the balls to give his identity, you can basically throw his words in the trash. When did this employee leave Apple? A year ago? 5 years ago? 10 years ago? Was he fired or did he quit? What department was he in? What did he work on? Apple has and has had thousands and thousands of employees, and some random ex-employee doesn't hold a special divine insight into the thoughts of Steve Jobs. This shit shouldn't have been published, as its meaningless, irrelevant, and insulting on so many levels. If this guy had an ounce of class, he would have kept his mouth shut- who knows what his motivations are? Speech recognition isn't something ANYONE can perfect- even Apple. It's pretty much the most complex problem in computing because of the imperfect variables that will only be involved. Siri is definitely not 'embarrassing', as in my experience its ahead of anything else out there in the consumer space, as well as the implementation. For the people saying its not 'ready for prime time'- when would have it been ready? Now? In a year? 2 years? I guarantee in 5 years it will still **** up and will not be perfect, as there will still be an infinite number of dialects, accents, and contexts out there. There comes a point where it needs to be released so you can get the data and feedback of millions of users.
This came from Lashinsk's cover story in Fortune magazine. I find it ironic that he was the one touting Scott Forstall as Apple's next CEO (not sure where he thinks Tim Cook is going). Isn't Siri Forstall's baby?
If I want to learn something juicy about Apple, I always consult anonymous, former Apple employees. It's well known that they are an incredible source of insight on Apple (second only to actual [or self-described] Wall Street analysts!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
Siri may also be facing obstacles in the enterprise. Earlier this week, IBM revealed that it had banned Siri from use on its corporate network because of security concerns. The company, which admitted it is "extraordinarily conservative" when it comes to security, specifically took issue with the fact that Siri contacts Apple's servers for each request.
As far as IBM, that's hilarious.
Have they also banned the use of Google?
(I heard a rumor that all Google search requests go to Google servers!)
I think the Apple faithful here should come clean and admit that Siri plain and simply sucks right now. Of course, it is in beta but Apple shouldn't resort to using the Google school of software versioning, in which they answer every complaint with, "It's still beta software." It's seriously becoming a ridiculous crutch.
What they should have done is keep their cute little commercials in the vault until it comes out of beta.
It is pretty funny. I am, however, split on this issue. Not in the sense that I am torn between two positions of the issue but that there are many issues being presented as a single issue.
I don't think Steve would have "lost his mind" as he was surely involved in the release of Siri. There is simply no way to make Siri understand every accent, every dialect, every cultural colloquium and every other part of speak dive speech and comprehension without a vast number of samples to learn from. This is a huge and longterm project. For that I gave Apple all the credit and time needed as Siri is the best consumer product on the market.
Where I do find fault with Apple is with their ads. I don't mind the shortened sequences but I do mind that what the actor said to does not seem possible to have been interpreted correctly by Siri. This is where Apple needs to be held accountable. They should only clips that Siri was able to interpret correctly because people will, as we've seen, attempt to recreate these queries.
PS: iClarified has a video comparison of Sii v. S Voice that's informative and entertaining. S Voice? Really? Was Samsung Intergrated Response Interface a little too on the nose for even Samsung?
I'd like to see some of the complainers actually talk to Siri. I don't remember ever seeing a Siri ad that promotes the ability to understand speech impediments. Ive never had a problem with it and I really only use it when Im drunk
I think the Apple faithful here should come clean and admit that Siri plain and simply sucks right now. Of course, it is in beta but Apple shouldn't resort to using the Google school of software versioning, in which they answer every complaint with, "It's still beta software." It's seriously becoming a ridiculous crutch.
What they should have done is keep their cute little commercials in the vault until it comes out of beta.
Yeah! The company is dead. They should sell everything and give it back to the shareholders. The stock is overpriced. Retail stores will never work.
And that GUI thing on the computers, and that touch screen and multitouch thing on the iOS devices, also suck. The iPod is just another music player (but expensive.) . . . etc.
Anyway, Siri definitely sucks (although personally I've never really had much of a problem with it.)
In short, they only say it's beta in the last sentence at the very bottom of the page.
It's mentioned in the last sentence of the top entry of the FAQ.
I never noticed a disclaimer in the TV ads.
I think that could be done better, because the disclaimers are done as if they're hoping you don't notice it. It seems inappropriate to make a beta feature also your headline feature, and advertise it so heavily without making it clearer.
I'd like to see some of the complainers actually talk to Siri. I don't remember ever seeing a Siri ad that promotes the ability to understand speech impediments. Ive never had a problem with it and I really only use it when Im drunk
This is pretty offensive. You are just assuming that everyone it doesn't work for has a speech impediment?
Normally, I don't do this, but did you read his comment at all? He was touting the fact that they don't advertise that Siri can understand you even with a speech impediments (in his case being drunk off his ass ) I wouldn't call that offensive. I would just call that awesome!
Apple might say Siri is beta, but so far, only in very fine print. I had to do a Ctrl-F / Cmd-F to find the word beta in this page: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html
In short, they only say it's beta in the last sentence at the very bottom of the page.
It's mentioned in the last sentence of the top entry of the FAQ.
I never noticed a disclaimer in the TV ads.
I think that could be done better, because the disclaimers are done as if they're hoping you don't notice it. It seems inappropriate to make a beta feature also your headline feature, and advertise it so heavily without making it clearer.
It says Beta right a the top in a golden rectangle next to the word Siri.
But that doesn't alter your point. It might have been better to putan asterisk after every use of Siri or simply write 'Siri (Beta)' every time with beta being given a footnote on exactly what it means.
I disagree. Google understands my speech better in both Spanish and English. Siri of course does not speak Spanish. Problem is neither of them understand me when I mix the two languages which is quite often necessary when living in California with all the Spanish names of places and things. Also in Spanish, quite frequently there is no Spanish word for many modern English nouns so you use the English word instead which is usually spoken without an accent. Both technologies fail miserably in this context. Voice recognition has advanced about 1% from where it was 10 years ago and is miles from where it needs to be to actually be useful. Who wants to repeat themselves twenty times before giving up when the whole point of voice recognition is to simplify common tasks.
maybe its my accent or my mic (I use google voice actions on an HTC G2, which doesnt have noise cancellation. i found that google's voice actions is alot more easily thrown off by background noise than siri.)
That siad, I also use google voice for voicemail. I have it set to email me a copy of my transcripted voicemails, and it constantly messes up on even very common words. on the plus side, some of the results are quite humorous.
PS: iClarified has a video comparison of Sii v. S Voice that's informative and entertaining. S Voice? Really? Was Samsung Intergrated Response Interface a little too on the nose for even Samsung?
It does seem odd, but it can be interpreted as taking the name of the product: Galaxy S-Voice. So it could be a coincidence, or it could be intentional, I don't know. At any rate, S-Voice sounds like a poor name.
When previously has Apple ever released something still in beta? I could easily imagine Steve Jobs being upset by that.
Non-developer public betas? Many times. Boot camp and Safari come to mind.
What I doNt recall is a beta that has been a prominent feature and having its own ad campaign. But that's fine with service as it's not possible to be baked with being a long term public beta.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by geoadm
I'd like to see some of the complainers actually talk to Siri. I don't remember ever seeing a Siri ad that promotes the ability to understand speech impediments. Ive never had a problem with it and I really only use it when Im drunk
This is pretty offensive. You are just assuming that everyone it doesn't work for has a speech impediment?
Not too mention all that money spent advertising a BETA???
The hobby Apple TV should be that lucky.
I suppose Beta trumps hobby??
I agree Steve J. should have lost his mind over Siri. It does not seem ready for prime time to me. I have an iPhone 4, and picked up my friend's new iPhone 4S to try out Siri, and after a few commands, I was not impressed at all. It did not recognize what I was trying to do or say. I would expect Apple should not have used something in beta, but wait until it's "ready", even if it's later that others. That's what people came to expect from Apple. As much as I love Apple as a whole (I really like their products and customer service, etc.) they sometimes make mistakes. One other mistake in my opinion is how the iCloud rollout took place. It was still too complicated to set up, there was confusion about which ID to use, whether you can have separate IDs from the App Store, etc. Once set up, it just works, and that's good. But there are other aspects of it which don't work well: if you accidentally back up your photos, including your photo stream to iCloud, you quickly run out of space, and keep getting an error message. That's OK for me, I can figure it out and fix it, but a non-technical person, such as my wife, it can be confusing as heck. Hope someone at Apple thinks about all these things.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eternal Emperor
Steve Jobs would have lost his mind over a product he authorized to ship? Sure. Like he lost his mind over the hockey puck mouse or Mac cube? Siri works now better than it did when it first came out and back then it probably worked better than when Jobs make the decision to label it a beta and ship it.
What would drive Steve Jobs nuts is people posthumously using his name to booster their credibility. He's gone. Let it go.
Indeed. I find these 'Steve Jobs would have..' despicable, narcissistic, hubristic, self-righteous, and just down-right wrong.
Either way when the guy doesn't have the balls to give his identity, you can basically throw his words in the trash. When did this employee leave Apple? A year ago? 5 years ago? 10 years ago? Was he fired or did he quit? What department was he in? What did he work on? Apple has and has had thousands and thousands of employees, and some random ex-employee doesn't hold a special divine insight into the thoughts of Steve Jobs. This shit shouldn't have been published, as its meaningless, irrelevant, and insulting on so many levels. If this guy had an ounce of class, he would have kept his mouth shut- who knows what his motivations are? Speech recognition isn't something ANYONE can perfect- even Apple. It's pretty much the most complex problem in computing because of the imperfect variables that will only be involved. Siri is definitely not 'embarrassing', as in my experience its ahead of anything else out there in the consumer space, as well as the implementation. For the people saying its not 'ready for prime time'- when would have it been ready? Now? In a year? 2 years? I guarantee in 5 years it will still **** up and will not be perfect, as there will still be an infinite number of dialects, accents, and contexts out there. There comes a point where it needs to be released so you can get the data and feedback of millions of users.
Quote:
Originally Posted by iSheldon
More like-
User: "I am like soo totally Sirious."
Siri: "Yes you are seriously an idiot."
good one except you forgot the "OMG"
If I want to learn something juicy about Apple, I always consult anonymous, former Apple employees. It's well known that they are an incredible source of insight on Apple (second only to actual [or self-described] Wall Street analysts!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by AppleInsider
Siri may also be facing obstacles in the enterprise. Earlier this week, IBM revealed that it had banned Siri from use on its corporate network because of security concerns. The company, which admitted it is "extraordinarily conservative" when it comes to security, specifically took issue with the fact that Siri contacts Apple's servers for each request.
As far as IBM, that's hilarious.
Have they also banned the use of Google?
(I heard a rumor that all Google search requests go to Google servers!)
I think the Apple faithful here should come clean and admit that Siri plain and simply sucks right now. Of course, it is in beta but Apple shouldn't resort to using the Google school of software versioning, in which they answer every complaint with, "It's still beta software." It's seriously becoming a ridiculous crutch.
What they should have done is keep their cute little commercials in the vault until it comes out of beta.
It is pretty funny. I am, however, split on this issue. Not in the sense that I am torn between two positions of the issue but that there are many issues being presented as a single issue.
I don't think Steve would have "lost his mind" as he was surely involved in the release of Siri. There is simply no way to make Siri understand every accent, every dialect, every cultural colloquium and every other part of speak dive speech and comprehension without a vast number of samples to learn from. This is a huge and longterm project. For that I gave Apple all the credit and time needed as Siri is the best consumer product on the market.
Where I do find fault with Apple is with their ads. I don't mind the shortened sequences but I do mind that what the actor said to does not seem possible to have been interpreted correctly by Siri. This is where Apple needs to be held accountable. They should only clips that Siri was able to interpret correctly because people will, as we've seen, attempt to recreate these queries.
PS: iClarified has a video comparison of Sii v. S Voice that's informative and entertaining. S Voice? Really? Was Samsung Intergrated Response Interface a little too on the nose for even Samsung?
Quote:
not only was steve jobs around when apple purchased siri, but he announced the phone that had the software and was very clear about it being beta.
just more apple-hating bullshit.
Oh horsesh!t. So anything negative voiced about an Apple product is automatically "hate" speech? Grow up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by geoadm
I'd like to see some of the complainers actually talk to Siri. I don't remember ever seeing a Siri ad that promotes the ability to understand speech impediments. Ive never had a problem with it and I really only use it when Im drunk
It's more fun when both you and Siri are drunk
Quote:
Originally Posted by macinthe408
I think the Apple faithful here should come clean and admit that Siri plain and simply sucks right now. Of course, it is in beta but Apple shouldn't resort to using the Google school of software versioning, in which they answer every complaint with, "It's still beta software." It's seriously becoming a ridiculous crutch.
What they should have done is keep their cute little commercials in the vault until it comes out of beta.
Yeah! The company is dead. They should sell everything and give it back to the shareholders. The stock is overpriced. Retail stores will never work.
And that GUI thing on the computers, and that touch screen and multitouch thing on the iOS devices, also suck. The iPod is just another music player (but expensive.) . . . etc.
Anyway, Siri definitely sucks (although personally I've never really had much of a problem with it.)
http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html
In short, they only say it's beta in the last sentence at the very bottom of the page.
It's mentioned in the last sentence of the top entry of the FAQ.
I never noticed a disclaimer in the TV ads.
I think that could be done better, because the disclaimers are done as if they're hoping you don't notice it. It seems inappropriate to make a beta feature also your headline feature, and advertise it so heavily without making it clearer.
It says Beta right a the top in a golden rectangle next to the word Siri.
But that doesn't alter your point. It might have been better to putan asterisk after every use of Siri or simply write 'Siri (Beta)' every time with beta being given a footnote on exactly what it means.
When previously has Apple ever released something still in beta? I could easily imagine Steve Jobs being upset by that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I disagree. Google understands my speech better in both Spanish and English. Siri of course does not speak Spanish. Problem is neither of them understand me when I mix the two languages which is quite often necessary when living in California with all the Spanish names of places and things. Also in Spanish, quite frequently there is no Spanish word for many modern English nouns so you use the English word instead which is usually spoken without an accent. Both technologies fail miserably in this context. Voice recognition has advanced about 1% from where it was 10 years ago and is miles from where it needs to be to actually be useful. Who wants to repeat themselves twenty times before giving up when the whole point of voice recognition is to simplify common tasks.
maybe its my accent or my mic (I use google voice actions on an HTC G2, which doesnt have noise cancellation. i found that google's voice actions is alot more easily thrown off by background noise than siri.)
That siad, I also use google voice for voicemail. I have it set to email me a copy of my transcripted voicemails, and it constantly messes up on even very common words. on the plus side, some of the results are quite humorous.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
It says Beta right a the top in a golden rectangle next to the word Siri.
Ha!
Good on you, I was just thinking I had never seen it *without* a Beta badge and went to check his link too.
How is it possible that any "global Moderator" such as yourselves could ever be fallible?
It does seem odd, but it can be interpreted as taking the name of the product: Galaxy S-Voice. So it could be a coincidence, or it could be intentional, I don't know. At any rate, S-Voice sounds like a poor name.
I really missed that one.
Non-developer public betas? Many times. Boot camp and Safari come to mind.
What I doNt recall is a beta that has been a prominent feature and having its own ad campaign. But that's fine with service as it's not possible to be baked with being a long term public beta.