Truth or click-bait, none of this matters, as the need/desire to speak commands to your electronics is so miniscule compared to the totality of all other methods of inputs and interactions.
Saying Amazon is winning is like saying a team than went on a 6 game winning streak in May is destined to win the World Series. It's soooo early in the "season" - and I suspect voice recognition, while increasing in importance over time, will remain niche compared type, touch, and perhaps much more advanced forms of AI interpretation (location, proximity, body, facial, eye analysis, sensors, habit analysis..)
Part of the limitation for wider home adoption currently is feedback is very limited (assuming one does not want to keep picking up their iPhone or iPad). But an Apple TV, which can become the visual side of an enriched Siri response, is very intriguing.
Everyone seems to believe Amazon and Alexa have already won The World Series of Smartphone Assistants and Siri has come in last place, far, far behind. That's the mindset that everyone believes, so it might as well be true. You won't find many Youtube videos asking "Does Alexa suck?" No. There are plenty of videos asking "Does Siri suck?" As far as Wall Street is concerned, Alexa is the big winner and Siri is nothing but a bad joke. I just feel Apple could have done a lot better with Siri than let it become the laughingstock of smart assistants. As Apple fans were always laughing at how low Amazon profits were, Apple should probably have been using all of its profits to build Siri into a super-AI assistant. No company should sit on hundreds of billions of dollars and allow any product of theirs to become the worst in class. Amazon seems to be beating Apple in everything when there should never have been a good reason for something like that to happen.
That’s because she sucks fool. The fan boy stockholder alligiance up on this blog is tired. Complain. Make them fix it she sucks and now tanked a product line. HomePod is doomed so long as Siri is this bad. At any price point.
I'm sorry to say this, even though it's plainly obvious, but Siri is fucking terrible. And I’m trying my best to keep the bar as low as possible. Siri is terrible at things it was supposed to do six %&#@ing years ago! It’s pathetic. Anyone trying to make excuses for siri is lying to themselves, and not doing Apple any favors by doing so.
Going tit for tat with alexa or google now does not make siri not suck. Saying that this is the early days of voice is horrible excuse, since siri sucks at basic things that it was supposed to do from day 1. Saying people don't use it for things other than simple tasks and reminders is incredibly fucking naive; people only use it for that because that's all it does in a remotely reliable fashion!
I have a HomePod and I cringe every time I try to use it. Not having a visual interface means Siri needs to be excellent. But Siri is still shit. I could list a ton of basic examples but it gets tedious.. playlists will only start from the beginning.. it doesn’t recognize artist names that remotely deviate from perfect English (which is a ton of them).. doesn’t even recognize some of the content on apple music even when it’s also on my phone.. cant give more than one command at a time.. if it tell siri "don't play songs like this" I get the response (and I'm not joking) "ok, more songs like ____ coming up!" if I say "stop playing songs like this" I'll get the response (again, not joking) "ok, more songs like ____ coming up," I finally decided to say "this song sucks" and I got the response I wanted: "ok, I'll play less songs like this in the future." And even BASIC fucking things that siri should be doing on homepod.. me: "hey siri, play anjunadeep volume seven [Anjunadeep 07]" ..siri has no fucking clue.. me again: "siri, play anjunadeep number 7", again, siri has no fucking clue, me again: "siri, play anjunadeep 7" she finally fucking plays it.. "ok, now playing anjunadeep seven" ..on and on and on..
Siri is pathetic.
I’ve never, ever been a Cook basher. With almost everything up to this point I think Tim's done an excellent job. But at this point he should have done something about Siri. Seems like letting eddie cue go should’ve been done a long time ago (quick aside: yet he’s now being given a blank check to buy content??; of all people cue is being trusted to have good taste??? Unbelievable.). Also, at this point Apple should have thousands of employees working on Siri, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Siri is so clearly the future cornerstone of the ecosystem, if it isn't already, Apple allowing siri to remain so bad for so long at even the most basic tasks and reliability isn't a great sign.
As both an Apple fan and an Apple consumer, Siri is beyond frustrating.
"Seems like letting eddie cue go should’ve been done a long time ago"
Been saying this for awhile. Up until the time Federighi was put in charge of Siri, her lack of quality was a reflection of her leadership and that fell on Cue's shoulders. Only good thing that's happened under Eddy Cue is Apple Pay.
Apple pay is great, but the rollout seems to have been bumbled badly. And now we're getting these ridiculous reports that apple pay is in 50% of retailers in the US? Again the denial seems to be a pattern with anything that's not going well under eddie cue, with the pervasive attitude being, "how hard can it be" (cue, referring to the bumbled maps rollout). I wish I didn't have to pick on him, but it's impossible not to notice a pattern. Apple news has struggled, apple music has struggled to gain the popularity it should have had being the default music app, with the largest library, and the only one that works with siri. Since apple pay's inception I've been going out of my way to use apple pay (walgreens, TJs, whole paycheck, best buy, starbucks..) and it's definitely not even close to 50% of retailers I go to. Perhaps it's capable of being used at 50% of locations, but it's not. There's plenty of places that don't know it exits, or have it turned off (they don't even plug in the square reader to avoid having to use it), or the NFC capability is just disabled. It's an amazing service that is no-brainer to use, yet besides myself, I almost never see it being used.
Lack of merchant support is so frustrating. Where are the gas stations??? Target? Walmart? Almost every supermarket? CVS? home depot? lowes? specs? Almost all restaurants? still can't use it at the register at chipotle even. Tons of other places that would be tedious to list.
I really do wonder if Siri runs on Apple Servers or if they have outsourced it to Google or Amazon Servers like they have done with some of their iCloud storage.
Truth or click-bait, none of this matters, as the need/desire to speak commands to your electronics is so miniscule compared to the totality of all other methods of inputs and interactions.
Saying Amazon is winning is like saying a team than went on a 6 game winning streak in May is destined to win the World Series. It's soooo early in the "season" - and I suspect voice recognition, while increasing in importance over time, will remain niche compared type, touch, and perhaps much more advanced forms of AI interpretation (location, proximity, body, facial, eye analysis, sensors, habit analysis..)
Part of the limitation for wider home adoption currently is feedback is very limited (assuming one does not want to keep picking up their iPhone or iPad). But an Apple TV, which can become the visual side of an enriched Siri response, is very intriguing.
Agree, this is all rudimentary and largely unfulfilling. We have a very long way to go to truly useful pattern recognition and contextual awareness. All parlor tricks right now, Amazon included. We’re in the very early days, like the original Macintosh GUI compared to today’s Macs. Let’s talk in twenty years!
You got it right. Parlor tricks for now. I believe a paradigm shift in computing (quantum, spintronics,etc) will be necessary before computer intelligence approaches what people have come to expect. As Doctor Who (the real one, Tom Baker) once out it, “Computers are very sophisticated idiots.”
“The real one, Tim Baker” that one got a chuckle out of me. And I agree 100%
Good summary of the article over at Daring Fireball.
Is it true?
Well, looking at how little Siri has improved since launch, and how the ex-team and the ex-manager are Twitter-sniping each other right now, then I’d say it’s right on the money.
Forstall put a manager, Williamson, in place to run Siri development so he could focus on Apple Maps. Williamson screwed up the Siri launch (though he’s happy to blame his team for it), and Forstall went on to screw up the Apple Maps launch. Great work, both of them.
Today Siri still doesn't seem to understand anything. Not even a simple sentence. Even less a sentence referring to another sentence. It still feels like a spoken DOS to me. You need to know the commands, and execute them correctly. Otherwise… error. Also, Siri is very underdeveloped in many other languages than English. Like the intelligence databases are not even available in other languages.
For me, Siri has not improved in any significant way over the years, other than now sounding better in some languages, and now starting to experiment with translations. This lack of development is kinda leading me to believe that Apple might have been developing a whole new Siri all this time, just trying to keep the current Siri alive not to loose the game completely before the new Siri is ready to go. Weren't there talks of Apple developing a neural network Siri AI like years ago? I'm wondering how it's coming along.
I'm still hopeful.. But seeing the openness of many interesting Google AI projects, and the "sealed off facility Apple style" is not precisely helping to create a forwardthinking image surrounding Apple's stance on AI.
Alexa still sucks. And people still use it for useless things like timers only. So I would say Siri is doing just fine.
What? Siri is by far the furthest behind in major voice assistants (which clearly have a future)... if you want to compare it to something in order to keep one's head buried in the sand then I'd use Samsung's Bixby... that'll make Siri look good... which I guess you need to keep whistling regardless of reality when your retirement future depends on AAPL share price.
IMO, the issue isn't where Siri was in 2011, but where Siri is today. And I still find it remarkably useless most of the time. If any real attention were being paid to it at all, it should be far more advanced than it is by now. Hoping Apple gives it some serious attention. Having said that, I haven't used Alexa or other such devices, so I can't compare how dumb they are, but at least with Siri, since I still have older devices in which I have to hit the button to use Siri, at least I know it's not listening to me when I don't want it to. And it doesn't mysteriously laugh at me.
If there truly was infighting and ego issues, that's the fault of whoever was leading the project. Considering how much Apple reportedly pays people, there's absolutely no excuse for that. They should have the best managers and the most professional (as well as the most creative) people.
The problem with Siri not working well is that it's yet another example (like Touch ID) of Apple really pushing a technology or function, getting everyone excited about it and then abandoning it.
Everything you need to know about Siri is illustrated perfectly here:
I tend to agree on your experience, however, may be slur how you said AT&T. Siri definitely has troubles recognizing abbreviation like that and it definitely has issues with some words, I do not care how you say the word it gets it wrong every time. And some days it is completely out to lunch.
Everything you need to know about Siri is illustrated perfectly here:
I tend to agree on your experience, however, may be slur how you said AT&T. Siri definitely has troubles recognizing abbreviation like that and it definitely has issues with some words, I do not care how you say the word it gets it wrong every time. And some days it is completely out to lunch.
Except...as you can see, Siri heard me say "AT&T" then didn't care to return that from my address book or from any search result. So...?
"The account cited a dozen former Apple employees, all speaking anonymously as to avoid breaching confidentiality agreements."
To avoid breaching the agreement? Actually it's to avoid getting caught breaching the agreement, since they all breached the agreement.
True, but I'm glad they did. I hope they don't get caught. Apple's arrogance needs to be reeled in and people need to see the company for what it is, behind all the reality twisting of their marketing. They could be a great company again if leadership got their heads out of their posteriors.
Right off the top of my head, my three 0f biggest complaints about Siri:
1) Saying 'Hey...'. I'd rather just say 'Siri...'
2) Can't do a followup sentence. I'll say 'take me to Costco' and Siri responds 'Which one?' I have to tap one from a list of warehouses instead of just naming one from the list.
3) Siri apparently can't get directions to people in Contacts at all.
There are other annoyance, but those are the first to come to mind.
I'm sorry to say this, even though it's plainly obvious, but Siri is fucking terrible. And I’m trying my best to keep the bar as low as possible. Siri is terrible at things it was supposed to do six %&#@ing years ago! It’s pathetic. Anyone trying to make excuses for siri is lying to themselves, and not doing Apple any favors by doing so.
Going tit for tat with alexa or google now does not make siri not suck. Saying that this is the early days of voice is horrible excuse, since siri sucks at basic things that it was supposed to do from day 1. Saying people don't use it for things other than simple tasks and reminders is incredibly fucking naive; people only use it for that because that's all it does in a remotely reliable fashion!
I have a HomePod and I cringe every time I try to use it. Not having a visual interface means Siri needs to be excellent. But Siri is still shit. I could list a ton of basic examples but it gets tedious.. playlists will only start from the beginning.. it doesn’t recognize artist names that remotely deviate from perfect English (which is a ton of them).. doesn’t even recognize some of the content on apple music even when it’s also on my phone.. cant give more than one command at a time.. if it tell siri "don't play songs like this" I get the response (and I'm not joking) "ok, more songs like ____ coming up!" if I say "stop playing songs like this" I'll get the response (again, not joking) "ok, more songs like ____ coming up," I finally decided to say "this song sucks" and I got the response I wanted: "ok, I'll play less songs like this in the future." And even BASIC fucking things that siri should be doing on homepod.. me: "hey siri, play anjunadeep volume seven [Anjunadeep 07]" ..siri has no fucking clue.. me again: "siri, play anjunadeep number 7", again, siri has no fucking clue, me again: "siri, play anjunadeep 7" she finally fucking plays it.. "ok, now playing anjunadeep seven" ..on and on and on..
Siri is pathetic.
I’ve never, ever been a Cook basher. With almost everything up to this point I think Tim's done an excellent job. But at this point he should have done something about Siri. Seems like letting eddie cue go should’ve been done a long time ago (quick aside: yet he’s now being given a blank check to buy content??; of all people cue is being trusted to have good taste??? Unbelievable.). Also, at this point Apple should have thousands of employees working on Siri, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Siri is so clearly the future cornerstone of the ecosystem, if it isn't already, Apple allowing siri to remain so bad for so long at even the most basic tasks and reliability isn't a great sign.
As both an Apple fan and an Apple consumer, Siri is beyond frustrating.
"Seems like letting eddie cue go should’ve been done a long time ago"
Been saying this for awhile. Up until the time Federighi was put in charge of Siri, her lack of quality was a reflection of her leadership and that fell on Cue's shoulders. Only good thing that's happened under Eddy Cue is Apple Pay.
Apple pay is great, but the rollout seems to have been bumbled badly. And now we're getting these ridiculous reports that apple pay is in 50% of retailers in the US? Again the denial seems to be a pattern with anything that's not going well under eddie cue, with the pervasive attitude being, "how hard can it be" (cue, referring to the bumbled maps rollout). I wish I didn't have to pick on him, but it's impossible not to notice a pattern. Apple news has struggled, apple music has struggled to gain the popularity it should have had being the default music app, with the largest library, and the only one that works with siri. Since apple pay's inception I've been going out of my way to use apple pay (walgreens, TJs, whole paycheck, best buy, starbucks..) and it's definitely not even close to 50% of retailers I go to. Perhaps it's capable of being used at 50% of locations, but it's not. There's plenty of places that don't know it exits, or have it turned off (they don't even plug in the square reader to avoid having to use it), or the NFC capability is just disabled. It's an amazing service that is no-brainer to use, yet besides myself, I almost never see it being used.
Lack of merchant support is so frustrating. Where are the gas stations??? Target? Walmart? Almost every supermarket? CVS? home depot? lowes? specs? Almost all restaurants? still can't use it at the register at chipotle even. Tons of other places that would be tedious to list.
Apple can’t have “bumbled” the rollout since Apple doesnt own all the stores you’re complaining about. Where I live my grocers have NFC terminals. As do many of my small local merchants. The big box stores are holding out for their own selfish reasons — go complain to Target and CVS. Or shop with Walgreens and Whole Foods and other retailers who have their shit together.
Good summary of the article over at Daring Fireball.
Is it true?
Well, looking at how little Siri has improved since launch, and how the ex-team and the ex-manager are Twitter-sniping each other right now, then I’d say it’s right on the money.
Forstall put a manager, Williamson, in place to run Siri development so he could focus on Apple Maps. Williamson screwed up the Siri launch (though he’s happy to blame his team for it), and Forstall went on to screw up the Apple Maps launch. Great work, both of them.
Unfortunately it’s all hearsay. This article leans heavily on unarmed, anonymous sources...which are basically worthless as we can’t tell the sour grapes from the true statements of fact.
Everything you need to know about Siri is illustrated perfectly here:
I tend to agree on your experience, however, may be slur how you said AT&T. Siri definitely has troubles recognizing abbreviation like that and it definitely has issues with some words, I do not care how you say the word it gets it wrong every time. And some days it is completely out to lunch.
Except...as you can see, Siri heard me say "AT&T" then didn't care to return that from my address book or from any search result. So...?
Truth or click-bait, none of this matters, as the need/desire to speak commands to your electronics is so miniscule compared to the totality of all other methods of inputs and interactions.
Saying Amazon is winning is like saying a team than went on a 6 game winning streak in May is destined to win the World Series. It's soooo early in the "season" - and I suspect voice recognition, while increasing in importance over time, will remain niche compared type, touch, and perhaps much more advanced forms of AI interpretation (location, proximity, body, facial, eye analysis, sensors, habit analysis..)
Part of the limitation for wider home adoption currently is feedback is very limited (assuming one does not want to keep picking up their iPhone or iPad). But an Apple TV, which can become the visual side of an enriched Siri response, is very intriguing.
Oh, this does indeed matter. Very much. And to deny it is to have one’s head in the sand and just be a cheerleader for Apple. Sorry but I like to think for myself. I rarely use Siri these days except to set an alarm or reminder. Too many times Siri is either “not available” or gets something totally wrong. I have a contact entry for a sushi restaurant and it’s even in my phone favorites. Yet all Siri does if I ask “Call Vic Sushi” is to pull up a web search that shows the restaurant’s web site. I don’t even bother to use Siri on my MacBook Pro since it seems even less capable than on my iPhone and iPad. At this point it’s a bad joke. I don’t have an Alexa or Google device but I am not hearing anything much that Siri does better and in some cases Siri falls far short. Maybe if Cupertino cared more about user experience than OS updates to add more emoji symbols things might be different.
Nope , it works fine for me. But I still do not use it for anything except timers & convertions.
Comments
Apple pay is great, but the rollout seems to have been bumbled badly. And now we're getting these ridiculous reports that apple pay is in 50% of retailers in the US? Again the denial seems to be a pattern with anything that's not going well under eddie cue, with the pervasive attitude being, "how hard can it be" (cue, referring to the bumbled maps rollout). I wish I didn't have to pick on him, but it's impossible not to notice a pattern. Apple news has struggled, apple music has struggled to gain the popularity it should have had being the default music app, with the largest library, and the only one that works with siri. Since apple pay's inception I've been going out of my way to use apple pay (walgreens, TJs, whole paycheck, best buy, starbucks..) and it's definitely not even close to 50% of retailers I go to. Perhaps it's capable of being used at 50% of locations, but it's not. There's plenty of places that don't know it exits, or have it turned off (they don't even plug in the square reader to avoid having to use it), or the NFC capability is just disabled. It's an amazing service that is no-brainer to use, yet besides myself, I almost never see it being used.
Lack of merchant support is so frustrating. Where are the gas stations??? Target? Walmart? Almost every supermarket? CVS? home depot? lowes? specs? Almost all restaurants? still can't use it at the register at chipotle even. Tons of other places that would be tedious to list.
Is it true?
Well, looking at how little Siri has improved since launch, and how the ex-team and the ex-manager are Twitter-sniping each other right now, then I’d say it’s right on the money.
Forstall put a manager, Williamson, in place to run Siri development so he could focus on Apple Maps. Williamson screwed up the Siri launch (though he’s happy to blame his team for it), and Forstall went on to screw up the Apple Maps launch. Great work, both of them.
For me, Siri has not improved in any significant way over the years, other than now sounding better in some languages, and now starting to experiment with translations. This lack of development is kinda leading me to believe that Apple might have been developing a whole new Siri all this time, just trying to keep the current Siri alive not to loose the game completely before the new Siri is ready to go. Weren't there talks of Apple developing a neural network Siri AI like years ago? I'm wondering how it's coming along.
I'm still hopeful.. But seeing the openness of many interesting Google AI projects, and the "sealed off facility Apple style" is not precisely helping to create a forwardthinking image surrounding Apple's stance on AI.
If there truly was infighting and ego issues, that's the fault of whoever was leading the project. Considering how much Apple reportedly pays people, there's absolutely no excuse for that. They should have the best managers and the most professional (as well as the most creative) people.
The problem with Siri not working well is that it's yet another example (like Touch ID) of Apple really pushing a technology or function, getting everyone excited about it and then abandoning it.
I tend to agree on your experience, however, may be slur how you said AT&T. Siri definitely has troubles recognizing abbreviation like that and it definitely has issues with some words, I do not care how you say the word it gets it wrong every time. And some days it is completely out to lunch.
1) Saying 'Hey...'. I'd rather just say 'Siri...'
2) Can't do a followup sentence. I'll say 'take me to Costco' and Siri responds 'Which one?' I have to tap one from a list of warehouses instead of just naming one from the list.
3) Siri apparently can't get directions to people in Contacts at all.
There are other annoyance, but those are the first to come to mind.