18 ms·
How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa
- notadoc 9y agoWas?
- wlesieutre 9y agoThe article URL slug is "why-siri-is-so-dumb" so clearly someone over there agrees with you.
- hsljekskfh 9y agojetzt wissen wir warum Siri langzeitig doof war
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>"It was slow, when it worked at all," Williamson said. "The software was riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me." As Steve Jobs said, once you become a VP you can’t make excuses anymore. You have crossed the Rubicon and need to start taking responsibility for the failures of your team. This guy has a lot to learn about leadership.
- moronicalox 9y agoThat was my thought too. Those comments certainly don't make the accusations seem hard to imagine.
- Shebanator 9y agoI know, right? I read this and instantly thought "man, I never want to work for this guy"!
- maxpupmax 9y agoIt's a terrible quote. Apple PR is going to be pissed with that guy.
- defen 9y agoHe was fired in 2012 https://www.cultofmac.com/203032/apple-svp-eddy-cue-fires-richard-williamson-for-botching-apple-maps/ https://www.cultofmac.com/203032/apple-svp-eddy-cue-fires-ri...
- jamestimmins 9y agoMy impression of Siri is that it was effectively R&D early on by the team that made it. To propose that Apple would purchase a company, and then expect an R&D product to support their level of scale without serious infrastructure changes, is a bit absurd.
- moronicalox 9y agoSo the takeaway here is that it was dumb because was poorly built? Also, how different is that "Information" report behind the paywall? It would not surprise me to see Mashable rewriting an article but to do so with paid content seems inappropriate.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoDo not think anyone can really explain why Siri is so bad. Just that it is really bad compared to the Google assistant.
- wuliwong 9y agoThe title of the article is "So this is why Siri is way behind the Google Assistant and Alexa". The submission title should be changed.
- cheald 9y agoMashable A/B tests their headlines. The original headline is one of the candidates.
- wuliwong 9y agoOh interesting, I didn't know that. I guess I'll leave my comment for the next person that has the same inclination as myself.
- wuliwong 9y agoI opened up Firefox and loaded the link and I actually saw the other headline for an instant. Edit: Actually it happens on every refresh in Chrome as well.
- rhizome 9y agoGood A/B'ing sets a cookie in your browser so that you don't screw up the numbers by reloading.
- leggomylibro 9y agoHuh, cool. I wonder if/when they'll start slipping in machine-generated headlines for a small % of the audience to train clickbait bots.
- hammock 9y agoOther variations: "How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa" "Why Siri is so dumb"
- saurik 9y agoTo say what cheald said in a more concrete way: "now we know why Siri was so dumb for so long" is definitely the title that I am currently seeing. The entire concept that there is a single title that somehow should match across sites is a weird concept made up by Hacker News that doesn't exist in the real world and probably causes more harm than it does good.
- jameskilton 9y agoYou can probably point to a lot of quality failings at Apple as starting with Steve Job's death. Apparently he failed to teach and instill a culture of high quality and instead just focused on micro-managing everything himself. Steve Jobs may go down as both the best and worst CEO Apple ever had.
- icebraining 9y agoRelated: the Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set (https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Calculator_Construction_Set.txt https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Calculator_Const...)
- omerta 9y agoNot true at all. Look up the story of Apple University. Jobs can't run Apple from his grave. He tried his best to leave Apple with the right culture and leadership in his view. And for the most part, Apple has done really well since he passed. No one is going to get 100% of things right 100% of the time, and Jobs is no different; things would have inevitably gone wrong under his leadership, too.
- FreakyT 9y agoExactly this—a particular anecdote from the biography describes his motivation. Apparently when the HP Touchpad failed, Steve Jobs viewed it as a tragedy more than a triumph: > "Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left it in good hands, but now it's being dismembered and destroyed. It's tragic. I hope I've left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple." In creating Apple University he was really trying to instill a legacy that would outlast him. That said, when pulling out the "Steve Jobs never would have let this happen" card, it's also important to remember that MobileMe happened on Steve's watch, as did the iPod HiFi.
- throwaway84742 9y agoI still have a working HiFi in my home gym. It’s a solid piece of engineering, especially for its time. I don’t know why people love to hate it so much.
- robotkdick 9y agoSiri has 20x more active users than Alexa. Not sure about Google. While they are perceived as having fallen behind, Apple is still way, way ahead. And when she works, like driving directions, people aren't even aware they're using Siri. Damned impressive given the car is moving through a vast network of roads/traffic/construction while instructions are being given. Meanwhile, Alexa gets to sit at home and help with baking timers... The competition will help everyone (no matter what platforms you choose).
- madeofpalk 9y ago> And when she works, like driving directions, people aren't even aware they're using Siri. What does that actually mean? When people talk about Siri; they’re talking about the thing that you talk to. I don’t think anyone thinks they’re not using Siri when they’d actually are.
- chirau 9y agoClearly a fanboy, I see. Numbers don't mean anything, technically. Siri is imposed on every iPhone owner. That should account for the numbers. Also, you trust Siri for directions over Waze-integrated Google Assistant? Good for you player! As for voice comprehension? I pity the fool who cares compare Siri to Alexa. But what do I know? You probably have a MacBook, an iPhone an iWatch and could not imagine anything better in your life.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoWhat? Think you drank the Kool aide and then poured it all over yourself and took a bath in it. I carry both a iPhone and a Pixel 2 XL and there is no comparison between Siri and the Google Assistant. Now a bit of a Apple fanboy but can be realistic.
- minimaxir 9y agoThe cofounder/CEO of Siri contests the depiction of the scalibility issues in the original Information article: > This statement, wholly false, was made by the architect and head of the biggest launch disaster in Apple history, Apple Maps. In reality Siri worked great at launch but, like any new platform under unexpectedly massive load, required scaling adjustments and 24 hour workdays. https://twitter.com/Dagk/status/974047743596404737 https://twitter.com/Dagk/status/974047743596404737
- sekou 9y agoAfter switching from Android to iOS one of the things I missed most was Google Now in comparison to Siri. Before I was far more likely to say "Okay Google" and get surprisingly contextual results.
- progval 9y agoShort version: they did not push updates to Siri often enough, waiting for major versions of iOS.
- Twisell 9y agoSomething always make me scratch my head. Is there any proof that actual people use and value Google and Amazon assistant more than Siri? Or is the leadership only designed by autoproclaimed experts and funky ad-hoc metrics? I totally confess that I use Siri for only 3 things: -Desactivating all wake up alarm during my morning poo -Setting timers while baking -Sending a « I’m coming » text to my loved one before riding my bike home Yes, this is a very dumb and limited usage. But I don’t see Android users around me doing incredible things that I could be jealous of with their voice assistant. I am missing something? Or maybe it’s because I’m not in the US and we still have to catch up with the trend of using voice assistant more?
- Consultant32452 9y agoThe things you listed are my primary uses of Google Assistant, but here's some others. What time is it in [location]? What's the temperature outside? Change the temperature inside (nest). Turn off all the lights. Really the only thing you can't do with Siri that I'm aware of is home automation. But I could be wrong about that.
- phxrsg 9y agoSiri can do home automation with HomeKit and it actually works really well. The disadvantage here is that HomeKit has less supported accessories because, as I understand it, it's less open/requires certification of the accessory. That said, for engineers in the crowd I know that I and others get around it by making a HomeKit RPi adapter for things that don't support it...
- exelius 9y agoI thought Apple required HomeKit devices to go through a certification process that includes an audit of device security controls (things like secret management, crypto, default passwords, etc) — and very few of these low-cost IoT devices worry about security. Apple won’t certify them, but there’s not yet a mass market for secure IoT devices (which would necessarily cost more due to the extra engineering required). It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- CharlesW 9y agoIt's sort of sad to read a story about a story, and not be able to figure out which problems were created in the source vs. the retelling. Mashable: "Right now, it looks like Siri won't be blown up and a [sp] rebuilt". Yeah, well, that'd most likely be a huge mistake[1] depending on your definition of "blown up" and "rebuilt", and also Siri's already been rebuilt twice.[2] The Information: "One of Apple’s original plans was to launch its speaker without Siri included, according to a source." Of course — there are always contingency plans. To me, this is a much more damning comment about the Siri team than Apple's "vision". [1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... [2] Mesosphere blog post, definitely reviewed and approved by Apple: http://archive.is/YNMLh http://archive.is/YNMLh
- flounder3 9y agoRegarding [1], the move to Mesos was not a rewrite. Some core components had to be improved, but [2] was primarily an infrastructure upgrade that happened to make Siri considerably faster by ditching hypervisors. It was a massive feat that was accomplished by relatively few engineers. There were always many components under review for reengineering; keep in mind that Siri was released before WebSockets was a thing, let alone RFC. The snowball effect of Siri's failures originated from iOS Program Management pushing us to expand into as many other languages as soon as possible from the beginning, thus diverting resources from implementing or polishing original "Siri, Inc." features and various "nice to have" improvements to en-US usage. Source: I worked on Siri from the moment it was acquired, and no longer work at Apple. Richard Williamson's recent comments are pathetic.
- MBCook 9y agoI always wondered how much of a toll Apple’s multilingual support was compared to the small number that Google and Amazon have.
- refulgentis 9y agoGoogle supports all of the same languages as Siri, and also supports Brazilian Portuguese. Amazon supports 2 languages
- ktta 9y agoTeam dysfunction seems to be a part of it. The 'head' guy for Siri, Dag Kittlaus left Apple to start Viv Labs in about a year since Siri was released. Their assistant Viv, looked pretty okay[1], and was since acquired by Samsung[2]. I feel if he had stayed on, Siri would have been better. Samsung seems to be trying pretty hard to get people to use it[3]. It's relatively new so I'm interested to see where it goes, especially since it has the lowest market share. [1]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI07aeZqeco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI07aeZqeco [2]: https://venturebeat.com/2017/02/28/samsung-paid-around-215-million-for-virtual-assistant-startup-viv/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/02/28/samsung-paid-around-215-m... [3]: https://youtu.be/zlesUiYkp_4?t=55s https://youtu.be/zlesUiYkp_4?t=55s
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoNot to mention Williamson shit-talking the Siri team to this reporter: "Williamson denies the accusations that he slowed Siri development down and instead cast blame on Siri's creators. 'It was slow, when it worked at all,' Williamson said. 'The software was riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me.'"
- ktta 9y agoThere's a rebuttal too https://twitter.com/Dagk/status/974047743596404737 https://twitter.com/Dagk/status/974047743596404737
- microtherion 9y agoI remember that Viv got positive press when launched. But how good did it actually become? It seems to me we'd be hearing more about Samsung's voice assistant if Viv did really live up to the hype.
- madeofpalk 9y agoEh. Theranos got “positive press”.
- rixrax 9y agoHow/for what do people actually use Siri, or Alexa for? I mean I can't think of having seen anyone use them for a long time for anything but to either test them out for curiositys sake, or for demoing their new Alexa controlled drapes. Hopefully this wasn't too off-topic. Maybe HN should have an ability to create a poll and attach them to a thread. ;-)
- aetherson 9y agoI have a couple of Echo devices in my home. I use an Echo Dot on my nightstand to control my LifX lightbulb, adjusting its brightness between 1% and 100%, as my wife and I prefer extremely dim lights right before bed. When my daughter was younger, I also used the same Dot to set timers when we were trying to give her a few minutes to get herself back to sleep when she'd wake up crying. I use a full-size Echo in the kitchen to set kitchen timers, to populate shopping lists, and to check the weather occasionally as we're going out the door. I also sometimes play music on it. Recently, I've started using the Google Assistant on my phone to start music in the car (so as to avoid physically touching my phone while driving), and I've started to decide that it's easier to say, "Hey Google, navigate to 123 main st" instead of using the touchscreen, even when I could use the touch screen.
- shaklee3 9y agoOne thing my wife and I use the Google home for constantly is grocery shopping. We had previously used an app called our groceries that synchronizes a grocery list between multiple people. That's a map where to plug in for Google home where you can just say things to it and it adds it to your synchronized grocery list. We use it all the time when we notice we run out of something.
- jd20 9y agoHaving two newborns has made me come to appreciate Alexa in a whole new way: my hands are almost always full with one (or both) babies and being able to use my voice to control the lights, play music for them, set reminders or alarms for myself, has been a godsend. While my wife was bedridden after her C-Section surgery, she loved being able to use Echo's ability to call other Echo's in the house (or outside the home) when she needed something. Kind of like an intercom system. The problem with the iPhone is that it was usually either on the charger, or battery was dead, or it was left on vibrate. The Echo was always 100% reliable for her, which is really critical when you can't even get out of bed.
- dharma1 9y agoIt's what happens at large orgs, esp ones with leadership problems - they can't move fast to improve products, even when something is obviously not working. The only thing I use Siri for is on the desktop for starting apps - I've hooked it up to a keyb shortcut. I find its a bit faster than fumbling around spotlight or the dock. Alfred would possibly be even faster. Google assistant has the best knowledge graph for generic questions, and much better machine learning models for voice recognition and language parsing. I primarily use it for route finding, finding out opening times, currency conversions, sometimes calling people. Alexa for almost only music, and timers, since it's hooked up to my kitchen speakers. It's terrible for general knowledge questions.
- draw_down 9y agoSiri is frustratingly bad/limited. It’s been kind of impossible to deny for a while now. I wonder what they’re going to do, because they had better do something. And the Viv people are at Samsung now so they can’t just buy that.
- thescribe 9y agoIs a voice assistant the killer app for anyone? I haven't ever used them, and I've only ever seen someone use it as an ironic 'look at me' at a party.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> Is a voice assistant the killer app for anyone? For a smart speaker, yes.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoIn our house they are used a lot for music, TV, answer all kinds of questions to look at photos.
- chetanahuja 9y agoFor users who have reasonably functioning products, yes. For Siri users, looks like not so much.
- dzhiurgis 9y agoThere should be an open standard to use whichever assistant you want, not limited to OEM one.
- ams6110 9y agoThe title seems poorly worded to me. I read it as "Why Siri underlies Google Assistant and Alexa," as if Siri were the backing technology. Should say something more like "Why Siri is lagging behind Google Assistant and Alexa."
- AlphaWeaver 9y agoOr the actual article title, which is "How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa"
- xiaq 9y ago> "It was slow, when it worked at all," Williamson said. "The software was riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me." Wow. It those were his original words, I don't doubt a bit that this guy should be responsible for Siri being left behind.
- blisterpeanuts 9y agoI know, I couldn't believe the chief of a major software product at Apple would talk smack about the previous team. It's what a newbie might do when he has screwed something up. Classic dodging.
- electrum 9y agoThis also directly contradicts one Steve Jobs' management principles: > "Somewhere between the janitor and the CEO, reasons stop mattering," says Jobs, adding, that Rubicon is "crossed when you become a VP." > In other words, you have no excuse for failure. You are now responsible for any mistakes that happen, and it doesn't matter what you say. http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference-between-a-vice-president-and-a-janitor-2011-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference-...
- rxhernandez 9y agoConversely you get handed a pile of steaming hot shit they call legacy code(and it lacks documentation and the variables lack names that hint at any meaning) and they're telling you it's completely your fault that you couldn't get something to work properly. Getting handed a huge amount of technical debt is a very real problem.
- killion 9y agoNot being able to flag requests that Siri failed to parse tells me that the Siri team isn't serious about making Siri better. Just adding a small "That isn't what I asked" button or letting me say something like "Hey Siri, you got my last request wrong" would give Apple a mountain of usable data.
- jd20 9y agoThere's actually a way to do this, for a long time. In older versions, you'd see a wavy underline on certain words it was less confident about, letting you choose alternatives. The current version has a "Tap to edit" link. Problem is discoverability. And having a mountain of "this request was wrong", without knowing what the answer should have been, would require too much manual sifting.
- untangle 9y agoApple fell behind in voice on Jobs' watch and prior to the Siri acquisition. In fact, it's probably more accurate to say that Apple was behind on iOS progress and facing a ho-hum 4s launch. Hence, the quick 8-figure Siri buy and hurried integration that put them behind the 8-ball on voice ever since. The broader context is that Apple doesn't seem to get: "It's the 'AI,' stupid!" As an aside (OT), it's interesting the way Mashable essentially republished paywall-protected content. If there was new reporting there, I missed it. But that's the nature of modern media.
- addicted 9y agoIf the Siri infrastructure is so bad I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t already have several skunkwork teams trying to create a fresh alternative for the past few years.
- FrancoisBosun 9y agoSiri is very dumb. I use for for reminders and alarms. I speak fr-ca as opposed to fr-fr, and some conversations go like this: Siri, call X on cell Sorry, can’t call X Siri, call X on mobile Calling X on cell In fr-ca, we talk about cell phones. In the contact app, the mobile phone is registered as cell phone, but in fr-fr, they use mobile. I also sometimes have this conversation: Siri, rappelle-moi de mettre des mouchoirs sur la liste de matériel du camp (Siri, remind-me to put tissues on the unit’s list of material) Do you want me to create a list? I only have one list, on purpose. I have no way to tell Siri that I never want to create new lists. It appears to me as if some words have more importance than others, such as the word « list ». Those are my biggest annoyances with Siri. I will continue to speak and use my iPhone in fr-ca, to promote my language and improve the software by providing data points about which languages are used.
- _sdegutis 9y agoThis is my same experience. The only things I can get Siri to do reliably is to route me home, or to do simple math problems. Also very simple short term reminders.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoSiri messes up so much just not worth the effort.
- scarface74 9y agoSeeing that Alexa only works in English and German (https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202207000 https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...) Siri is still better than Alexa for most of the world....
- icebraining 9y agoEh, I'm not sure. The percentage of iPhone users worldwide who can speak some English is probably pretty high. As a non-native speaker myself, I'd certainly prefer a reliable assistant in English over an unreliable one in my native language.
- remir 9y agoIn my opinion, the problem with these assistants is that interacting with them using voice give you the impression that they're intelligent, but it's just a trick. When it works, it can be useful for certain tasks, but when it doesn't work, you lose trust in the system pretty quickly, especially if you're in a situation where you expect and need the assistant to work, like when driving.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoWould agree with Siri but the Google Assistant is pretty incredible at figuring out what you want.
- spentdeath 9y agoAll the known techniques for NLP and NLU are mediocre. From Apples perspective, it makes a lot of sense to not invest so much money for such little gain. Google Assistant is supposedly better, but I don’t notice/care. Google/Amazon pour a lot of money into their personal assistant tech, but the end result is hardly noticeable or useful.
- jacksmith21006 9y agoFind the Google Assistant very useful.
- arvinsim 9y agoTL;DR I don't find it useful so it must be the same for other people
- jacksmith21006 9y agoProblem is people that put Siri in the same bucket as the Google Assistant and assume they are all not helpful. The issue is how bad Siri is.
- breatheoften 9y agoI will believe that someone is trying to improve Siri when the implementation is updated so that the time between when I push the button and when I can start speaking is reduced to the minimum possible with a only a short reliably deterministic delay length. The inability of Siri to provide me a way to know when I can start talking absolutely (waiting for that horrible beep is just insanely terrible) completely breaks the experience. The fact that no one seems to have noticed this flaw enough to figure out a fix suggests to me that the people developing the project do not have sufficient understanding of the interaction model to ever improve it ... There should be zero network requests that need to be complete before I can start talking. If Siri is unavailable for network reasons tell me after (or during) my query — but don’t slow down every single interaction and add ridiculous amounts of uncertainty to the responsiveness of the interface for the sake of the uncommon cases ...
- IBM 9y agoYou don't have to wait for Siri to respond and you haven't had to for a while. Just say "Hey Siri" followed by the command with no pauses and it will handle it just fine.
- mung 9y agoThis I think was poorly communicated. I found it out by accident, prior to that it seemed like Siri had taken a nosedive. "Hey Siri...." waiting.... followed by the cancel tone or sometimes "Yes?" - then the cancelled tone.
- andrewmcwatters 9y agoThis isn't true. On iPhone 6, running the latest iOS version, with a brand new battery, there is a significant delay before you can speak. Instead, you have to hold the home button down. https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/ https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/
- IBM 9y agoHey Siri doesn't work on the iPhone 6 if it's not plugged in. Only the 6s and later do, and it's enabled by a specific low power chip.
- ilyaeck 9y agoSay what you will about Siri, but it was the watershed product that unleashed a new generation of mass-market voice assistants, including later bloomers such as Alexa, Google Assistant, etc. Yes, it was (is?) relatively rudimentary technology, but the founding team was visionary. As for the mismanagement, Apple's bureaucracy is to blame.
- happertiger 9y agoI’m going on the record as not actually liking the name Siri. Pithy though that sounds, it’s the Sharon or Ralph name in digital assistants and I don’t even like saying it. Try saying “hey Siri” in a quiet room sometime and feel the awkward. Also it doesn’t work.
- dagaci 9y agoSiri: I've notice a massive slowdown in the speed of Siri and an actual deterioration in voice recognition (but I've just assumed that this is just part of the general deterioration of iOS) I would say that Siri has not only fallen behind but gone backwards. I'm still running an iPhone 5s ;) because i dont like the direction of Apple have taken certain things (and Android terrifies me with the sheer volume of personal data collection)
- 72deluxe 9y agoYes the data collection volume is pretty massive. I run a raspberry pi at home running pihole to block DNS requests and the amount of metrics and dialling home devices do is pretty staggering. That being said, my Windows 10 and Apple devices all do a similar insane amount of dialling home all the time so I don't think it is unique to Android. In fact, you should probably run O&O ShutUp10 on Windows to disable all the telemetry (does it really need to know how you're using your keyboard?????), GlassWire or NetLimiter (not tried them) and install Little Snitch for Mac (I use this and observe much dialling out). A sad world we live in.
- singularity2001 9y agoHow much of Siri's failure is due to the fact that Apple was strangled by the industire's monopolist (Nuance)?
- Sharlin 9y agoSiri has the best language support. Siri is infinite times better than any competitor in Finnish because nothing else knows Finnish at all!
- jvzr 9y agoI concur. It's amazing how tech is blind of the world beyond the US.
- eltoozero 9y agoWow so much Siri bashing in here. I’m a daily driver and I suppose an outlier working on a now aging 6S+ but Siri has been way reliable and generally fast outside of what I’d call “harsh” environments like outside on a busy street or with poor reception. I’m able to consistently perform: - Reminders with or without location tags “add eggs to grocery list” “remind me to check oil when I get home” - Calendar events “create event about mr Smith tomorrow 2pm” “create meeting with bob March 12 noon” (“with” spawns an invite, I use “about”) “move my 2pm meeting to 4pm” “what’s going on tomorrow” - weather “what’s the weather like this week” “what’s it going to be like in Manhattan beach on Saturday” - Calls, by name, number or direct to speaker “call my brother” “call 213-555-1212” “call my dad on speakerphone” - FaceTime “FaceTime my mom” - Email “Email my brother” Subject? “take out” Message? “Grab me a burger” ready to send? “Yes” - Messages, one liner or conversationally “tell my brother I’m running late” ready? “Go” or “message my sister” message? “Call me.” Ready to send it? “Affirmative” - Math “what’s 128 times 10 million?” “What’s 10 days from next Tuesday?” - Time “what time is it?” “What time is it in Florida?” - Location “where is my sister?” - Automation “living room lights blue” “goodnight” - Dictation “blah period new line I swear exclamation mark new paragraph furthermore comma open parentheses really close parentheses all caps cats are all caps really all caps really cool question mark” I frequently do complicated technical dictation using Siri, it’s not a problem in fact this particular sentence was composed entirely with Siri with zero post correction. All of these work consistently and reliably, for me, using either PTT style hold and speak, long-press and wait for the beep, or “Hey Siri” invocation. Seriously, I use all of this all day every day on an old iPhone, I’m not blind but if I was I’d consider it reliable enough for those purposes. I don’t do a lot of location, navigation, or searches with Siri because generally, performance is not optimal and you’re not able to focus the intent domain clearly enough with consistent verbiage.
- viraptor 9y ago> Location “where is my sister?” How does this one work? Is it just an address lookup, or does it support some location sharing like Google maps?
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
- godelmachine 9y agoNot only Siri, Apple went downhill on a lot of other features after Jobs passed away.
- gowld 9y agoIt's hard to imagine Steve Jobs ever allowing a hit piece like this to get published while/if he was alive.
- bdcravens 9y agoIt's hard to imagine anyone, SJ or otherwise, having enough influence to control freedom of the press to prevent any article from being published.
- pgt 9y agoSiri's amnesia is the biggest painpoint for me. Lack of context and compounding errors when I can't extend an initial sentence makes it entirely unusable. Anything useful requires speaking a longer sentence. Siri will interpret most of it but get one (key) word wrong, but Siri won't let me clarify my statement or add a statement without starting all over again. So I can't use Siri on top of it not understanding my accent (I've tried Australian, America and English accents and using "G'day Siri"). I know there is an NLP engine in the background deriving entity relations - just let me add some more to the same context and remember it for 30 seconds and I'll use Siri a lot more. E.g. "Hey Siri, search the web for minumum cut graph algorithms." Siri: "Now searching for minumum cut Graaff I'll go rhythms." Me: "Graph, not graaff." Siri: "Hello, I'm a web server!" Me: throws phone out of window
- kennydude 9y agoSiri to me is just useless most of the time. I can ask it to set a timer and 8 times out of 10 it'll think I just said "poop" and nothing else.
- EGreg 9y agoI wrote this a few years ago: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234 If Steve Jobs still ran Apple
- billfruit 9y agoI haven't use Siri, so I am guessing here: Perhaps a major advantage of Google Assistant is that Google has more aggressively worked towards recognising and speaking regional accents. Assistant in India quite reliably understands Indian accents and speaks in an Indian 'News' accent.
- SamBam 9y agoAnd Google was working it that space really early. Did anyone here use GOOG-411? A service you could call way back in 2007, before most people had smart phones, and ask natural questions and get search results back. Obviously that was early Google Assistant prototyping, and also a huge wealth of voice data to mine.
- segmondy 9y agoAre we surprised? Apple is not a software company, and has never been good at it. Apple is a design company, they make pretty things. Their hardware and software looks pretty. They figured out how to make their hardware robust. Their software not so much so.