The first option to locate your iPhone locally is already available. If my phone is laying face up anywhere, "Hey Siri, where are you" triggers one of several responses: "Right here", "wherever you are", "wherever you want me to be" and a few others. I use it all the time.
BTW, I've been reading AppleInsider since the day it started 20-ish years ago. One of the founders and I were regulars in a #macintosh IRC channel at the time and ended up at the channel's party for a Seybold or MacWorld convention at the time. Surprisingly young kid. Forgot his name.
I would like to see it answer to "Computer?" instead of "Hey Siri!" I was taught growing up that yelling "Hey!" was rude. And using the brand name all the time ("Siri") makes me feel like a shill. One of the rules of product design is to make the customer feel good, but this product makes me feel bad before I've even stated my query.
I'd like to be able to choose what Siri answers to by a simple training session.
"First, one could just holler "Hey Siri!" into a room where the iPhone
has been misplaced. Siri could them respond in a loud ping or some other
audio cue to help the phone be located."
Isn't this how Siri normally works?
"Siri currently can change many different settings on your phone, like
disabling Bluetooth. It doesn't, however, have the ability to toggle the
flashlight."
If I'm holding the phone to use as a flashlight, why would I need Siri to turn on the flashlight?!
No, when you say Hey, Siri she will wait for you to say a command. After a few moments, she will say something like "I'm listening". What I'm looking for is like a loud pinging tone akin to when you use your Apple Watch or Find My iPhone. Siri doesn't make any noises this loud.
You could say the same thing about almost everything Siri can do. If I'm holding the phone, why do I need Siri to toggle off the WiFi? If I'm holding the phone, why do I need Siri to text someone for me? It's partially a consistency thing part accessibility thing. If the phone is unlocked, I'm not sure my grandmother would know to open Control Center and find the flashlight toggle, but she does use Siri most of the time.
This is the 2nd time I've seen it asserted at AppleInsider that Siri doesn't do this and it is INCORRECT. You simply do this,
"Hey Siri, where are you?"
Siri will audibly ping (as per normal) and respond - sometimes in a humorous fashion. This doesn't address a situation where you might want to ask Siri on the HomePod (or ATV) "where is my phone?" However, Siri DOES respond when asked, "where are you?"
It's unbelievable that Apple could let siri be a failure for so long.
The suggestions in the article and comments are great, but siri is a failure at BASIC things that it was supposed to do or should have been able to do from day 1. If Apple doesn't fix the basic functionality, people will continue to use it in a VERY limited fashion, and will continue to hate siri and Apple due to the constant frustration with basic functionality. It's difficult to keep the various frustrations in memory, but here are some basic things off the top of my head that siri MUST be able to do to be usable:
-have halfway decent comprehension of what is said
-don't make things even worse by making wild, completely ridiculous guesses if siri doesn't understand what it said
-have a little bit of the context awareness promised at launch
-have at least a tiny bit of intelligence, for instance, don't cut me off when I'm halfway through dictating a phone number, then try to call "97354" and then tell me "this doesn't appear to be a working number." No shit. As another person mentioned, don't cut me off halfway through dictating a reminder. In 75% or more of my attempts to add reminders, I have to put them in or correct them with type.
-have a TINY bit of flexibility and humanism. for example, have more than one exact way to refer to something. should be common sense, but apparently not to the geniuses that have been in charge of siri for 6 years..for example, if I'm trying to play, hypothetically,
Dancemix 4, allow the user to say "play Dancemix 4", or "play Dancemix
album 4", or "play Dancemix volume 4". It's absurd that siri will only
recognize one of those options.
-be able to do more than one task at one time, shouldn't be that difficult after 7 years
-use info from our own device and icloud to inform queries. don't give me an address that's 30-300 miles away when the actual address, which is in my contacts, is 5 miles away.
-if I ask siri to so something that requires the phone to be unlocked, DONT cancel the query and make me re-do it after I unlock the phone
-have
a back-up, visual interface for idevices so you don't have to shout at
siri for every little thing (e.g. I don't want to pause the music on my
homepod when I want to know the details of the song I'm listening to or
adjust the volume).
--and ffs, please allow us to shut siri up. I don't need some pseudo-clever reply EVERY SINGLE TIME.. just do the thing.
I don't need to hear siri tell me over and over "I'll get right on
that" "there you go" "home sweet home," on and on..
I'm sure there's a lot more things that I can't think of right now.
Apple, please fix this. The frustration of Siri not being able to work even for simple, basic functions is a slap in the face to everyone that's locked in (mostly very happily, even enthusiastically) to the Apple ecosystem.
How about: "Hey Siri, what's up today?" and you get a brief of weather, appointments, traffic, etc. It's still pretty annoying that you have to open the weather app to know whats going on, I wish the app icon reflected the conditions or get a notification every morning.
I'd mostly prefer Siri being scrapped. It is a waste of time effort and a Mac users intelligence. It's plugged in to crappy old code like DevCALDev which can't handle multiple timed events in a single 24hr period. Siri's problems are very similar to those which the ill-fated Newton suffered from. Asking Siri to do anything beyond the most obviously mundane is like using a first generation Mac from way back when...
That’s it? This is a very lame list of suggestions. What about making Siri actually smart instead of just responding to your questions? She doesn’t learn anything at the moment.
The only smart feature that is currently available I can think of is travel time alerts for appointments, as they take traffic conditions into account. Otherwise she’s dumb as f...
One small example: I ask her directions to a store. Siri, in all her wisdom, suggests a store on the other side of the world. So I lookup the store by typing the name. Two minutes later I ask Siri again and she again points me to the other side of the world. She’s not learning anything and remains as frustrating to deal with.
I don’t know about Alexa or google Home as I don’t use those but Siri is not “behind” in terms of capabilities, she’s just not smart. By a long stretch.
That's one of my biggest complaints about Siri. When one asks it for anything location related, unless you tell it otherwise, it should always find the nearest places. Even if I say "pizza near me", it will find pizza places thousands of miles away. Makes no sense whatsoever.
How are there no comments on improving Siri while driving??
I am constantly distracted from maps during my drives. When I need to make a call, "hey Siri call home." I am not returned back into my map application. I have to stare at a number pad.
What's worse is that after the call is done, my phone goes to sleep! Now I have to pick the phone up, FaceID it, choose "I'm not driving", engage maps again, and then be on my way.
My iPhone knows I am driving. Shouldn't it make the call and dump me back to maps? Maybe let me say something like, "Hey Siri, call home and return to maps."
And I'll take my comments off the air.
This is so true. Especially poignant is the fact that in many, many, many cases, do-not-distubt-while-driving is LESS safe because it forces you to do things unsafely that you should be able to do safely otherwise.
How about: "Hey Siri, what's up today?" and you get a brief of weather, appointments, traffic, etc. It's still pretty annoying that you have to open the weather app to know whats going on, I wish the app icon reflected the conditions or get a notification every morning.
You can easily say, "Hey Siri, what's the weather today?" and get a full response from Siri.
I wouldn't want all that information in one shot after simply asking "what's up today?" As soon as you think the answer should be all those items, some other person is going to think it isn't enough or it is too much, etc. I think it works much better to ask specific questions and have a specific expectation.
As a developer, I want to see tvOS augmented to allow:
- Bluetooth as an official background mode - Dependable, persistent CoreData (vs. the current method where on-device, stored data can be blown away) - Ability to soft-instantiate certain HomeKit accessories
I'd like to see Siri natively support custom voice triggered automations/macros/workflows on both iOS and macOS. These voice triggered automations should be trainable so any series of commands, actions, UI steps, IO operations, etc., on the device or computer can be initiated via a custom user defined voice command. These custom automations would be associated with a single user's voice by default but optionally configurable to accept additional voices. The ability to support different phases with the same automation (aliases) should also be supported. Perhaps Apple can build the training capability into the Workflow app. All user defined Siri automations would be stored in the iCloud and usable on compatible devices.
1. Customized wake up, or at least half dozen alternatives to “Hey Siri”
2. Smart reminders initiated by Siri when for example you forget to END your outdoor bicycle app.
3. Allow user or Siri to create personal library of your common requests, so you can just say “Siri NBA” to get score etc. Or “humidity” to succinctly get latest local data.
4. Ditto easy formulation of scenes so each user can get a customized briefing morning afternoon or night. These are near term requests, readily achievable.
One thing I'd like to see, and I'm not even sure if it's possible, is Smart Night Shift. Meaning, it will adjust the color temperature for all areas of the display except for video. Since I switch or pages frequently at night and pages with text usually have white backgrounds which can be piercing, I do use Night Shift, but it's not great for also playing video at the same time. I suppose this being possible depends on whether Night Shift is adjusting the HW itself, or just effectively adding a yellow hue to the GUI.
I would like to see it answer to "Computer?" instead of "Hey Siri!" I was taught growing up that yelling "Hey!" was rude. And using the brand name all the time ("Siri") makes me feel like a shill. One of the rules of product design is to make the customer feel good, but this product makes me feel bad before I've even stated my query.
Computer was how voice control worked on the Mac since 2000. It just changed with the recent addition of Siri
Many of the requested features for Siri would remove most security protections. Voice recognition is not secure at all. It is far to easy to record high quality audio of users speaking, edit it and use it to access smart speakers and anything you have it set to control. Like ordering from Amazon or unlocking you door and deactivating the alarm.
Apple could be waiting for the inevitable massive security breaches to begin, so their cautiously secure moves will become their marketing platform.
Comments
I stopped reading after this...:)
I wouldn't want all that information in one shot after simply asking "what's up today?" As soon as you think the answer should be all those items, some other person is going to think it isn't enough or it is too much, etc. I think it works much better to ask specific questions and have a specific expectation.
- Bluetooth as an official background mode
- Dependable, persistent CoreData (vs. the current method where on-device, stored data can be blown away)
- Ability to soft-instantiate certain HomeKit accessories
Apple could be waiting for the inevitable massive security breaches to begin, so their cautiously secure moves will become their marketing platform.