A lot of impressive things announced. Your move Apple.
With respect to digital assistants / AI / ML / ambient computing, I would love to see Apple make some serious headway but I'm not banking on it. Google, MS, and Amazon are so far ahead in this area it isn't even funny.
I’d love to know what happened inside Apple that they dropped the ball here. Was it just a failure of leadership at the top? Someone should write a story on that.
Too busy shipping real products at real volume.
So Alexa and Google Assistant aren’t real products to you? Real products are only ones that Apple ships?
Yes. Here at AppleInsider, the only products are those from Apple. iBlinders are an effective tool at filtering out anything else; they make all Apple products good enough. On behalf of everyone at AppleInsider, thanks for your query!
Google's presentation was rather impressive and creepy. Apple really needs step up their game, I haven't seen a presentation from them that gets me excited in a long time. Privacy and security are great, but there should be some compromises.
None. Privacy and security isn’t the issue. Siri sucks in many trivial ways such as keeping conversations going, understand relevance and context, “intelligence” and voice recognition.
Simple things such as apostrophies it adds stop it from understand and recognising whole sentences. Which has nothing to do with privacy or security:
Or how about if I ask I a math question by only use a measurement for one of the numbers—it cannot assume I’m looking for a distance related answer, or at a minimum ask me back if I was distance or area. It can only kick me to the web:
Again, not privacy or security. And don’t get me started on voice recognition. Sometimes Ok, sometimes incredibly bad and frustrating. And hasn’t improved any in the last few years at understanding me. Even when it became tuned for my country it improved zero in understanding me and my accent isn’t that strong and I don’t speak quickly.
Also worth pointing out I’ve given many specific feedbacks about Siri, only to see them go unfixed.
Could not have said it better myself. I don’t have an accent and it doesn’t recognize basic stuff. Recently I asked Siri to call a close friend while driving. Then it said “do you want to confirm so and so is your mother?” WTF???? It’s horrible.
Well, I'm sure you could have said it without the typos. Fixed them now. Can't edit my comments often in mobile Safari once posted, needed to on my Mac (beta 3/4). Anyway, yes, your example is also one of those weird Siri responses I sometimes hear. Or the times where no matter where I point the mic or what way I speak it insists I'm trying to say a word or group of words that just does not sound like what I'm saying.
A lot of impressive things announced. Your move Apple.
With respect to digital assistants / AI / ML / ambient computing, I would love to see Apple make some serious headway but I'm not banking on it. Google, MS, and Amazon are so far ahead in this area it isn't even funny.
I’d love to know what happened inside Apple that they dropped the ball here. Was it just a failure of leadership at the top? Someone should write a story on that.
Too busy shipping real products at real volume.
So Alexa and Google Assistant aren’t real products to you? Real products are only ones that Apple ships?
Yes. Here at AppleInsider, the only products are those from Apple.
Untrue. Apple Insider isn't /r/apple. We like Apple products, but are not ignorant or other valuable products. It's but a vocal minority here who have the views you mentioned. But there are also a large number here who value privacy, so that can influence opinions and lead to sarcasms on Google or Amazon posts. I do think those comments are largely justified. I've personally criticised Apple many times here.
P.S. You can also see much defensiveness here from commenters who are clearly influenced by ownership of their Apple shares—blind greed? I'm a reformed AAPL owner, and perhaps have been guilty of this at random times in the past, though not as much as some who live in and who's every move is informed by such thinking.
Google's presentation was rather impressive and creepy. Apple really needs step up their game, I haven't seen a presentation from them that gets me excited in a long time. Privacy and security are great, but there should be some compromises.
None. Privacy and security isn’t the issue. Siri sucks in many trivial ways such as keeping conversations going, understand relevance and context, “intelligence” and voice recognition.
Simple things such as apostrophes (which I didn't intend) can stop Siri from understanding and recognising whole sentences. Which has nothing to do with privacy, or security:
Or how about if I ask I a math question and use a measurement for just of the numbers—it should assume I’m looking for a distance related answer, or at a minimum ask me if I'm looking for distance or area. It kicks me to the web:
And don’t get me started on voice recognition. Sometimes Ok, sometimes incredibly bad and frustrating. And hasn’t improved any for me in the last few years. Even when it became tuned for my country it improved zero in understanding my words and accent, and my accent isn’t that strong (I've been told so a few times) and I don’t speak quickly.
Also worth pointing out that I have given many specific feedbacks about Siri over the last couple of years, only to see them remain unfixed.
Another thing that boggles my mind is different results for different people asking the same question.
Yes, voice recognition is not perfect on iOS Yesterday I dictated a text to my wife: "The company approved my vacation request." My wife received "The company approved my vasectomy request." Needless she was confused on SO MANY levels. LOL
Yes, voice recognition is not perfect on iOS Yesterday I dictated a text to my wife: "The company approved my vacation request." My wife received "The company approved my vasectomy request." Needless she was confused on SO MANY levels. LOL
The other day I spoke to my nearby iPhone X and asked Siri to set a timer for 3 minutes. When the timer was done I told Siri “Do that again.” Siri responded by saying “hang on let me listen... hmm I don’t recognize that song.”
I then asked my nearby Echo’s Alexa to set a timer for 3 minutes. When it was done I told Alexa “Do that again” and it immediately set another timer for 3 minutes.
I love Apple but am disappointed the Siri is falling so far behind in the basics. It feels like Siri is a soon to be discontinued product and that Apple has moved onto other things like Augumented Reality.
And note that nothing in that example required giving up "privacy and security" for the Alexa device to handle the interaction in a manner expected. The software behind each of them is what is at work there. One of them is 'smarter' in how it responds than another and having mountains of personal data and/or selling it is not necessary for that.
I wonder if Siri might work as an interface to an app. e.g. in Xcode, "Siri, take me to the handler function for the OK button," or in Final Cut Pro, "Move clip 3 to the front and fade it in, use the same effect we used yesterday. The remove the 10 seconds starting at index 20:03."
Because Google's main advantage is that their great AI allows them to understand a wide range of situations, and Apple will get that too eventually, but in the meantime they could paper over the gaps by doing more domain specific applications.
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P.S. You can also see much defensiveness here from commenters who are clearly influenced by ownership of their Apple shares—blind greed? I'm a reformed AAPL owner, and perhaps have been guilty of this at random times in the past, though not as much as some who live in and who's every move is informed by such thinking.
Yesterday I dictated a text to my wife: "The company approved my vacation request."
My wife received "The company approved my vasectomy request."
Needless she was confused on SO MANY levels.
LOL