4 ms·

The problem may not be the Siri software, it may be the iPhone hardware. I believe the Echo has a pretty sophisticated microphone setup that is light-years bett

The problem may not be the Siri software, it may be the iPhone hardware. I believe the Echo has a pretty sophisticated microphone setup that is light-years better than an iPhone's. Apple is generally pretty good at hardware, so they could catch up quickly there.

bobsam 9y ago
The last 1/3 of your comment contradicts the first 1/3 :)
- Spare_account 9y ago
  Not only that, but his middle sentence is comparing apples to oranges.
  - vannevar 9y ago
    That was in fact the point. Siri might work in a speaker orange a lot better than it works in an iPhone apple. ;-)
- asdfologist 9y ago
  One describes Apple in general, while the other points to a specific exceptional case.
- bronxbomber92 9y ago
  Not really. The HW design trade-offs would be very different, leading to hardware optimized for different purposes.
- vannevar 9y ago
  The iPhone is a phone, with all the space and power limitations inherent in that form factor. A standalone speaker is something else entirely.
  - IanDrake 9y ago
    True, but I speak directly into my phone, which I assume is a big advantage for the phone?
    - vannevar 9y ago
      Seems like it would be. I never use Siri speaking directly into the phone, because if I have the phone in hand, I just do whatever I need to do and skip Siri. The only time I try it is when the phone is out of reach, or in the car.
joshuas 9y ago
Siri works much better on my watch than on my phone. I refuse to even use it(her?) on my phone.
- vannevar 9y ago
  Interesting. I wonder if it also works a lot better on an iPhone 7 than a 6.
- tdburn 9y ago
  Same here! I use Siri on my watch all the time. Turned off hey Siri on my phone because it would activate both
singularity2001 9y ago
The problem is Siri's software. Both the speech recognition as well as the intent recognition are way better on Google phones.
pbarnes_1 9y ago
How does NLP have anything to do with microphones? Siri's problem isn't speech to text -- try the dictation button on the iOS keyboard sometime. It's perfect. Siri's problem is that it's very limited.
- vannevar 9y ago
  A fair point. I never use the dictation, but I often try to use Siri when the phone is out of reach. My Echo understands me when I speak at a conversational level from across the room with the faucet running. If the dictation is spot on and Siri is still bad when speaking directly into the phone, then yeah, that seems pretty damning.
- sib 9y ago
  NLP quality is dependent on ASR quality (automated speech recognition, transforming audio into words) because you can't generally get meaning without words. ASR quality is dependent on audio quality (plus, of course, a bunch of big-data-driven training) because it's harder to get the words right if you can't hear the sound. Audio quality is dependent on microphone(s) quality and signal processing (higher signal-to-noise ratio). And getting that to happen at far-field distances of 10-20 feet in noisy environments is not easy. So... bottom line: the better the microphones, the higher the ceiling is on NLP performance. Source: worked on Echo / Alexa for almost 3 years.
  - mtthwmtthw 9y ago
    Does it really make sense splitting ASR and NLP up into distinct concepts? While I understand in the past they have solved different problems, it's my understanding that to get accurate ASR, grammar files or corpus can be provided to improve the recognition. I've also seen things like Siri autocorrect what is being transcribed as the sequence of words evolves. Another example is how as an Alexa skill maker, you have to provide utterance / intent mappings. Is that just used to accurately classify intent / entities? Or is it also used to identify which skill to pass a user utterance to as a part of the alexa skill service because there could be very little variation between skill names or inquiries amazon is supposed to actually fulfill when a person is talking ??

bobsam 9y ago

The last 1/3 of your comment contradicts the first 1/3 :)

Spare_account 9y ago
Not only that, but his middle sentence is comparing apples to oranges.
- vannevar 9y ago
  That was in fact the point. Siri might work in a speaker orange a lot better than it works in an iPhone apple. ;-)
asdfologist 9y ago
One describes Apple in general, while the other points to a specific exceptional case.
bronxbomber92 9y ago
Not really. The HW design trade-offs would be very different, leading to hardware optimized for different purposes.
vannevar 9y ago
The iPhone is a phone, with all the space and power limitations inherent in that form factor. A standalone speaker is something else entirely.
- IanDrake 9y ago
  True, but I speak directly into my phone, which I assume is a big advantage for the phone?
  - vannevar 9y ago
    Seems like it would be. I never use Siri speaking directly into the phone, because if I have the phone in hand, I just do whatever I need to do and skip Siri. The only time I try it is when the phone is out of reach, or in the car.

joshuas 9y ago

Siri works much better on my watch than on my phone. I refuse to even use it(her?) on my phone.

vannevar 9y ago
Interesting. I wonder if it also works a lot better on an iPhone 7 than a 6.
tdburn 9y ago
Same here! I use Siri on my watch all the time. Turned off hey Siri on my phone because it would activate both

singularity2001 9y ago

The problem is Siri's software. Both the speech recognition as well as the intent recognition are way better on Google phones.

pbarnes_1 9y ago

How does NLP have anything to do with microphones? Siri's problem isn't speech to text -- try the dictation button on the iOS keyboard sometime. It's perfect. Siri's problem is that it's very limited.

vannevar 9y ago
A fair point. I never use the dictation, but I often try to use Siri when the phone is out of reach. My Echo understands me when I speak at a conversational level from across the room with the faucet running. If the dictation is spot on and Siri is still bad when speaking directly into the phone, then yeah, that seems pretty damning.
sib 9y ago
NLP quality is dependent on ASR quality (automated speech recognition, transforming audio into words) because you can't generally get meaning without words. ASR quality is dependent on audio quality (plus, of course, a bunch of big-data-driven training) because it's harder to get the words right if you can't hear the sound. Audio quality is dependent on microphone(s) quality and signal processing (higher signal-to-noise ratio). And getting that to happen at far-field distances of 10-20 feet in noisy environments is not easy. So... bottom line: the better the microphones, the higher the ceiling is on NLP performance. Source: worked on Echo / Alexa for almost 3 years.
- mtthwmtthw 9y ago
  Does it really make sense splitting ASR and NLP up into distinct concepts? While I understand in the past they have solved different problems, it's my understanding that to get accurate ASR, grammar files or corpus can be provided to improve the recognition. I've also seen things like Siri autocorrect what is being transcribed as the sequence of words evolves. Another example is how as an Alexa skill maker, you have to provide utterance / intent mappings. Is that just used to accurately classify intent / entities? Or is it also used to identify which skill to pass a user utterance to as a part of the alexa skill service because there could be very little variation between skill names or inquiries amazon is supposed to actually fulfill when a person is talking ??