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I'd never used Siri in the 5+ years I've been using an iPhone. Then I switched to Android for a month while awaiting the iPhone 7 (my previous phone screen cra

I'd never used Siri in the 5+ years I've been using an iPhone. Then I switched to Android for a month while awaiting the iPhone 7 (my previous phone screen cracked and could not be repaired a month before the new release). After being impressed with "OK Google" I decided to try out Siri on my iPhone 7. I have been shocked how much better "OK Google" works than Siri. I think Apple has a fair bit of catching up to do in this area. With OK Google you can basically just tell it what app to open, what to do, etc., and it works. With Siri, something as simple as asking her to play a song doesn't actually start playing the song, it forces you to interact with a clunky UI on the siri screen first, then it doesn't even open the correct song in Apple Music.

gkop 10y ago
Siri is really bad. Another grievous example is once you choose a Bing result to explore from the Siri screen, there's no apparent way to get back to the results screen to try another one.
- gok 10y ago
  Reactivate Siri, scroll down.
IBM 10y ago
I'm not sure what "clunky UI" you need to interact with, you can play music without touching your phone. You literally just say "Hey Siri, play Two Weeks by FKA Twigs" and it will begin playing. It shows your request being transcribed when its made but that screen goes away on its own shortly after. Most people's complaints about Siri as far as I can tell (via Twitter mostly, so it's a tech crowd) is that it's basically not Google Now. That is, Apple doesn't have a search engine so it can't answer general interest/trivia questions unless it's specifically related to a domain Apple has included (such as Wolfram Alpha or MLB for baseball). Now many people think it should be able to do that, but that's certainly not what it was designed for. Siri is a "personal assistant" to help you do things on your device via voice. They've recently begun to expand these integrations by creating a Siri API which will probably expand to cover more domains over time.
- grandalf 10y ago
  Hmm, I'll try that. Edit. Ahh, Siri seems not to know how to play albums, only songs. It also mis-parsed an album name of a song I have hearted in Apple Music. The mis-parse was for a more obscure title, but the incorrect behavior for playing an album was for a more mainstream one.
  - eastWestMath 10y ago
    Did you say you wanted an album specifically? I've never had any trouble with saying "play the album X".
    - grandalf 10y ago
      I'll try saying "play the album", I've just asked her to play <album name>...
  - M4v3R 10y ago
    It works for me. > Play me some <Artist name here> > Play <Album name>
  - heyitskevin 10y ago
    I've noticed that since my Apple Music trial expired I have to say "play MY song Self Control" or "play MY album Endless" for Siri to properly work. If I don't do that Siri just says it can't find the music.
- Itsdijital 10y ago
  >Now many people think it should be able to do that, but >that's certainly not what it was designed for. That's just a cop out though to say it isn't designed for that. Siri's biggest competitor is designed for it and does it very well on top of doing everything Siri does besides that (except perhaps wolfram and witty replies). Apple's hand is forced on the matter, and frankly their hands are tied without having an extremely powerful search engine under their belt. I doubt they are gonna get too far scraping Bing before MS steps in, if that's the route they decide to go.
gxs 10y ago
I keep seeing this posted and I just really have no idea what people are talking about. I've been using Android since..right after the Nexus one came out and I don't see this awesome ok Google feature everyone talks about. All I have ony Nexus 5X is the same old voice search that gets the basics right and not much else. Everyone I know has an iPhone and I've always enjoyed interacting with Siri more and have never noticed a big difference.
- Itsdijital 10y ago
  Do you have an accent? Most complaints about poor recognition on google now comes from people with accents, it seems to struggle with what are typically considered heavy accents (some very localized accents or English as a second language speakers) If not, try asking it any questions you can think of. You'll be surprised at how good it is, not counting "population of x" or "whats the weather?" type questions. Some examples: How long do you cook chicken for on the grill? When did the current pope become pope? Why do some people fill their tires with nitrogen? Do LED bulbs contain mercury? What's the loudest sound ever heard on Earth? Is it dangerous to drink distilled water? Why do canon printers have 2 black ink cartridges? I use it a ton and it reads back an answer about 70% of time. Sometimes it misses easy ones and sometimes it nails really challenging ones. Sometimes it will work when your question is phrased one way but not another. Usually it prefers direct phrasing rather than vaguer phrasing (i.e. how long do you cook chicken on the grill vs how do you cook chicken on the grill). Overall though it is ridiculously powerful compared to other assistants.
  - hsuresh 10y ago
    > Do you have an accent? Google's voice recognition works extremely well, at least with certain accents. I'm from India, and it gets me right almost always. Not just that, it recognizes some ridiculously hard to pronounce names of places in India.
  - piyush_soni 10y ago
    I don't know which accent you're talking about, but I have a strong Indian accent, and one of the major selling points of Google Now is the amazing accuracy with which it works for that! Yes, you have to actually go and set the Voice language to English (India), because the default English (US) doesn't do that great for my accent - but as soon as I switch that, it works really awesome. When we friends sit together, we always compare our Indian English on Google Now v/s Siri. All I have to say is Siri is a joke in comparison. Not only does it listen to our accent correctly, it also speaks back all the regional words in the right way they're supposed to be spoken which is very comforting.
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
"Siri, set an alarm for 8am Wednesday." "I can't set an alarm for more than one day ahead. How about a reminder instead?" "Siri, close Google Maps." "As much as I would like to, I can't close apps."
- mikeash 10y ago
  Stuff like this really confuses me. They went to all the trouble to have it say "sorry, I know what you want but I can't." Why not actually implement it instead?
  - marcosdumay 10y ago
    "I can't close apps" is easy to understand. It's a good thing to have in case it misunderstood you command.

gkop 10y ago

Siri is really bad. Another grievous example is once you choose a Bing result to explore from the Siri screen, there's no apparent way to get back to the results screen to try another one.

gok 10y ago
Reactivate Siri, scroll down.

IBM 10y ago

I'm not sure what "clunky UI" you need to interact with, you can play music without touching your phone. You literally just say "Hey Siri, play Two Weeks by FKA Twigs" and it will begin playing. It shows your request being transcribed when its made but that screen goes away on its own shortly after. Most people's complaints about Siri as far as I can tell (via Twitter mostly, so it's a tech crowd) is that it's basically not Google Now. That is, Apple doesn't have a search engine so it can't answer general interest/trivia questions unless it's specifically related to a domain Apple has included (such as Wolfram Alpha or MLB for baseball). Now many people think it should be able to do that, but that's certainly not what it was designed for. Siri is a "personal assistant" to help you do things on your device via voice. They've recently begun to expand these integrations by creating a Siri API which will probably expand to cover more domains over time.

grandalf 10y ago
Hmm, I'll try that. Edit. Ahh, Siri seems not to know how to play albums, only songs. It also mis-parsed an album name of a song I have hearted in Apple Music. The mis-parse was for a more obscure title, but the incorrect behavior for playing an album was for a more mainstream one.
- eastWestMath 10y ago
  Did you say you wanted an album specifically? I've never had any trouble with saying "play the album X".
  - grandalf 10y ago
    I'll try saying "play the album", I've just asked her to play <album name>...
- M4v3R 10y ago
  It works for me. > Play me some <Artist name here> > Play <Album name>
- heyitskevin 10y ago
  I've noticed that since my Apple Music trial expired I have to say "play MY song Self Control" or "play MY album Endless" for Siri to properly work. If I don't do that Siri just says it can't find the music.
Itsdijital 10y ago
>Now many people think it should be able to do that, but >that's certainly not what it was designed for. That's just a cop out though to say it isn't designed for that. Siri's biggest competitor is designed for it and does it very well on top of doing everything Siri does besides that (except perhaps wolfram and witty replies). Apple's hand is forced on the matter, and frankly their hands are tied without having an extremely powerful search engine under their belt. I doubt they are gonna get too far scraping Bing before MS steps in, if that's the route they decide to go.

gxs 10y ago

I keep seeing this posted and I just really have no idea what people are talking about. I've been using Android since..right after the Nexus one came out and I don't see this awesome ok Google feature everyone talks about. All I have ony Nexus 5X is the same old voice search that gets the basics right and not much else. Everyone I know has an iPhone and I've always enjoyed interacting with Siri more and have never noticed a big difference.

Itsdijital 10y ago
Do you have an accent? Most complaints about poor recognition on google now comes from people with accents, it seems to struggle with what are typically considered heavy accents (some very localized accents or English as a second language speakers) If not, try asking it any questions you can think of. You'll be surprised at how good it is, not counting "population of x" or "whats the weather?" type questions. Some examples: How long do you cook chicken for on the grill? When did the current pope become pope? Why do some people fill their tires with nitrogen? Do LED bulbs contain mercury? What's the loudest sound ever heard on Earth? Is it dangerous to drink distilled water? Why do canon printers have 2 black ink cartridges? I use it a ton and it reads back an answer about 70% of time. Sometimes it misses easy ones and sometimes it nails really challenging ones. Sometimes it will work when your question is phrased one way but not another. Usually it prefers direct phrasing rather than vaguer phrasing (i.e. how long do you cook chicken on the grill vs how do you cook chicken on the grill). Overall though it is ridiculously powerful compared to other assistants.
- hsuresh 10y ago
  > Do you have an accent? Google's voice recognition works extremely well, at least with certain accents. I'm from India, and it gets me right almost always. Not just that, it recognizes some ridiculously hard to pronounce names of places in India.
- piyush_soni 10y ago
  I don't know which accent you're talking about, but I have a strong Indian accent, and one of the major selling points of Google Now is the amazing accuracy with which it works for that! Yes, you have to actually go and set the Voice language to English (India), because the default English (US) doesn't do that great for my accent - but as soon as I switch that, it works really awesome. When we friends sit together, we always compare our Indian English on Google Now v/s Siri. All I have to say is Siri is a joke in comparison. Not only does it listen to our accent correctly, it also speaks back all the regional words in the right way they're supposed to be spoken which is very comforting.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

"Siri, set an alarm for 8am Wednesday." "I can't set an alarm for more than one day ahead. How about a reminder instead?" "Siri, close Google Maps." "As much as I would like to, I can't close apps."

mikeash 10y ago
Stuff like this really confuses me. They went to all the trouble to have it say "sorry, I know what you want but I can't." Why not actually implement it instead?
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  "I can't close apps" is easy to understand. It's a good thing to have in case it misunderstood you command.