Happy birthday to Siri, the first and most frustrating voice assistant
It's ten years since Apple introduced Siri as a beta service, which means a decade of talking to our iPhone, then Apple Watch, and HomePod.
How Siri looked at launch on the iPhone 4S
The more you know about voice recognition, or even just the more you think about it, the more incredible Siri is today -- and astounding it was on its announcement, ten years ago. On October 4, 2011, Phil Schiller called it "the coolest feature of the new iPhone 4S."
Unfortunately, Schiller also inadvertently described the future of Siri even as he believed he was commenting on previous attempts to do voice recognition.
"Because for decades, technologists have teased us with this dream that you're gonna be able to talk to technology and they'll do things for us," he said. "Haven't we seen this before? Over and over, but it never comes true."
"We have very limited capability," he continued. "Just learn a syntax, call a name, dial a number, play a song. It is such a letdown."
Mind you, he wasn't the only one to say something at the Siri launch that sounds a little different in retrospect. "When I leave Apple it'll put up an alert," said Scott Forstall in the demo, "reminding me to call my wife."
Then that's compared to what you said a moment ago, because you may be continuing a kind of conversation. And then the instruction is sent back to your phone so that Siri can both do whatever you've asked, and tell you the result.
This has changed only very recently, with Apple introducing on-device Siri which can sometimes skip that business of sending across the world.
Nonetheless, this is a series of steps that are difficult to do, and difficult to do quickly, but Siri does it in excess of 25 billion times a year.
It's easy to forget how much it is doing, in every sense, and it's also hard to remember that it's doing all of this because it goes wrong so often. Sometimes that's because a kind of auto-correct type of failure has hit the translation and it thinks you've asked something you haven't.
But it can also be that Siri fails to do what it says it's done, or rather what you think it says it's done. Ask Siri on your Apple Watch to set an alarm for 6pm and it will commonly complain saying that there isn't an alarm for 6pm.
When you've finished explaining in words with multiple asterisks that this is why you were asking it to set one, it might do it. Siri might actually set a 6pm alarm and tell you it has.
But it won't necessarily have then turned that 6pm alarm on.
In the quite incredible work that Siri does, that feels like the kind of low-hanging fruit that should be easy to fix. It's not about parsing difficult sentences, it's not about picking a result out of a best-guess voice-analysis, it's not doing the thing it says it's doing.
It just does lose some of that amazement when right after your Apple Watch says "Done," so does your iPhone. And your HomePod.
It's less than amazing when you're in the kitchen and ask your iPhone to set a timer, and it's your HomePod mini with bionic ears in the den that does it, right before someone shuts the door to that room.
That aspect is extra frustrating because really it should be an example of Apple's absolute brilliance in sweating the details. When you call out "Hey, Siri," every single device you own that is capable of hearing you, listens.
They all then rapid-fire talk with each other to calculate which device you meant. If you've raised your Watch arm, while your iPhone is in your pocket and the HomePod is in the den, it's your Watch that knows to respond.
But then it doesn't.
There must surely, easily, be situations where it's not possible to correctly predict which device you wanted. But there certainly cannot be any intra-device communication that results in two devices thinking you meant them.
Yet that happens. The Watch on your wrist, the iPhone in your back pocket. The iPhone in your hand, and the HomePod on your desk, two devices can both react, both act, on what you say.
And then sometimes, just sometimes, nothing responds. That is equally frustrating -- but it is also when you realise just how much you actually rely on Siri.
From iOS 5 onwards, more of Siri will work on-device instead of needing an internet connection
Or you've got your arms full when you walk up to your front door. "Hey, Siri, unlock the front door," and if you've got a Smart Lock, it does. "Turn off the downstairs lights." Done.
What time is it in New York? Easy. "Hey, Siri, what's 29 times 3?"
Or you're listening to music through AirPods and you can say, "Hey, Siri, play Francisca Valenzuela." With the gentlest of dips in the music volume, Siri listens, and then plays what you want.
Apple devices are better with Siri.
Siri has the weather down cold, you can ask it about that any time. You can also tell it to take you home -- and it will open Apple Maps with the route to your house right there.
And Apple has got the tone right with Siri. It doesn't pretend to shout at you like the Carrot Weather app, but it also isn't robotic.
So sometimes Siri will tell you about Apple launches a little early. Ask Siri its favorite color and it might dodge the question, but ask you yours.
Or if - when - you have occasion to use colorful language with Siri, it may reply "I'm not responding to that."
It's not "following along the conversation just like a human does," as Forstall said later in his demo. But it's more than straight answer-and-respond.
Somehow it is enough of a personality that if you ever hear someone using Siri with one of its alternative voices, it sounds wrong to you.
So if Siri is this brilliant thing that is chiefly so brilliant that we can tell how much better it could be, it is still something remarkable. And ten years of it is worth celebrating.
"Hey, Siri, when's your birthday?"
"Surprise!" says Siri, if you ask on October 4, 2021. "I'm ten today. I tried to organize my own surprise birthday party, but I knew it was coming, so I thought I'd surprise you instead."
Read on AppleInsider
How Siri looked at launch on the iPhone 4S
The more you know about voice recognition, or even just the more you think about it, the more incredible Siri is today -- and astounding it was on its announcement, ten years ago. On October 4, 2011, Phil Schiller called it "the coolest feature of the new iPhone 4S."
Unfortunately, Schiller also inadvertently described the future of Siri even as he believed he was commenting on previous attempts to do voice recognition.
"Because for decades, technologists have teased us with this dream that you're gonna be able to talk to technology and they'll do things for us," he said. "Haven't we seen this before? Over and over, but it never comes true."
"We have very limited capability," he continued. "Just learn a syntax, call a name, dial a number, play a song. It is such a letdown."
Mind you, he wasn't the only one to say something at the Siri launch that sounds a little different in retrospect. "When I leave Apple it'll put up an alert," said Scott Forstall in the demo, "reminding me to call my wife."
Siri really is amazing
Today we're used to Siri and Alexa, and we may remember such digital voice assistants as Cortana, but we know them so well that we can forget how remarkable they all are. When you ask Siri something, it sends that audio across the world to a server where it is parsed, or just plain ripped apart, to determine what words -- and what language -- you said.Then that's compared to what you said a moment ago, because you may be continuing a kind of conversation. And then the instruction is sent back to your phone so that Siri can both do whatever you've asked, and tell you the result.
This has changed only very recently, with Apple introducing on-device Siri which can sometimes skip that business of sending across the world.
Nonetheless, this is a series of steps that are difficult to do, and difficult to do quickly, but Siri does it in excess of 25 billion times a year.
It's easy to forget how much it is doing, in every sense, and it's also hard to remember that it's doing all of this because it goes wrong so often. Sometimes that's because a kind of auto-correct type of failure has hit the translation and it thinks you've asked something you haven't.
But it can also be that Siri fails to do what it says it's done, or rather what you think it says it's done. Ask Siri on your Apple Watch to set an alarm for 6pm and it will commonly complain saying that there isn't an alarm for 6pm.
When you've finished explaining in words with multiple asterisks that this is why you were asking it to set one, it might do it. Siri might actually set a 6pm alarm and tell you it has.
But it won't necessarily have then turned that 6pm alarm on.
In the quite incredible work that Siri does, that feels like the kind of low-hanging fruit that should be easy to fix. It's not about parsing difficult sentences, it's not about picking a result out of a best-guess voice-analysis, it's not doing the thing it says it's doing.
Calm down, take a deep breath
This is Siri's tenth birthday and we wouldn't have it disappear, we don't fail to appreciate what a marvel it is. When you can just call out to thin air, "Hey, Siri, remind me to pay my credit card when I get home," it is a truly amazing thing.It just does lose some of that amazement when right after your Apple Watch says "Done," so does your iPhone. And your HomePod.
It's less than amazing when you're in the kitchen and ask your iPhone to set a timer, and it's your HomePod mini with bionic ears in the den that does it, right before someone shuts the door to that room.
That aspect is extra frustrating because really it should be an example of Apple's absolute brilliance in sweating the details. When you call out "Hey, Siri," every single device you own that is capable of hearing you, listens.
They all then rapid-fire talk with each other to calculate which device you meant. If you've raised your Watch arm, while your iPhone is in your pocket and the HomePod is in the den, it's your Watch that knows to respond.
But then it doesn't.
There must surely, easily, be situations where it's not possible to correctly predict which device you wanted. But there certainly cannot be any intra-device communication that results in two devices thinking you meant them.
Yet that happens. The Watch on your wrist, the iPhone in your back pocket. The iPhone in your hand, and the HomePod on your desk, two devices can both react, both act, on what you say.
And then sometimes, just sometimes, nothing responds. That is equally frustrating -- but it is also when you realise just how much you actually rely on Siri.
From iOS 5 onwards, more of Siri will work on-device instead of needing an internet connection
We don't come to bury Siri
You're deep in the middle of a task and you remember you need to put the oven on to pre-heat for tonight's dinner. No one ever remembers that at the moment they need to do it, but now you can just call aloud and Siri will remember it for you, Siri will tell you when it's time.Or you've got your arms full when you walk up to your front door. "Hey, Siri, unlock the front door," and if you've got a Smart Lock, it does. "Turn off the downstairs lights." Done.
What time is it in New York? Easy. "Hey, Siri, what's 29 times 3?"
Or you're listening to music through AirPods and you can say, "Hey, Siri, play Francisca Valenzuela." With the gentlest of dips in the music volume, Siri listens, and then plays what you want.
Apple devices are better with Siri.
Siri has the weather down cold, you can ask it about that any time. You can also tell it to take you home -- and it will open Apple Maps with the route to your house right there.
And Apple has got the tone right with Siri. It doesn't pretend to shout at you like the Carrot Weather app, but it also isn't robotic.
So sometimes Siri will tell you about Apple launches a little early. Ask Siri its favorite color and it might dodge the question, but ask you yours.
Or if - when - you have occasion to use colorful language with Siri, it may reply "I'm not responding to that."
It's not "following along the conversation just like a human does," as Forstall said later in his demo. But it's more than straight answer-and-respond.
Somehow it is enough of a personality that if you ever hear someone using Siri with one of its alternative voices, it sounds wrong to you.
So if Siri is this brilliant thing that is chiefly so brilliant that we can tell how much better it could be, it is still something remarkable. And ten years of it is worth celebrating.
"Hey, Siri, when's your birthday?"
"Surprise!" says Siri, if you ask on October 4, 2021. "I'm ten today. I tried to organize my own surprise birthday party, but I knew it was coming, so I thought I'd surprise you instead."
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
As well as that, its comprehension is terrible. A typical example I use is asking Siri to add 5 minutes to a timer. Siri changes the timer to 5 minutes. Similar lack of comprehension with lists too. With Alexa, - as long as the skill is installed - I can specify the exact item I want from the grocery store, I can ask the price, and I can add it to the basket. Next time I go on the grocery store's site, it'll be waiting in the basket. Siri can't even get adding things to a list right. "Add tomato sauce to my shopping list" regularly results in two items, "tomato" and "sauce". These kinds of bugs have existed since at least 2016, and yet apparently "Siri really is amazing"? Don't think so.
Aside from Siri itself, I don't think I've ever heard anyone other than me ever say "hey Siri" unless it's at my direction. Certainly never heard or seen anyone use Siri in public, ever. In fact most people I know have it switched off. Also, Siri's crappiness is a key reason the HomePod flopped.
Andy Rubin’s Essential phone
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You apparently misunderstand what HomePod did and does. It’s not a smart speaker; it’s a speaker that uses a voice interface. When it comes to its job to be done, playing music, there is no problem (even tho I almost always use the iPhone or iPad UI rather than voice).
Also:
My SO OTOH will often ask “Siri, What time do the Twins play today?” And get two, sometimes three devices all answering at once. Siri will also drop a non sequetor into the middle of a conversation. We didn’t say Hey Siri, but it thought we did and it tries to reply.
I find what Siri does, it does well. It will set a timer for me without fail. It will call up a game time with no problem. On the other hand I have never had any luck with requests that involve if/then logic. “Remind me to do X when I get home” has never elicited any response worth mention. So I just don’t do that.
1. Dictation accuracy is terrible (that's not really Siri).
2. If you pause when trying to do a task like set a reminder, forget it. Better know what you're going to say exactly.
3. Using it over any 3rd party bluetooth device (including in the car) takes time off my life expectancy.
4. "Hey Siri......" (waiting for acknowledgement)...."open my....." [interrupts "Mmmhmmm?].
5. It still can't read me my email.
It's still useful for some things. I will set reminders with it, but depending on what I'm asking, it's often easier to type.
2) Yes I’ve founbd the same thing. Say it all at once, or Siri just falls apart.
3) Haven’t tried that.
4) That’s why I don’t use “Hey Siri”. Once I switched to a button push to call it up, I’ve had much better luck with it.
5) Another thing I haven’t tried.
Directions to Where?
Home
You'll need to unlock your iPhone first.
Maddening, since my phone is also smart enough to know I am DRIVING. Seems counter to all the things we are told about using our phones while driving, since I need to lift my phone out of its holder and take my attention OFF THE ROAD to unlock my phone.
Great! You got one of the times Siri worked. Siri needs to work 95% of the time otherwise it’s not worth even trying.
Siri is none of those things because of Apple management's total lack of imagination and need for absolute control over everything. This is why Siri's voice recognition has to phone back to Apple's own servers exposing everything you say potential security threats. This is why there is no open standard for home control that Apple's products can use. It is why you can't access vital hardware and software features of your iPhone with a simple voice command. The creative, surprising, amazing Apple vision died with Steve Jobs. What's left is a greedy husk of a company that is only interested in short term profit.
Unfortunately, it has to be done after some iOS updates that turn it back on.
with all my five devices answering, unless I put all but one well away. My HomePod via Siri often can’t find music in my library, even though it is either bought from iTunes or streamed from Apple Music. I also get Siri talking to me when I haven’t called him up. Basically, Siri is a complete waste of time, it’s quicker not to bother.