What exactly makes Alexa so much better than Siri? (I personally do not have issues with Siri and have never owned an Alexa device to compare). This is the narrative but I never see specific reasons. Like, what does alexa offer that is the game changer?
What exactly makes Alexa so much better than Siri? (I personally do not have issues with Siri and have never owned an Alexa device to compare). This is the narrative but I never see specific reasons. Like, what does alexa offer that is the game changer?
I can't speak for Alexa but I rarely use Siri because it returns too many 'this is what I found on the internet results'. Another little peeves is that the Spanish Spanish voice changed a couple of updates ago and now sounds far worse.
On the Google Maps side there are two niggles. The voice sounds fine but is too effervescent and insists on roads named TV being called 'television 1234' instead of 'TV1234'.
I don't buy the Siri is sooo far behind. Not for one minute. The entire issue is really about what access you give these intrusive home listening devices. They are toys at this point. You ply a song, you look up weather. what exactly are they doing to change your life? And I ask honestly. The Google and Amazon devices are happy to rummage through your life to find connections. Giving the device access to everything you write, all your address, your locations, your work and children ETC, yes. It will 'seem' smarter. It's just a better spy isn't it?
Outside of this forum I’ve never met any one who didn’t think Siri was a pathetic joke. More a pain to use than worth trying. I actively try to stay away from Miss Annoyance. Alexa on the other hand works great and was cheap.
Who are you talking to, tech reporters and product testers?
I've never met any regular iOS/Siri user that thinks Siri is a joke. They might if they did a full comparison with other voice assistants but most users just don't care either way. Once you know the limitations (all of them have many limits) of voice assistants, you either figure out how they benefit your life in a small way or you just don't use them. There is no magic assistant that works for everything.
Apple should buy IBM, keep the Watson division (to create a base for future Siri), divest the rest of the company (including the cloud business), and rename Siri as Watson.
Haha. I’ve argued in favor of Apple buying IBM in the past and still think it would make sense.
Siri, like Apple's Maps, was mis-managed by Forstall. Then handed over to Eddie Cue, who had no ability in AI. Finally, Craig got the mandate. It seems Craig realized that AI / NLP is THE future and needed a fully dedicated expert. My guess he told Tim to hire the best and give him carte blanche, C-level authority.
I'm total FanBoy, but Siri is terrible. It makes Lily Tomlin as Ernestine look like a genius. "Is this the party to whom I'm speaking" - Showing my age.....
That’s a gross simplification - if not falsification.
The original Siri developers never got along with Apple after it bought the product, as Apple didn’t want to implement the modular structure they considered necessary for scaled development.
Apple then made its own decisions that weren’t very wise from a developer perspective (but might or might not have been preferable for other reasons such as security)
In the end, the devs moved out. Forstall was intelligent enough to understand the essence of software development. I don’t think he was to blame. Actually, he never was - also in the Maps drama he had the right vision but didn’t get it adopted in the organisation.
Anyway, handing over responsibilities to Cue is....what should I say...the fastest way to elevate the problematic to the desastrous ?
What vision did Forstall have?
Well not being a scapegoat for one thing. He was the one thrown under the bus because Steve bought a couple of companies and wanted Apple to cobble together something that was better than Google maps.
I don’t think they were ready to give Google the heave ho when they were negotiating the renewal of google maps. After Jobs died, Scott’s days were numbered. Tim Cook did not like the conflict between Ive and Forestall and decided to blame Scott for the terrible launch of Maps. Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi were also not big fans of Forestall and the way he did things.
You still have to give Scott credit. He was not an idiot. He was one of the few people who stayed employed by Steve since 1992 at NeXT and at Apple until after Steve’s passing in 2011.
If Forestall was that bad and the cause for the horrible release of Maps and now being blamed for Siri then why has it taken so long to improve the quality of those apps? He’s been gone since 2012. That’s going on 7 years.
Cook, Ive, Cue and Federighi will be under pressure this year to innovate and deliver on their promises to make a pro system, bring back displays, make better software, and possibly release new products that can reinvigorate that feeling we all had when Apple came out with a new product.
We couldn’t wait to give Apple our money. I miss those days.
Siri, like Apple's Maps, was mis-managed by Forstall. Then handed over to Eddie Cue, who had no ability in AI. Finally, Craig got the mandate. It seems Craig realized that AI / NLP is THE future and needed a fully dedicated expert. My guess he told Tim to hire the best and give him carte blanche, C-level authority.
I'm total FanBoy, but Siri is terrible. It makes Lily Tomlin as Ernestine look like a genius. "Is this the party to whom I'm speaking" - Showing my age.....
That’s a gross simplification - if not falsification.
The original Siri developers never got along with Apple after it bought the product, as Apple didn’t want to implement the modular structure they considered necessary for scaled development.
Apple then made its own decisions that weren’t very wise from a developer perspective (but might or might not have been preferable for other reasons such as security)
In the end, the devs moved out. Forstall was intelligent enough to understand the essence of software development. I don’t think he was to blame. Actually, he never was - also in the Maps drama he had the right vision but didn’t get it adopted in the organisation.
Anyway, handing over responsibilities to Cue is....what should I say...the fastest way to elevate the problematic to the desastrous ?
What vision did Forstall have?
Well not being a scapegoat for one thing. He was the one thrown under the bus because Steve bought a couple of companies and wanted Apple to cobble together something that was better than Google maps.
I don’t think they were ready to give Google the heave ho when they were negotiating the renewal of google maps. After Jobs died, Scott’s days were numbered. Tim Cook did not like the conflict between Ive and Forestall and decided to blame Scott for the terrible launch of Maps. Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi were also not big fans of Forestall and the way he did things.
You still have to give Scott credit. He was not an idiot. He was one of the few people who stayed employed by Steve since 1992 at NeXT and at Apple until after Steve’s passing in 2011.
If Forestall was that bad and the cause for the horrible release of Maps and now being blamed for Siri then why has it taken so long to improve the quality of those apps? He’s been gone since 2012. That’s going on 7 years.
Cook, Ive, Cue and Federighi will be under pressure this year to innovate and deliver on their promises to make a pro system, bring back displays, make better software, and possibly release new products that can reinvigorate that feeling we all had when Apple came out with a new product.
We couldn’t wait to give Apple our money. I miss those days.
Scott Forstall threw his team under the bus very publically. After that he was never going to stay it's management suicide in any organisation.
The incident showed either he was a bad manager who didn't know what was going on in his team so when it hit the fan he blamed the team or he did know but didn't have the leadership to fix it and agian blamed the team.
Apple should buy IBM, keep the Watson division (to create a base for future Siri), divest the rest of the company (including the cloud business), and rename Siri as Watson.
LOL. You have no idea what Watson is I guess? I've had to work with it several times..It's just a marketing ploy to install IBM contracts. There is no AI.
Apple should buy IBM, keep the Watson division (to create a base for future Siri), divest the rest of the company (including the cloud business), and rename Siri as Watson.
LOL. You have no idea what Watson is I guess? I've had to work with it several times..It's just a marketing ploy to install IBM contracts. There is no AI.
Oh, really, what was that thing that won Jeopardy against folks like Ken Jennings? Writers for Trebek pretending to be Watson?
Apple should buy IBM, keep the Watson division (to create a base for future Siri), divest the rest of the company (including the cloud business), and rename Siri as Watson.
LOL. You have no idea what Watson is I guess? I've had to work with it several times..It's just a marketing ploy to install IBM contracts. There is no AI.
Oh, really, what was that thing that won Jeopardy against folks like Ken Jennings? Writers for Trebek pretending to be Watson?
That was a modified Apache UIMA and Lucene installation, with some extra filtering code. That had a good performance, for sure, but it was basically a pumped up search engine. There was significant engineering effort put into reducing the latency of getting answers out of it. So, a heavily optimised bot for playing jeopardy. It couldn't do anything else. After that, nothin happened with the tech, since it was single-purpose. The commercial projects Watson has been inserted into, have all failed. It's a way for IBM to sell enterprise cloud services contracts. It's not AI, at best it's ML.
Now, Apple, please do the same with whomever is in charge of that unmitigated disaster called iTunes. Thank you.
it's really Tim Cook. Its been a bloated, ugly mess for years. He's the one responsible for the lack of resources. It's certainly not for lack of money at Apple that this hasn't been fixed.
Apple should buy IBM, keep the Watson division (to create a base for future Siri), divest the rest of the company (including the cloud business), and rename Siri as Watson.
LOL. You have no idea what Watson is I guess? I've had to work with it several times..It's just a marketing ploy to install IBM contracts. There is no AI.
Oh, really, what was that thing that won Jeopardy against folks like Ken Jennings? Writers for Trebek pretending to be Watson?
That was a modified Apache UIMA and Lucene installation, with some extra filtering code. That had a good performance, for sure, but it was basically a pumped up search engine. There was significant engineering effort put into reducing the latency of getting answers out of it. So, a heavily optimised bot for playing jeopardy. It couldn't do anything else. After that, nothin happened with the tech, since it was single-purpose. The commercial projects Watson has been inserted into, have all failed. It's a way for IBM to sell enterprise cloud services contracts. It's not AI, at best it's ML.
"good performance;" "pumped up search"; "significant engineering to reduce latency"; "after [Jeopardy] nothing happened;" "it's a way for IBM to sell cloud services."
You've just provided the reasons for why Apple should acquire it and transform it away from cloud services.
Agree regarding Apple Search being the common failures point (which is why I always laugh when non experts ‘predict’ how Apple will eat Google’s lunch if they ever enter the search arena).
On the other hand, in restricted use cases, like CarPlay or AppleTV, Siri really shines. Again, because it’s a restricted environment.
The other thing Siri (and otter services) really need, are incremental updates - not yearly ones. Upgrades to content and ‘smarts’ should be pushed out monthly or quarterly. Not yearly - the yearly upgrade cycle is plain dumb and myopic.
The debate over which is better, Siri or Alexa is a non starter for me. I would never trust Amazon or Google with an earpiece in my house.
Siri is not a joke as some have suggested. Siri is very useful for anyone that uses HomeKit devices. If you have a HomePod, it is invaluable. However, Siri's reliability has declined over the last year. I have noticed many unprodded responses on the HomePod where Siri just jumps into the conversation as if we were speaking to it. I do understand how the "I found this on the web," or "I am unable..." can be frustrating to some. We are so accustomed to having all knowledge at our fingertips now that we can't understand why Siri is unable to answer any question we have.
But as I alluded above, the real value of Siri is not in answering all our whimsical questions, it is instead with the ability to help us with handsfree commands, while checking messages while driving or walking into a room to turn the lights on and play some music.
I remember using Google Assistant (or whatever it was called back then) several years ago and I was amazed at what it could do and how fast it was. Siri, today, still cannot do the same things as Google Assistant could back then (and the same goes for Apple Maps).
Apple should buy IBM, keep the Watson division (to create a base for future Siri), divest the rest of the company (including the cloud business), and rename Siri as Watson.
Apple had "Sherlock" before. You are suggesting they add a Watson?
while seeming to defy the laws of physics: Siri simultaneously sucks and blows! the mere fact you have to repeat "hey siri" to get her attention is annoying. even worse, especially since we know siri is always listening, it's ridiculous that siri does _not_ respond to commands when listening to music.
Since USB Restricted Mode is not supposed to affect charging, but it obviously does, this is solid evidence that there is a bug in Apple's USB Restricted Mode code. Why doesn't Apple simply fix the code? Is it really that difficult?
Seems like a large feature of Alexa is that Amazon is active developing tools to help 3rd parties build skills for Alexa and they have a weekly cadence for releasing new interactions/features. I don't see this with Siri, largely because Apple hasn't decided to commit to this strategy. I'd love to be able to ask Siri to play my Audible book, or to use my Audible credit to buy the next book in series...X, or how much would an Uber to Y cost me.
Comments
On the Google Maps side there are two niggles. The voice sounds fine but is too effervescent and insists on roads named TV being called 'television 1234' instead of 'TV1234'.
Apple user of 30 years.
I've never met any regular iOS/Siri user that thinks Siri is a joke. They might if they did a full comparison with other voice assistants but most users just don't care either way. Once you know the limitations (all of them have many limits) of voice assistants, you either figure out how they benefit your life in a small way or you just don't use them. There is no magic assistant that works for everything.
I don’t think they were ready to give Google the heave ho when they were negotiating the renewal of google maps.
After Jobs died, Scott’s days were numbered.
Tim Cook did not like the conflict between Ive and Forestall and decided to blame Scott for the terrible launch of Maps. Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi were also not big fans of Forestall and the way he did things.
You still have to give Scott credit. He was not an idiot. He was one of the few people who stayed employed by Steve since 1992 at NeXT and at Apple until after Steve’s passing in 2011.
If Forestall was that bad and the cause for the horrible release of Maps and now being blamed for Siri then why has it taken so long to improve the quality of those apps? He’s been gone since 2012. That’s going on 7 years.
Cook, Ive, Cue and Federighi will be under pressure this year to innovate and deliver on their promises to make a pro system, bring back displays, make better software, and possibly release new products that can reinvigorate that feeling we all had when Apple came out with a new product.
We couldn’t wait to give Apple our money. I miss those days.
You've just provided the reasons for why Apple should acquire it and transform it away from cloud services.
Siri is not a joke as some have suggested. Siri is very useful for anyone that uses HomeKit devices. If you have a HomePod, it is invaluable. However, Siri's reliability has declined over the last year. I have noticed many unprodded responses on the HomePod where Siri just jumps into the conversation as if we were speaking to it. I do understand how the "I found this on the web," or "I am unable..." can be frustrating to some. We are so accustomed to having all knowledge at our fingertips now that we can't understand why Siri is unable to answer any question we have.
But as I alluded above, the real value of Siri is not in answering all our whimsical questions, it is instead with the ability to help us with handsfree commands, while checking messages while driving or walking into a room to turn the lights on and play some music.