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Just because it's hard to implement right doesen't mean Apple should get a pass. I mean, they aren't forced to create a voice assistant by regulation. If the

Just because it's hard to implement right doesen't mean Apple should get a pass. I mean, they aren't forced to create a voice assistant by regulation. If they can't make a good one, (and this applies to Amazon and Microsoft too) they should have just left it in the lab until they can.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
> they should have just left it in the lab until they can. Totally disagree, because the only way these assistants get better is with real-world usage (which is why I can definitely agree that one should wonder why Apple isn't improving as fast as the competition). It was only a couple years ago that using Google Assistant was an extremely frustrating experience. I'd say it got about 5-10% of my words wrong, which meant it got my intent wrong about 25-35% of the time. These days I find its accuracy uncanny - it almost never makes a mistake with most of my "standard" queries. No way it could have gotten that good without real-world feedback and data.
- jordanpg 6y ago
  It is still an extremely frustrating experience. All of them: Google, Amazon, Apple. That it gets it wrong, ever, is too much for me. The first time I ever had to repeat myself getting directions on the road I was done. I don't understand why anyone other than hobbyists can stand to use these things. They are so obviously years away from ready for serious use, and the novelty value wore off years ago. Not shitposting here, these are serious comments about absurdly bad UX.
  - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
    > That it gets it wrong, ever, is too much for me. The first time I ever had to repeat myself getting directions on the road I was done. How can you stand to deal with humans?
    - schrodinger 6y ago
      Humans are so many orders of magnitude better at comprehension that your comment feels a bit disingenuous.
      - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
        I was replying to the parent comment that said that basically any errors were unacceptable, and that ever having to repeat himself was a deal breaker. This seems like a ridiculous position to me given that, as you point out, humans are much better at comprehension, and even they can't hit this standard.
astrea 6y ago
So they should go completely counter to the way that businesses traditionally function and keep something in a lab for potentially decades instead of shipping a "good enough" solution that can be fixed along the way? Especially one that would get valuable information and edge cases from a live system? It's not like it's safety critical software. It's neat to have, sure, but you won't die if you get the wrong London's time.
- recursive 6y ago
  > shipping a "good enough" solution I think the debate here is about whether anything has shipped that is actually "good enough". I don't think it's that controversial to avoid shipping stuff that's not good enough.
  - astrea 6y ago
    I think it's good enough. Sure, in this very cherry-picked example it fails. But for a lion's share of functionality it works just fine.

hn_throwaway_99 6y ago

> they should have just left it in the lab until they can. Totally disagree, because the only way these assistants get better is with real-world usage (which is why I can definitely agree that one should wonder why Apple isn't improving as fast as the competition). It was only a couple years ago that using Google Assistant was an extremely frustrating experience. I'd say it got about 5-10% of my words wrong, which meant it got my intent wrong about 25-35% of the time. These days I find its accuracy uncanny - it almost never makes a mistake with most of my "standard" queries. No way it could have gotten that good without real-world feedback and data.

jordanpg 6y ago
It is still an extremely frustrating experience. All of them: Google, Amazon, Apple. That it gets it wrong, ever, is too much for me. The first time I ever had to repeat myself getting directions on the road I was done. I don't understand why anyone other than hobbyists can stand to use these things. They are so obviously years away from ready for serious use, and the novelty value wore off years ago. Not shitposting here, these are serious comments about absurdly bad UX.
- hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
  > That it gets it wrong, ever, is too much for me. The first time I ever had to repeat myself getting directions on the road I was done. How can you stand to deal with humans?
  - schrodinger 6y ago
    Humans are so many orders of magnitude better at comprehension that your comment feels a bit disingenuous.
    - hn_throwaway_99 6y ago
      I was replying to the parent comment that said that basically any errors were unacceptable, and that ever having to repeat himself was a deal breaker. This seems like a ridiculous position to me given that, as you point out, humans are much better at comprehension, and even they can't hit this standard.

astrea 6y ago

So they should go completely counter to the way that businesses traditionally function and keep something in a lab for potentially decades instead of shipping a "good enough" solution that can be fixed along the way? Especially one that would get valuable information and edge cases from a live system? It's not like it's safety critical software. It's neat to have, sure, but you won't die if you get the wrong London's time.

recursive 6y ago
> shipping a "good enough" solution I think the debate here is about whether anything has shipped that is actually "good enough". I don't think it's that controversial to avoid shipping stuff that's not good enough.
- astrea 6y ago
  I think it's good enough. Sure, in this very cherry-picked example it fails. But for a lion's share of functionality it works just fine.