First, this is not a little oopsie. This is a make or break moment. Remember RIM or Nokia? Me neither. If Google or Microsoft had done this the forum would be filled with memes mocking them. The reason rank and file should not be fired is that they are simply delivering on what the top ring of leadership is telling them to do. If they are fired then the top brass need to be fired too. Apple seems like a lean cat gone fat. The think a better chip and camera is awesome. They can’t deliver much and when they do it is largely irrelevant (the vision thing) or broken (the intelligence thing). Should Cook step down? Probably. But he knows how to make the share price go up with the constant iterations and the board should keep him around. But they need to bring in a new creative products director, move the 194 billion or whatever it is to that person and make them responsible only to the board with Cook having no vote. Apple has missed out on social media, EV’s, cloud, AI (software and hardware) under Cook. This person can start developing and delivering new products. If they don’t the board fires them. Once the product is developed, Cook can iterate it for the next few decades on these new products, phone, watch, tablet, pods, current services and Mac.
I could care less about AI, Siri has been turned off since day one and Apple will be fine if it steers clear from AI the same way it steers clear from social media and user generated content with very very minor exceptions.
The white iPhone 4 was delayed over 10 months because of the physics and chemistry of getting it right. The G5 processor never happened because physics got in the way. Maps was self-inflicted, from trusting too much in the team leader; similarly MobileMe. From the narrative it sounds like the development team has made large strides on Siri but it’s not yet ready for prime time and they don’t want another Maps or MobileMe repeat. That’s a good reason for not launching yet. I don’t recall Apple ever saying exactly when features would arrive, only that they would be delivered over time – and they are, I see small AI touches added to different parts of my phone operating system regularly and they are bleeding into my appreciation of the product. Bad news travels fast, good news rarely travels. Most of the people writing about this have never worked on complex software projects and assume the team is wringing their hands over what to do; the reality will be that they know what to do, they know how long it will take, and they know their capacity – do the math. In an earlier article it was mentioned that there are other higher internal priorities at Apple which also have to be met so this sounds more like a resource contention or a coordination of technologies matter; I’m looking forward to what is unveiled at WWDC.
Why do people… almost always… expects ‘others to be fired’? (Obviously… never they.)
That people… posible… made a mistake, or even a lot. Then… you want them to be fired. So, the company must hire new people… …How do we assure that they won't do the same… or even worser… mistakes? Maybe the only thing that is needed is a clarification or redefinition of the goals, timeframe, and controls.
Of course, we all remember that after the failure of MobileMe's launch Steve Jobs fired the team. In the Maps fiasco… the —maybe only— person fired was because he did not want to sigh the apology.
And the real solution after those debacles was a change in the head of the project… Eddy Cue took the internet services.
Life is to have experiences. If the experience turns out as we expected, we call it ‘success,’ otherwise we call it ‘failure.’ But they are only experiences!
The only ‘real’ failure is to not learn from experience.
It's often scapegoating. Even if the problem stems from management if you fire the people doing the work you can try again with management knowing what didn't work before (i.e.: knowing what mistakes they should avoid making again). If it is successful then it's easy to to 1) take credit for fixing the problem (even though they caused it), and 2) being able to point the finger at the previous team that can't defend themselves.
For example, MobileMe had issues, but one of the biggest issues was out of the gate when Steve Jobs said it would be available to everyone at once. They should've done it in stages, first with .Mac users that wanted to try it out. This would allow them to gauge usage needs for both processing and bandwidth as well as work on bugs. To make matters exponentially worse, MobileMe went live the same time as the iPhone 3G, iOS 2.0, and App Store. The stupidity of this move meant that countless people are now also trying MobileMe all at once. I certainly tried to test the fuck out of MobileMe on that day since it was new and it basically didn't work for an unknown number of days. For this I blame Steve Jobs, not the engineers. If not for that boondoggle of a launch we may still be using MobileMe in name right now, instead of the renamed iCloud that came the next year.
If you make a mistake at work, how would you like to be treated?
Do you ever make mistakes?
Depends on the severity of the mistake. In the real world, people get fired all the time for making mistakes. If this latest AI blunder ends up costing Apple millions due to lawsuits, then yeah, someone should be fired.
It also depends on the nature of the mistake. Did the individual lose the confidence of the team, did the individual lose the confidence of superiors, i.e., the board, did the individual commit a large and avoidable tactical blunder, did the individual create a toxic culture, did the individual savage the team with oppressive demands, did the individual repeatedly fail to meet commitments, did the individual fail to maintain corporate standards, did the individual lack vision or fail to build a winning team, did the individual commit fraud or put the company's reputation in jeopardy, etc., sort of things? I once worked for a company that went on to hire a genuine con man as CEO. Once the gig was up, the company basically collapsed into bankruptcy and was eventually bought by a competitor. Very glad I baled out of that sinking ship well before the crtap hit the fan.
I personally believe that a fair number of "firings" are done to cover up failures in other parts of the organization or to make someone serve as a sacrificial lamb to light a fire under those who have been underperforming but are still onboard. In the sports world the firing of a head coach often leads to a small temporary uptick in performance, but a crap team is still a crap team and will ultimately return to being a crap team with poor performance because it's still lacking core skills and players needed to perform at a higher level.
I don't see the kinds of things that justify heads rolling, but the proverbial "the buck stops here" rationale is always in play. Apple is so far removed from being anywhere close to being in trouble or on an extended losing streak. Apple is graded on a very lofty scale and the expectations are unmatched compared to current corporate standards. But humans are always prone to making incredibly stupid choices for the slightest of reasons and lacking of all logic, as we've witnessed in abundance in recent months, so who knows what's ahead for Apple and the rest of us. I have an abundance of confidence in Apple and its leader right now. It's everything surrounding Apple and normalcy of any kind that is descending us into chaos and lack of sanity that is putting everything we've come to recognize as "normal" that's in doubt. Somehow, the brain from a jar labeled "Abby Normal" has been installed into the skull of the person currently in-charge of the mess we're living in today and the mechanisms for firing that individual have been disabled.
The Apple Intelligence rollout reminds of iTools which had a very rough rollout and wasn't widely accepted, then switched to .Mac which was better but still not create, which was switched to mobileMe which was a little better and now iCloud which still isn't 100% but works pretty well for what it does. BTW this was all under Steve Jobs so I guess we should have fired him too by how some people are calling for Tim Cook to step down.
Nobody needs to be fired. They just need to take the feedback, learn from it and make appropriate changes to make it better. I think people have very unrealistic expectations of new services. They seem to expect everything to be perfect and great out of the gate and that's usually never the case. Apple has very talented people working for them and they can make changes and make it better than is today. We also don't know why features are delayed, why things are the way they currently are, etc.
I just don't get this well something failed out of the gate so people need to be fired! How would you like if you were fired because something didn't work quite right out of the gate and perhaps it wasn't even your fault (or anyone's fault directly)?
People lose jobs all the time even when they’ve done everything well.
Those are shitty companies you don't wanna work for anyways then.
This is starting to look like Copland part deux from the late 90s. Steve Jobs and NextStep saved Apple then. Who will ride to the rescue this time?
What exactly needs outside Support to rescue this? This is a software company saying, we're sorry but we need a bit more time.
They've had 12 years since Siri's debut, but clearly they have done nothing at all to improve Siri in that time. So now trying to reverse that neglect and cram sky-high improvements into < 1 year has turned out to be impossible. Robby Walker is clearly responsible for this lack of improvement - he came over from the Cue acquisition back in 2013 - and seems to have sat on his hands ever since. He needs to be moved on.
The only reason bad Siri has been fairly accepted by the world is because barely anyone uses it - Maps was a huge disaster as it's such a well-used app. But Apple got on that and totally fixed it within a couple of years. Siri has been a joke for an embarrassingly long time. And it is a joke - people defending it here saying they don't have a problem because they only ask it a couple of different, limited and specific queries are totally missing the point about a "personal assistant".
This is starting to look like Copland part deux from the late 90s. Steve Jobs and NextStep saved Apple then. Who will ride to the rescue this time?
What exactly needs outside Support to rescue this? This is a software company saying, we're sorry but we need a bit more time.
They've had 12 years since Siri's debut, but clearly they have done nothing at all to improve Siri in that time. So now trying to reverse that neglect and cram sky-high improvements into < 1 year has turned out to be impossible. Robby Walker is clearly responsible for this lack of improvement - he came over from the Cue acquisition back in 2013 - and seems to have sat on his hands ever since. He needs to be moved on.
The only reason bad Siri has been fairly accepted by the world is because barely anyone uses it - Maps was a huge disaster as it's such a well-used app. But Apple got on that and totally fixed it within a couple of years. Siri has been a joke for an embarrassingly long time. And it is a joke - people defending it here saying they don't have a problem because they only ask it a couple of different, limited and specific queries are totally missing the point about a "personal assistant".
Can't really take a comment seriously when they say something like "they have done nothing" in 12 years, "barely anyone uses it." Give me a break. Siri is one of the most used assistants on the planet simply because of the number of Apple products. It might be the butt of jokes, but that's because of the same problem we've seen with AI companies over promising and under delivering. All the modern assistants are jokes because companies like Amazon and Google promised that they would change the world with a talking computer from the Jetsons. What we got was a reminders machine that can play music and turn the lights on.
Stick to what Siri can do and it works fine.
It needs work, sure. It's not perfect. None of them are. But this world view is out of touch with reality. What exactly do you want Siri to do that it doesn't do today? File your taxes?
I'm exhausted by over exaggerating drama queen nerds. Siri not working the way you want sometimes is at worst a mild inconvenience.
The Apple Intelligence rollout reminds of iTools which had a very rough rollout and wasn't widely accepted, then switched to .Mac which was better but still not create, which was switched to mobileMe which was a little better and now iCloud which still isn't 100% but works pretty well for what it does. BTW this was all under Steve Jobs so I guess we should have fired him too by how some people are calling for Tim Cook to step down.
Nobody needs to be fired. They just need to take the feedback, learn from it and make appropriate changes to make it better. I think people have very unrealistic expectations of new services. They seem to expect everything to be perfect and great out of the gate and that's usually never the case. Apple has very talented people working for them and they can make changes and make it better than is today. We also don't know why features are delayed, why things are the way they currently are, etc.
I just don't get this well something failed out of the gate so people need to be fired! How would you like if you were fired because something didn't work quite right out of the gate and perhaps it wasn't even your fault (or anyone's fault directly)?
It's called accountability.
Yes, people make mistakes all the time. No one is perfect, and I agree that no one should be fired based upon a single failure. But, it should be based upon a pattern of behavior.
IMO, the only person that should be asked to resign is Tim Cook, and there should already be a plan of how to replace him by the Board. For how many years have people complained about Siri? For how many years has it been neglected? It started off as the gold standard of voice commands, but it has fallen to dead last. Should there have been better leadership on the issue?
For a $2 trillion company, Apple seems to pivot from a couple of products to another without being able to keep all major products in development. "Oh, this year, we will upgrade the Mac Pro, when was it upgraded last?" "Oh, it's been five years since we have developed a new display? I still hope no one noticed that the last Studio Display was just repackaged in a new case." "Oh, is AI the upcoming trend? Have any of us in the industry been staying up on this trend? No? Let's rush out Apple Intelligence." People have excused this "pivoting" behavior to Apple being a "design company" being led by the small, core design team. But, since Apple has so many different products, shouldn't someone in leadership have thought to restructure the company or to enlarge the design team to be able to handle more products? That failure of leadership falls right at the doorstep of the CEO.
Tim Cook has contributed significantly to Apple's evolution to a leading tech/design company. However, it has always been known that Tim is a logistics genius and not a technology visionary. Because it is his forte, he has been able to navigate the logistical nightmare of the US-China relationship and has been able to move manufacturing out of China without upsetting the Chinese government. However, his lack of being a technology visionary has handicapped Apples ability to pivot. I fully acknowledge things like the development of the Apple Watch, the shift to chip manufacturing, and the migration away from Qualcomm (you could argue the latter two could be the natural evolution of keeping more control of the hardware, but I am going to give credit to Tim Cook). On the other hand, he did put a lot of the emphasis and resources on Apple Car and Apple Vision. I am fully okay with Apple trying new paths and not succeeding because we all want Apple to innovate. However, it is arguably his distraction with those endeavors that caused him and his leadership team to miss the evolution of AI, which may be the most consequential technology in the next several decades. With AI advancing by leaps and bounds with new (versions) of LLM coming out every 6 months, Apple is stuck a the stage of still planning its AI server farm, trying to collaborate with AI models to be the (accessory) brain of Siri, and to transform Siri into something useful. Without AI, Apple has arguably become a "has been" company. Is Apple going to build its own fully functioning AI? Apple is like at the 5 yard line, while ChatGPT4 and Grok3 are at the 40 yard line and moving faster ahead. If you will recall, Grok was behind, but Elon Musk built his AI server farm in ~2 weeks, throwing who knows how much money into it. Grok has 1200 employees, while Apple's Siri team only has ~121 employees. Is this how someone leads in a cutting edge field?
The example of iTools was raised. At the time, it was cutting edge technology and speaks to Jobs being a technology visionary. People at the time thought about backing up data, and no one really thought about keeping computers/devices in sync. What we considered in sync, was copying something to a disc and transferring the data to another computer. Jobs had a different vision, and it is something that we appreciate now. Unfortunately, technology moves at an even more rapid pace than ever before. For someone in the technology industry, how could this AI technology have been missed? Why has the AI team not been scaled up? Instead of developing an AI model, Apple is really focused on developing an "AI interface" called Siri, which is why Apple is collaborating with AI model(s). As such, Apple is losing relevance on a weekly/monthly basis. It isn't about what Apple has accomplished, it is about leading Apple into the future. That is how CEO's are judged as unfair as that may be.
Just because a company has to pay out a severance package does not mean that the company should not hold someone to account. For a large company as Apple, the Board must have a succession plan in place in case something were to happen to Tim Cook. Yes, it is disruptive to change leadership, but a company should never function on the shoulders of any one person, and any leader should also understand the importance of holding people accountable. It is also important to bring in a new leader to shake up a company that is not executing as well as it should/needs to be. As much as Apple has benefited from Tim Cook's leadership, he has also failed on many important issues that affects Apple's future. As such, he should be asked to resign and for Apple to bring in a new leader.
This is starting to look like Copland part deux from the late 90s. Steve Jobs and NextStep saved Apple then. Who will ride to the rescue this time?
What exactly needs outside Support to rescue this? This is a software company saying, we're sorry but we need a bit more time.
They've had 12 years since Siri's debut, but clearly they have done nothing at all to improve Siri in that time. So now trying to reverse that neglect and cram sky-high improvements into < 1 year has turned out to be impossible. Robby Walker is clearly responsible for this lack of improvement - he came over from the Cue acquisition back in 2013 - and seems to have sat on his hands ever since. He needs to be moved on.
The only reason bad Siri has been fairly accepted by the world is because barely anyone uses it - Maps was a huge disaster as it's such a well-used app. But Apple got on that and totally fixed it within a couple of years. Siri has been a joke for an embarrassingly long time. And it is a joke - people defending it here saying they don't have a problem because they only ask it a couple of different, limited and specific queries are totally missing the point about a "personal assistant".
Can't really take a comment seriously when they say something like "they have done nothing" in 12 years, "barely anyone uses it." Give me a break. Siri is one of the most used assistants on the planet simply because of the number of Apple products. It might be the butt of jokes, but that's because of the same problem we've seen with AI companies over promising and under delivering. All the modern assistants are jokes because companies like Amazon and Google promised that they would change the world with a talking computer from the Jetsons. What we got was a reminders machine that can play music and turn the lights on.
Stick to what Siri can do and it works fine.
It needs work, sure. It's not perfect. None of them are. But this world view is out of touch with reality. What exactly do you want Siri to do that it doesn't do today? File your taxes?
I'm exhausted by over exaggerating drama queen nerds. Siri not working the way you want sometimes is at worst a mild inconvenience.
This is far worse than the underpromises from AI companies. A machine that you can sometimes persuade to remind you, turn lights on and play music is all we've ever had from Siri. Ask your Homepod to add "Thyme" to your shopping list. It just keeps asking "what should I add?". Ask it to add pasta bake. Ask it to add tomato sauce. 50% of the time it will say "i have added those two things". I asked it to turn off the TV. It said "which room", then listed 4 rooms of which only one has a TV in. I told it the room, it made the boo-beep noise and nothing happened. Steve promised it to be "conversational", 12 years later and it still fails at the most basic comprehension.
I know 8 or 9 people with iPhones and Apple Watches. None of them ever use Siri, because every time they ask it to do something it fails. It fails too often to be worth using unless its the only input source.
There were things it used to do that it now cannot. It regularly used to bounce the question to Wolfram Alpha, which often could answer. But that integration seems to have stopped, and along with it Siri's usefulness went down several notches. But you're right, trying to persuade Siri to do what you want by formulating the sentence in a special way is exhausting. At least Alexa has extensions which you can leverage to perform more complex tasks. HomePod can't directly run shortcuts, it needs an iPhone on the local network, so it can't do anything directly, unlike Alexa.
We're all Apple fanbois, but some of us can admit when Apple has failed, and they have failed with Siri. Apple isn't perfect, and sometimes they need criticism. And clearly, if you think "sticking to what it can do and it works fine" is a) acceptable after 12 years, and b) actually the truth, you obviously do not use it enough to judge how bad it is. In any case - if it is fine now, why is Apple revamping it with Apple Intelligence? ...and, why has the long-time Siri chief just been removed?
This is starting to look like Copland part deux from the late 90s. Steve Jobs and NextStep saved Apple then. Who will ride to the rescue this time?
What exactly needs outside Support to rescue this? This is a software company saying, we're sorry but we need a bit more time.
They've had 12 years since Siri's debut, but clearly they have done nothing at all to improve Siri in that time. So now trying to reverse that neglect and cram sky-high improvements into < 1 year has turned out to be impossible. Robby Walker is clearly responsible for this lack of improvement - he came over from the Cue acquisition back in 2013 - and seems to have sat on his hands ever since. He needs to be moved on.
The only reason bad Siri has been fairly accepted by the world is because barely anyone uses it - Maps was a huge disaster as it's such a well-used app. But Apple got on that and totally fixed it within a couple of years. Siri has been a joke for an embarrassingly long time. And it is a joke - people defending it here saying they don't have a problem because they only ask it a couple of different, limited and specific queries are totally missing the point about a "personal assistant".
Can't really take a comment seriously when they say something like "they have done nothing" in 12 years, "barely anyone uses it." Give me a break. Siri is one of the most used assistants on the planet simply because of the number of Apple products. It might be the butt of jokes, but that's because of the same problem we've seen with AI companies over promising and under delivering. All the modern assistants are jokes because companies like Amazon and Google promised that they would change the world with a talking computer from the Jetsons. What we got was a reminders machine that can play music and turn the lights on.
Stick to what Siri can do and it works fine.
It needs work, sure. It's not perfect. None of them are. But this world view is out of touch with reality. What exactly do you want Siri to do that it doesn't do today? File your taxes?
I'm exhausted by over exaggerating drama queen nerds. Siri not working the way you want sometimes is at worst a mild inconvenience.
This is far worse than the underpromises from AI companies. A machine that you can sometimes persuade to remind you, turn lights on and play music is all we've ever had from Siri. Ask your Homepod to add "Thyme" to your shopping list. It just keeps asking "what should I add?". Ask it to add pasta bake. Ask it to add tomato sauce. 50% of the time it will say "i have added those two things". I asked it to turn off the TV. It said "which room", then listed 4 rooms of which only one has a TV in. I told it the room, it made the boo-beep noise and nothing happened. Steve promised it to be "conversational", 12 years later and it still fails at the most basic comprehension.
I know 8 or 9 people with iPhones and Apple Watches. None of them ever use Siri, because every time they ask it to do something it fails. It fails too often to be worth using unless its the only input source.
There were things it used to do that it now cannot. It regularly used to bounce the question to Wolfram Alpha, which often could answer. But that integration seems to have stopped, and along with it Siri's usefulness went down several notches. But you're right, trying to persuade Siri to do what you want by formulating the sentence in a special way is exhausting. At least Alexa has extensions which you can leverage to perform more complex tasks. HomePod can't directly run shortcuts, it needs an iPhone on the local network, so it can't do anything directly, unlike Alexa.
We're all Apple fanbois, but some of us can admit when Apple has failed, and they have failed with Siri. Apple isn't perfect, and sometimes they need criticism. And clearly, if you think "sticking to what it can do and it works fine" is a) acceptable after 12 years, and b) actually the truth, you obviously do not use it enough to judge how bad it is. In any case - if it is fine now, why is Apple revamping it with Apple Intelligence? ...and, why has the long-time Siri chief just been removed?
So you're claiming that these 8 or 9 people that you know never hit that nifty button on the steering column when CarPlay is connected to make call, send a text, or get directions? Never? Not even once?
This is starting to look like Copland part deux from the late 90s. Steve Jobs and NextStep saved Apple then. Who will ride to the rescue this time?
What exactly needs outside Support to rescue this? This is a software company saying, we're sorry but we need a bit more time.
They've had 12 years since Siri's debut, but clearly they have done nothing at all to improve Siri in that time. So now trying to reverse that neglect and cram sky-high improvements into < 1 year has turned out to be impossible. Robby Walker is clearly responsible for this lack of improvement - he came over from the Cue acquisition back in 2013 - and seems to have sat on his hands ever since. He needs to be moved on.
The only reason bad Siri has been fairly accepted by the world is because barely anyone uses it - Maps was a huge disaster as it's such a well-used app. But Apple got on that and totally fixed it within a couple of years. Siri has been a joke for an embarrassingly long time. And it is a joke - people defending it here saying they don't have a problem because they only ask it a couple of different, limited and specific queries are totally missing the point about a "personal assistant".
Can't really take a comment seriously when they say something like "they have done nothing" in 12 years, "barely anyone uses it." Give me a break. Siri is one of the most used assistants on the planet simply because of the number of Apple products. It might be the butt of jokes, but that's because of the same problem we've seen with AI companies over promising and under delivering. All the modern assistants are jokes because companies like Amazon and Google promised that they would change the world with a talking computer from the Jetsons. What we got was a reminders machine that can play music and turn the lights on.
Stick to what Siri can do and it works fine.
It needs work, sure. It's not perfect. None of them are. But this world view is out of touch with reality. What exactly do you want Siri to do that it doesn't do today? File your taxes?
I'm exhausted by over exaggerating drama queen nerds. Siri not working the way you want sometimes is at worst a mild inconvenience.
This is far worse than the underpromises from AI companies. A machine that you can sometimes persuade to remind you, turn lights on and play music is all we've ever had from Siri. Ask your Homepod to add "Thyme" to your shopping list. It just keeps asking "what should I add?". Ask it to add pasta bake. Ask it to add tomato sauce. 50% of the time it will say "i have added those two things". I asked it to turn off the TV. It said "which room", then listed 4 rooms of which only one has a TV in. I told it the room, it made the boo-beep noise and nothing happened. Steve promised it to be "conversational", 12 years later and it still fails at the most basic comprehension.
I know 8 or 9 people with iPhones and Apple Watches. None of them ever use Siri, because every time they ask it to do something it fails. It fails too often to be worth using unless its the only input source.
There were things it used to do that it now cannot. It regularly used to bounce the question to Wolfram Alpha, which often could answer. But that integration seems to have stopped, and along with it Siri's usefulness went down several notches. But you're right, trying to persuade Siri to do what you want by formulating the sentence in a special way is exhausting. At least Alexa has extensions which you can leverage to perform more complex tasks. HomePod can't directly run shortcuts, it needs an iPhone on the local network, so it can't do anything directly, unlike Alexa.
We're all Apple fanbois, but some of us can admit when Apple has failed, and they have failed with Siri. Apple isn't perfect, and sometimes they need criticism. And clearly, if you think "sticking to what it can do and it works fine" is a) acceptable after 12 years, and b) actually the truth, you obviously do not use it enough to judge how bad it is. In any case - if it is fine now, why is Apple revamping it with Apple Intelligence? ...and, why has the long-time Siri chief just been removed?
So you're claiming that these 8 or 9 people that you know never hit that nifty button on the steering column when CarPlay is connected to make call, send a text, or get directions? Never? Not even once?
I'm the only one of those 8 or 9 who has Carplay, so yes. Carplay is one place Siri is more reliable, because the things you ask it to do are less complex: playing music, sending texts, driving directions. Even then, the texts it sends often switch out words for something that makes no sense. With contextual understanding Siri would be able to fix that and replace the word it heard wrongly with the similarly sounding one that fits - but it doesn't.
Wait, what? “Rumor Score: Likely”, but what’s the rumor?
I feel silly asking because it seems like I’m missing something super obvious. But I did read the article twice and I don’t actually know what the rumor is. Or is the rumor simply that Apple will try harder and nobody will get fired?
Yes, the rumor was that Apple will shuffle somebody in to to fix Siri (over time) and nobody will be fired because of it.
And, as it turns out, that's EXACTLY what happened.
“Siri, add salt to my shopping list” … “what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “salt” “what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “salt”
“what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “rock salt” “ok, I’ve added rock songs to your shopping list”
Great! But @"Wesley Hilliard" hasn't come across this so the rest of the world is clearly lying.
“Siri, add salt to my shopping list” … “what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “salt” “what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “salt”
“what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “rock salt” “ok, I’ve added rock songs to your shopping list”
Great! But @"Wesley Hilliard" hasn't come across this so the rest of the world is clearly lying.
I just tested this. I said "Add salt to my shopping list”. Since this is a feature I've never used it asked me if I wanted to create a shopping list. I choose Yes. To my surprise it added Salt to the list whereas I was expecting that I would have to make the request again after it create the shopping list.
Assuming your request was in English, is English your first language? Do you have an accent or speech impediment that could be difficult for Siri to understand? Have you gone through the Siri setup so it can more accurately discern your pronunciations?
Is your mention of Wesley and lying an inference that anyone who has used Siri successfully is lying about their results?
“Siri, add salt to my shopping list” … “what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “salt” “what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “salt”
“what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “rock salt” “ok, I’ve added rock songs to your shopping list”
Great! But @"Wesley Hilliard" hasn't come across this so the rest of the world is clearly lying.
I just tested this. I said "Add salt to my shopping list”. Since this is a feature I've never used it asked me if I wanted to create a shopping list. I choose Yes. To my surprise it added Salt to the list whereas I was expecting that I would have to make the request again after it create the shopping list.
Assuming your request was in English, is English your first language? Do you have an accent or speech impediment that could be difficult for Siri to understand? Have you gone through the Siri setup so it can more accurately discern your pronunciations?
Is your mention of Wesley and lying an inference that anyone who has used Siri successfully is lying about their results?
I tested this again today, and it worked on my OG HomePods, but not on the second gen one... Native English speaker with no speech impediment. The second gen one definitely seems to have more problems understanding.
No, it's not a claim that anyone who has used it successfully is lying. I use it successfully 75% of the time, but that is still way too low. If only 75% of emails you sent actually sent, you'd be pissed off. It's countering Wesley's claim it's a "mild inconvenience" when it fails. When it does fail like this it's a big inconvenience, because I then have to open Reminders on my phone and fix it - so I might as well have not used it in the first place.
“Siri, add salt to my shopping list” … “what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “salt” “what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “salt”
“what would you like to add to your shopping list?” “rock salt” “ok, I’ve added rock songs to your shopping list”
Great! But @"Wesley Hilliard" hasn't come across this so the rest of the world is clearly lying.
I just tested this. I said "Add salt to my shopping list”. Since this is a feature I've never used it asked me if I wanted to create a shopping list. I choose Yes. To my surprise it added Salt to the list whereas I was expecting that I would have to make the request again after it create the shopping list.
Assuming your request was in English, is English your first language? Do you have an accent or speech impediment that could be difficult for Siri to understand? Have you gone through the Siri setup so it can more accurately discern your pronunciations?
Is your mention of Wesley and lying an inference that anyone who has used Siri successfully is lying about their results?
I tested this again today, and it worked on my OG HomePods, but not on the second gen one... Native English speaker with no speech impediment. The second gen one definitely seems to have more problems understanding.
No, it's not a claim that anyone who has used it successfully is lying. I use it successfully 75% of the time, but that is still way too low. If only 75% of emails you sent actually sent, you'd be pissed off. It's countering Wesley's claim it's a "mild inconvenience" when it fails. When it does fail like this it's a big inconvenience, because I then have to open Reminders on my phone and fix it - so I might as well have not used it in the first place.
1) I use dictation, mapping, and song/album/artist picks often, especially while driving. I think having it work most of the time the way I want or expect it to is better than "not [using] it in the first place." This morning I asked Siri to pull up songs by a particular 80s band but it grabbed a rapper instead. The correct name, but not the correct artist. I do wish it was smart enough to ask me which one I want using some context clues, or even let me use queries like "the band..." or "not the rapper...", but I don't think anyone is there yet.
2) I current have a lot of Echos at my house — like 6 of them — and I've been an Alexa user since before it was available to everyone on Amazon. I got mine on January 2nd, 2015, which is about 6 months before it was no longer an invitation-only product. I had been impressed by the product since the start, but I will be moving to HomePods because they are moving away from localized voice processing on the device to using Gemini on Amazon's cloud servers for everything. I like that Apple does this locally first. If this means they are behind because they want to ensure better privacy then I'm OK with that. Devices get faster, the AI models get better, and we are still only a decade in since the first Echo release.
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For example, MobileMe had issues, but one of the biggest issues was out of the gate when Steve Jobs said it would be available to everyone at once. They should've done it in stages, first with .Mac users that wanted to try it out. This would allow them to gauge usage needs for both processing and bandwidth as well as work on bugs. To make matters exponentially worse, MobileMe went live the same time as the iPhone 3G, iOS 2.0, and App Store. The stupidity of this move meant that countless people are now also trying MobileMe all at once. I certainly tried to test the fuck out of MobileMe on that day since it was new and it basically didn't work for an unknown number of days. For this I blame Steve Jobs, not the engineers. If not for that boondoggle of a launch we may still be using MobileMe in name right now, instead of the renamed iCloud that came the next year.
I personally believe that a fair number of "firings" are done to cover up failures in other parts of the organization or to make someone serve as a sacrificial lamb to light a fire under those who have been underperforming but are still onboard. In the sports world the firing of a head coach often leads to a small temporary uptick in performance, but a crap team is still a crap team and will ultimately return to being a crap team with poor performance because it's still lacking core skills and players needed to perform at a higher level.
I don't see the kinds of things that justify heads rolling, but the proverbial "the buck stops here" rationale is always in play. Apple is so far removed from being anywhere close to being in trouble or on an extended losing streak. Apple is graded on a very lofty scale and the expectations are unmatched compared to current corporate standards. But humans are always prone to making incredibly stupid choices for the slightest of reasons and lacking of all logic, as we've witnessed in abundance in recent months, so who knows what's ahead for Apple and the rest of us. I have an abundance of confidence in Apple and its leader right now. It's everything surrounding Apple and normalcy of any kind that is descending us into chaos and lack of sanity that is putting everything we've come to recognize as "normal" that's in doubt. Somehow, the brain from a jar labeled "Abby Normal" has been installed into the skull of the person currently in-charge of the mess we're living in today and the mechanisms for firing that individual have been disabled.
Those are shitty companies you don't wanna work for anyways then.
The only reason bad Siri has been fairly accepted by the world is because barely anyone uses it - Maps was a huge disaster as it's such a well-used app. But Apple got on that and totally fixed it within a couple of years. Siri has been a joke for an embarrassingly long time. And it is a joke - people defending it here saying they don't have a problem because they only ask it a couple of different, limited and specific queries are totally missing the point about a "personal assistant".
Stick to what Siri can do and it works fine.
It needs work, sure. It's not perfect. None of them are. But this world view is out of touch with reality. What exactly do you want Siri to do that it doesn't do today? File your taxes?
I'm exhausted by over exaggerating drama queen nerds. Siri not working the way you want sometimes is at worst a mild inconvenience.
Yes, people make mistakes all the time. No one is perfect, and I agree that no one should be fired based upon a single failure. But, it should be based upon a pattern of behavior.
IMO, the only person that should be asked to resign is Tim Cook, and there should already be a plan of how to replace him by the Board. For how many years have people complained about Siri? For how many years has it been neglected? It started off as the gold standard of voice commands, but it has fallen to dead last. Should there have been better leadership on the issue?
For a $2 trillion company, Apple seems to pivot from a couple of products to another without being able to keep all major products in development. "Oh, this year, we will upgrade the Mac Pro, when was it upgraded last?" "Oh, it's been five years since we have developed a new display? I still hope no one noticed that the last Studio Display was just repackaged in a new case." "Oh, is AI the upcoming trend? Have any of us in the industry been staying up on this trend? No? Let's rush out Apple Intelligence." People have excused this "pivoting" behavior to Apple being a "design company" being led by the small, core design team. But, since Apple has so many different products, shouldn't someone in leadership have thought to restructure the company or to enlarge the design team to be able to handle more products? That failure of leadership falls right at the doorstep of the CEO.
Tim Cook has contributed significantly to Apple's evolution to a leading tech/design company. However, it has always been known that Tim is a logistics genius and not a technology visionary. Because it is his forte, he has been able to navigate the logistical nightmare of the US-China relationship and has been able to move manufacturing out of China without upsetting the Chinese government. However, his lack of being a technology visionary has handicapped Apples ability to pivot. I fully acknowledge things like the development of the Apple Watch, the shift to chip manufacturing, and the migration away from Qualcomm (you could argue the latter two could be the natural evolution of keeping more control of the hardware, but I am going to give credit to Tim Cook). On the other hand, he did put a lot of the emphasis and resources on Apple Car and Apple Vision. I am fully okay with Apple trying new paths and not succeeding because we all want Apple to innovate. However, it is arguably his distraction with those endeavors that caused him and his leadership team to miss the evolution of AI, which may be the most consequential technology in the next several decades. With AI advancing by leaps and bounds with new (versions) of LLM coming out every 6 months, Apple is stuck a the stage of still planning its AI server farm, trying to collaborate with AI models to be the (accessory) brain of Siri, and to transform Siri into something useful. Without AI, Apple has arguably become a "has been" company. Is Apple going to build its own fully functioning AI? Apple is like at the 5 yard line, while ChatGPT4 and Grok3 are at the 40 yard line and moving faster ahead. If you will recall, Grok was behind, but Elon Musk built his AI server farm in ~2 weeks, throwing who knows how much money into it. Grok has 1200 employees, while Apple's Siri team only has ~121 employees. Is this how someone leads in a cutting edge field?
The example of iTools was raised. At the time, it was cutting edge technology and speaks to Jobs being a technology visionary. People at the time thought about backing up data, and no one really thought about keeping computers/devices in sync. What we considered in sync, was copying something to a disc and transferring the data to another computer. Jobs had a different vision, and it is something that we appreciate now. Unfortunately, technology moves at an even more rapid pace than ever before. For someone in the technology industry, how could this AI technology have been missed? Why has the AI team not been scaled up? Instead of developing an AI model, Apple is really focused on developing an "AI interface" called Siri, which is why Apple is collaborating with AI model(s). As such, Apple is losing relevance on a weekly/monthly basis. It isn't about what Apple has accomplished, it is about leading Apple into the future. That is how CEO's are judged as unfair as that may be.
Just because a company has to pay out a severance package does not mean that the company should not hold someone to account. For a large company as Apple, the Board must have a succession plan in place in case something were to happen to Tim Cook. Yes, it is disruptive to change leadership, but a company should never function on the shoulders of any one person, and any leader should also understand the importance of holding people accountable. It is also important to bring in a new leader to shake up a company that is not executing as well as it should/needs to be. As much as Apple has benefited from Tim Cook's leadership, he has also failed on many important issues that affects Apple's future. As such, he should be asked to resign and for Apple to bring in a new leader.
I know 8 or 9 people with iPhones and Apple Watches. None of them ever use Siri, because every time they ask it to do something it fails. It fails too often to be worth using unless its the only input source.
There were things it used to do that it now cannot. It regularly used to bounce the question to Wolfram Alpha, which often could answer. But that integration seems to have stopped, and along with it Siri's usefulness went down several notches. But you're right, trying to persuade Siri to do what you want by formulating the sentence in a special way is exhausting. At least Alexa has extensions which you can leverage to perform more complex tasks. HomePod can't directly run shortcuts, it needs an iPhone on the local network, so it can't do anything directly, unlike Alexa.
We're all Apple fanbois, but some of us can admit when Apple has failed, and they have failed with Siri. Apple isn't perfect, and sometimes they need criticism. And clearly, if you think "sticking to what it can do and it works fine" is a) acceptable after 12 years, and b) actually the truth, you obviously do not use it enough to judge how bad it is. In any case - if it is fine now, why is Apple revamping it with Apple Intelligence? ...and, why has the long-time Siri chief just been removed?
“Siri, add salt to my shopping list” …
“what would you like to add to your shopping list?”
“salt”
“what would you like to add to your shopping list?”
“salt”
“rock salt”
“ok, I’ve added rock songs to your shopping list”
Great! But @"Wesley Hilliard" hasn't come across this so the rest of the world is clearly lying.
Assuming your request was in English, is English your first language? Do you have an accent or speech impediment that could be difficult for Siri to understand? Have you gone through the Siri setup so it can more accurately discern your pronunciations?
Is your mention of Wesley and lying an inference that anyone who has used Siri successfully is lying about their results?
No, it's not a claim that anyone who has used it successfully is lying. I use it successfully 75% of the time, but that is still way too low. If only 75% of emails you sent actually sent, you'd be pissed off. It's countering Wesley's claim it's a "mild inconvenience" when it fails. When it does fail like this it's a big inconvenience, because I then have to open Reminders on my phone and fix it - so I might as well have not used it in the first place.
2) I current have a lot of Echos at my house — like 6 of them — and I've been an Alexa user since before it was available to everyone on Amazon. I got mine on January 2nd, 2015, which is about 6 months before it was no longer an invitation-only product. I had been impressed by the product since the start, but I will be moving to HomePods because they are moving away from localized voice processing on the device to using Gemini on Amazon's cloud servers for everything. I like that Apple does this locally first. If this means they are behind because they want to ensure better privacy then I'm OK with that. Devices get faster, the AI models get better, and we are still only a decade in since the first Echo release.