17 ms·

After a decade as Apple’s assistant, Siri still hasn’t figured out the job

146 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

supermatt 5y ago
what is the current state of the art in open CSR/transcription? it feels to me that theres a lot of potential in these assistants that seems locked ip by the big players
martythemaniak 5y ago
Ten years ago I hated the fact that they gave these assistants a female name and voice. Today I hate the fact that after 10 years they still have not changed this. At least Google didn't give theirs a stupid female name, but they still use a female voice. It's not hard. Give this software a neutral name and a neutral voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRauhbZqJCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRauhbZqJCY
- asiachick 5y ago
  You've been able to change the voice in Siri for years under settings https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/change-siris-voice-on-iphone-or-ipad/ https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/change-siris-voice-on-iphon...
yellow_lead 5y ago
As the article points out, it seems apple missed the ball with integration into other apps. I'm not completely certain, but I don't think apps have the capability to "hook-in" to Siri in any useful way. Apple's obsession with maintaining control means they never nurtured this kind of development.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  It exists now. You don’t even have to say “on Spotify” for every song anymore (holy shit!!!!). They’re certainly moving late, but they’re moving.
- can16358p 5y ago
  Actually they do, for the most use cases. Sending messages, performing certain actions like switching things are the biggest use cases for most 3rd party apps for regular users. For the rest (power users), adding a Siri shortcut within the app almost covers every possible scenario.
- Veen 5y ago
  There is app integration with Siri, via tasks and intents. There's also Siri Shortcuts, which can integrate with custom intents. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/siri/overview/introduction/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit/adding_user_interactivity_with_siri_shortcuts_and_the_shortcuts_app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit/adding_use...
  - yellow_lead 5y ago
    Ah, thanks for the info.
can16358p 5y ago
Am I the only one who thinks Siri "just works" as it should? Sure it's far from perfect, but it almost never failed me to call or text someone, ask about weather, take a note/reminder, switch the lights using my smart outlet, or to set an alarm (my personal highest use-case). Sure it could do more, but I don't thik it didn't "figure out the job".
- amelius 5y ago
  You are probably talking to Siri like you're talking to a computer. However, most people talk to Siri like they're talking to a human being.
  - can16358p 5y ago
    Yes and no. As a computer engineer I'm probably biased about what it can and can't do technically, so I ask things that it can do. From a user perspective, I use a very natural language instead of robotic/feelingless commands and it just works anyway.
- withinboredom 5y ago
  I've asked what time it is in PST once. It told me the current time in my timezone, with the PST timezone qualifier.
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    Wow, this is a great example of how crap Siri is. Let's do this – all of these work perfectly with Google Assistant: "Time in PST" gives me 3 links. The first 404's, the second has no clock but alerts "No locations currently on PST" (which is true, its PDT right now – but come on), and the 3rd has no clock but prompts me to install a "FREE iOS app." Fail, big time. "What time is it in PST" gets me a web snippet showing "PST is 8 hours behind UTC." Fail. "What's the current time in Pacific Standard Time" runs it through Wolfram, giving me a LOT of unrelated info but admittedly also a clock showing the correct time. Success... sort of. Wouldn't help while driving. "What's the current time in PST" gives me "Sorry, I can't help with that, but you can ask me the time for a specific city." Fail. "What's the current time in Los Angeles" correctly shows me a Siri prompt with the time. Success.
durnygbur 5y ago
Open Siri and say "hey google, what's amazon's stock price?"
withinboredom 5y ago
I feel the pain with setting an alarm... I have my phone set to 24 hour time. When I say 16:04, it's distinctly different than 04:04. Yet, I tell Siri to set an alarm for 09:40, it sets one for 21:40 like an idiot.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  A minute off from the 09:41 of Apple ads and screenshots: https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-the-time-is-always-set-to-941-in-apple-ads-2014-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-the-time-is-always...
- dgellow 5y ago
  I face the same annoying issues with Siri when I’m trying to set reminders from the Apple Watch. I often have to repeat 2-3 times then remove the incorrect ones. But you have worst IMHO in other languages! When speaking German units are spoken before the tenths (fünf-und-dreizig to say 35). That completely confuses Siri when saying dates, hours/minutes, or just big numbers.
  - nextstep 5y ago
    Dreissig* I speak German to Siri everyday and she never has this issue with setting alarms. Maybe it’s a dialectical difference?
    - dgellow 5y ago
      I’m not native and would be lying if I would say my German is great. But I don’t think it’s just about my prononciation, I see it often with German auto-generated subtitles or transcriptions, that dates or big numbers are transcribed incorrectly due to the unit-before-tenths grammatical construct.
- wartijn_ 5y ago
  In some countries that use 24 hour time notation it's really uncommon to use that in spoken language[0]. When I say four past four in Dutch, it could be 04:04 or 16:04. So even if you've set the clock to 24 hours, that doesn't mean you would actually say sixteen when referring to 16:xx. You can set the region in the settings, maybe that influences the way Siri interprets time? (I would be surprised if it does, but you never know) [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_representation_by_country#/media/File:12_24_Hours_World_Map.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_representation_b...
whywhywhywhy 5y ago
I'm convinced they've swapped out the microphones used by Siri for cheaper and cheaper ones over the years because it no longer seems to be able to pick up your requests across the room which it could at the launch of Hey Siri reliably. Presumably because the whole AI assistant thing kinda turned out to be a fad and not as world changing as people were thinking around the time Siri/Alexa launched. Turns out the thing it's good for it setting timers not ordering soup like Apple originally envisioned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP1YAatv1Mc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP1YAatv1Mc
- mettamage 5y ago
  Edit: forgive my enthusiasm. Voice assistants seen as command-lines make me excited. No it's not! The issue is that we as developers can't actually innovate on it. Look at what Apple did in its heyday with the App Store. Now it's commonplace, back then it was mindblowingly innovative unicorn goodness (I'm a bit biased :) ). And I understand, you can critique the App Store for many things, but the iPhone would be worse without it. And they didn't create an "App Store" or any other free extensible model for Siri. They should have, because people are on aggregate more creative than any big company including Apple -- thanks to survivorship bias. What Siri is actually quite good at is interpreting single words or small sentences. So it would be a perfect spoken command-line interface. I have had genuine situations where I needed to talk and couldn't type, but apps aren't allowed to make use of Siri, so I can't talk to apps, I need to type. Siri and other voice assistants are amazing when you look at it as we look at a command-line.
  - mlang23 5y ago
    Well, looking at the skills offers by alexa, I am not sure if a siri appstore would be worthwhile. 99.9% of alexa skills are totally and utterly useless.
  - veidr 5y ago
    Interesting take. I am kinda excited about voice assistants and the command-line style use cases for them, too, except the closed nature of Siri and the dominance of Apple has probably set them back 10 or 20 years. Yes, if Siri was open and any iOS app could easily make a "voice CLI" to their apps that would awesome. But, that's not the case at all. I am a heavy user of Siri, too, with an Apple Watch and a HomePod in every room of my house. It's better than nothing. But it is still objectively terrible. It can barely do more than set timers, send text messages, and control the lights and music. That's not useless, but it's not even close to what I wish I could do with my voice (which is basically what you describe).
frou_dh 5y ago
I still have zero desire to speak to any computer with my voice. Not saying it's a bad product feature. Probably just a psychological profile some of us fall into. EDIT: Yes I'm already aware it can be useful/quick for doing X :)
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  I find it works well for a few use cases: - play some song or playlist - open all the blinds, or a set of blinds, or all lights, or some lights. And close then close them/turn them off. That’s about it. The only reason it works well for those use cases is because the equivalent menu/physical controls take too much time to use vs voice commands.
  - Closi 5y ago
    Also it’s really useful if you are in a car - getting directions, calling people, texting etc without touching your phone. Sure lots of cars have this already with voice, but Siri et al are much more reliable at it.
    - nerbert 5y ago
      Meh, the ~90% success rate kills that purpose for me.
- fedreserved 5y ago
  I felt the same way until I started experiencing carpel tunnel typing with both thumbs
- yakubin 5y ago
  Same here. I'm curious if it has any correlation to having an internal voice. Do you have an internal voice for your thoughts?
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    Wait, don't all people have that? If not, then how do they think?
jebronie 5y ago
its really terrible, apple should just delete siri, its too embarrassing
mrweasel 5y ago
I'm still not convinced that any of the digital assistants have their job figured out. They are useful when driving, or if you want to listen to music when cooking. Beyond that I fail to see an actual use case. They could be a major benefit to disabled people I suppose.
- tonyedgecombe 5y ago
  Pretty much the only thing I use it for is setting a timer or alarm. For anything more complex than that it always seems easier to just use the app.
- suction 5y ago
  That's where Siri absolutely and completely fails for me. It doesn't understand 90% of the song or band names I ask to play. Maybe it's good when all you ask it to play is "The Beatles" or "Kanye West", but anything more ambiguous than that, it will produce a wrong result. Google Assistant is way better at nuances.
  - wintermutestwin 5y ago
    I am impressed that it gets Khruangbin right, but I'm guessing that apple feeds Siri with artists that are popular with their target market.
- veidr 5y ago
  I felt like it was really helping me when we had kids, and I was like, holding a baby a lot of the time. But that is form of temporary disability, maybe.
suction 5y ago
I like Apple in general, but using Siri is the most frustrating experience Apple has ever rolled out to the public. It's absolutely awful and useless in its current state for anything but setting a timer or alarm. Google Assistant is several galaxies above it in every aspect.
- ubermonkey 5y ago
  Wow, opinions vary here a LOT. I find Siri very capable and useful. It's surprising to me when I don't get what I want out of it.
mlang23 5y ago
My favourite Siri bug: If it fails to understand the name of the person I want to call, it suggests to call myself! "OK, so you want to call <your name>?" This bug exists since about 10 years, and apparently has never been fixed.
- virgilp 5y ago
  Did you try answering "yes"?
  - mlang23 5y ago
    Yes, believe it or not, it will try to call itself, and fail.
waisbrot 5y ago
Siri the voice assistant is disappointing, but I find Google's and Amazon's to be disappointing also and I think it's an inherent problem of voice assistants and AI. If Google Assistant can get basic tasks correct more often, I just end up irritated that it can't get more complex tasks correct. But Apple's been branding some simpler heuristics as Siri and those are excellent: - Suggesting data to add to a contact based on scraping from elsewhere - Associating a phone number that's calling me with a person who emailed me with a phone number in the signature - Suggesting apps to open based on time, location, connected peripherals, or recent activity - Suggesting driving directions based on calendar items or history None of these make me say "wow! AI!" But they do make me feel like my phone "just works" which is even better.
- TheJoeMan 5y ago
  I believe this article conflates two separate pieces of voice AI: speech-to-text and processing the text. Google’s speech to text is amazing, possibly related to the “less privacy” part. Siri can handle slightly more complicated commands but so many times I see it transcribe what I’m saying… then in a blink change all the words.
dc-programmer 5y ago
Kind of related, but has anyone else noticed iOS text autocorrect has gotten notably worse over the years?
- deergomoo 5y ago
  I believe at some point in the last couple of years (iOS 13 maybe?) they switched to a machine learning-based system and yes, it's been significantly worse since. I cannot put into words just how frustrating it is to have the device change a correctly spelled, correctly chosen word because it thinks I may have meant something else. Double points if I backspace to change it back and it re-"corrects" me again.
  - rusk 5y ago
    It just refuses to learn! This is inarguably worse than what we had with T9 like 20 years ago, all running without cloud support on a limiting embedded platform.
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    Love it when it replaces a correctly chosen word while swipe-typing the next few ones because it would fit better in the new context. Boggles my mind how you can let something like that into prod. The things it leads to are - Errors that make the message hard to understand that are (here it replaced “that” with “they and “here” with “get”) only caught while proof-reading or not at all - Having to go back and re-type 3 words for correction. I check the word I just swiped for misrecognition, not one that was previously correctly recognized, god damn it. The actual success rate of that piece of garbage is maybe 5%. That said: Of course I’m happy they have a swipe feature at all, albeit significantly worse than Google’s (about on par with Microsoft’s). But you don’t have to make the feature intentionally worse, do you?
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    The re-correction thing is unacceptable, imho. No predictive text algorithm will be perfect, but why in holy hell would they let it ignore explicit correction is beyond me.
  - 5y ago
seddin 5y ago
I find it pretty useful to set up reminders when working without having to unlock the phone or even pick it up.
jordansmithnz 5y ago
As a HomeKit user, I was looking forward to iOS 15, thinking there might be some incremental improvements to Siri’s handling of HomeKit commands. It wasn’t bad before, but it had room for improvement. Unfortunately iOS 15 significantly deteriorated Siri’s understanding of HomeKit in some situations. Here’s a few reproducible examples: ‘Hey Siri, shades down’: sets the shades to 99%, i.e. a 1% adjustment. I now need to say ‘closed’ rather than ‘down’ to close them. ‘Hey Siri, close the living room shades’: responds with the current shade status. I need to switch the ordering to get things working (Hey Siri, living room shades: closed) Did someone delete a mapping file of common HomeKit voice commands to actions or something? At this point, I’d almost prefer no AI, and just a static command list. I guess I could create that with shortcuts, but with 20 or so accessories that’s a big chore to set up.
- mattsieren 5y ago
  Glad to see I'm not the only one. I feel like a bunch of prior working commands have gone missing or are interpreted entirely wrong. Siri doesn't respond properly to "Turn the radiator in living room off" but when you say "turn heating in living room off" even responds with "turning radiator in living room off". As a consumer, this is downright frustrating.
- stevedekorte 5y ago
  “Hey Siri, close the living room shades” works for me. The problem I have is that we have both sun shades and black out blinds and Siri treats the words “shades” and “blinds” as the same word, forcing me to create special group labels for each so it can distinguish them. That said, it does feel like magic to be able to easily control all the lights and blinds with voice commands and Siri usually gets it right.
- nerdjon 5y ago
  This has been driving me insane since iOS 15. Heavily invested in HomeKit (to the point of having several HomePods around the house), and it feels like something changed and much of it I can't quite put my finger on. But a few that I have been able to identify: - Something has changed about how it handles figuring out which device you are talking too. I have had a HomePod in a different room go off (screwing up the room awareness), or my iPhone going off even when I am right next to a HomePod. - All of my HomePod pairs (having 2 linked together) switched to the opposite HomePod for which one speaks, and there is no clear way to change this. - Every action has slowed down, I can't figure out why but most of the time I get "one moment" while it tries to turn in lights or whatever. - They added the ability for the HomePod to turn on and off the Apple TV. Which is great in theory but I have my own custom TV configuration hooked up to Logitech harmony and it will constantly ask me "do you want to control x or y" (one being my custom and one being the Apple TV depending on the room I am in). I want to disable this but I can't. Edit: All I really want is a log. Please. A log of automated events that happen (I still don't know why my lights will randomly turn off... something is triggering it and I can't figure out what) and a log of what it thinks it heard and tried to do so I can address the "nothing with that name or function is found" or whatever it says when I say "Turn off the fan" and it doesn't know what I meant, and then I try again and it works.
solarkraft 5y ago
The assistant I’ve been really impressed with was Alexa. I remember asking it all kinds of complex things and it just knowing the answer. Google seems to be somewhere in between.
JadoJodo 5y ago
> is it a feature focused on search and retrieval, or an assistant that carries out complex tasks? I'd settle for an assistant that carries out simple tasks. I don't expect much from my robot assistant, but the number of times throughout the day that she gets it blatantly wrong has become a running joke in our household. A few recent examples: Me, holding my Apple Watch near my face: "Hey, Siri, drive to Kroger <there's one I go to all the time that is 10 minutes from my house>" Watch: "Now playing <some band I've never heard of, that isn't in my library>" Simultaneously, iPhone: "Getting directions to Kroger <shows results that are ~700 miles away>" Or: Me, to my iPhone: "Hey, Siri, start a yoga workout." iPhone: <starts playing a Yoga video on Fitness+, instead of starting the plain Yoga tracking workout I do every day> Edit: I just remembered another one. I was mowing the lawn on Sunday and wanted to start an outdoor walk. The mower was off, and I had my AirPods in: Me: "Siri, start an outdoor walk" iPhone: "Ok, I've cancelled your alarm for tomorrow"
- amluto 5y ago
  I’ll bite. Me to watch: Hey Siri, call so-and-so on Bluetooth Siri: calls so-and-so with Bluetooth selected but nonetheless the audio comes out the watch until I touch the phone. Siri on Apple Watch is generally very weak.
- FabHK 5y ago
  "Hey Siri, is my phone still charging?" - "The current volume is 43%".
- retSava 5y ago
  When I'm a cynical, I'm thinking bad search and bad implementations (to me) are really good implementations, the difference is that the goal is not my goal. Examples: * when starting to type, Chrome address bar preferring to go to Google search, instead of the friggin site I've gone to a hundred times already! * Google maps, search seemingly doesn't deterministically remember my searches. If I start typing the same search term I did yesterday, well, odds are I'm looking it up again! Show that. * Windows start menu... oh don't get me started on that. :)
- moffkalast 5y ago
teekert 5y ago
I just got my first iPhone some months ago. I really wanted to give Siri a chance because of privacy. But more often than being useful it just bothered me during video calls when it suddenly started to speak. So I turned it off again. I would like to have it on when I'm using Apple maps for example, my kids would have fun asking Google stuff in the car. But that doesn't seem to be an option. Edit: I know I can put Siri behind a button too, maybe I can give that another chance.
marcins 5y ago
Google Home can hear me whispering on the other side of the room, and usually do the right thing. Meanwhile, Siri on my watch gets triggered by the hiss of a running tap or a sizzling frying pan.
chadlavi 5y ago
The thing I really want with Siri is better user documentation. Give me a dictionary of all the things I can say to it! I'm only going to guess the obvious ones and then sometimes try a few experiments, but lack of awareness of what it can do means I just do the handful of things I have seen it do successfully.
- gruez 5y ago
  That will probably cause it to lose a feeling of magic for the user. If the list of supported phrases is listed out, then you'll see it for what it is: a voice based CLI.
  - chadlavi 5y ago
    but I WANT it to be a voice-based CLI! which, yeah, I recognize that most users don't want.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  this is generally a complaint i have with most modern software. With the older versions of windows like 95 and 98 (that's the oldest experience i have), i read the manuals, tried things and slowly learned the intricacies of the OS. Modern smartphones, tablets and computers seem to come with increasingly sparse manuals, let alone documentation. Take iOS for example - i have no idea how to manage windows on my ipad, i don't know how to close them, window manipulation is not obvious and so on.
drewg123 5y ago
Coming from Android, I used to use the Google assistant in hands free situations. Like when cooking or driving. I've found that Siri is TERRIBLE in these situations, because its more likely to punt to give you some links to click on and say "I found this on the web". I just asked Google and Siri "what temperature do I need to cook fish to". Google came right back with 145F. Siri put up some stuff she found on the web, and didn't give a verbal answer. I like almost everything better about the iPhone, but I really wish I could replace Siri with Google Assistant.
- manwe150 5y ago
  145F is beyond well-done for fish Edit: I must refrain myself from changing this comment into a pun about it seeming fishy.
  - m463 5y ago
    related, I read recently that the temperatures were lowered for some meats for internal temperature from 165. EDIT: ok, here's the chart: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/safe-temperature-chart https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and... some things are still 165, but some are now 145. ham in some cases is 140.
    - tornadron 5y ago
      Came across this last year, which intuitively made sense to me--definitely have had chicken cooked at lower than 165F and didn't get sick. I've not seen charts for other types of meat though. https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-chicken-breast https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-s... "The upshot is: Food safety is a function of both temperature and time. What the USDA is looking for is a 7.0 log10 relative reduction in salmonella bacteria in chicken. That is, a reduction that ensures that out of every 10,000,000 bacteria living on that piece of chicken to start, only one will survive."
      - 5y ago
throw7 5y ago
“What we really want to do is just talk to our device,” If we could "just talk to our device", I'd be able to ask it to change her name to whatever I want. But, yeah no. I don't _want_ to really "just talk to my device". Years ago, simple things just worked (i'm on android)... I could just say "e.t.a." to google maps and it would say the eta to my destination. Now it just gets confused or starts talking about the wiki page or some such nonsense.
BitwiseFool 5y ago
I'm averse to any kind of voice assistant. I'm the kind of person who just finds it faster to type in my query or go hunting for the information I want directly. I also come from a time when voice recognition used to be just barely functional, so I'm biased to think the phone will mishear me. I also have a bias towards thinking that computers aren't meant for natural language questions - I'm still very much a keyword query maker. To this day, I have never asked Siri anything, nor Alexa, Cortana, or whatever Google is calling theirs right now. I know I can't be the only one, right?
- erulabs 5y ago
  Outside of cooking, I'm with you. I use Siri for setting timers while I have my hands full in the kitchen - and even then - it only allows _one timer at a time_. My phone has multiple processor cores, but it requires the assist of my 15 year old microwave to track both rice -and- veggies...
- thefounder 5y ago
  I find Siri great...while driving(to call, play music, change volume and ask for news). And that's the only use I find for it.
- ghaff 5y ago
  No. Even asking the weather, I can get a weather report with far more context in about 30 seconds on weather underground either on my phone or on a computer. And for places where I can't just go to a computer or phone, e.g. my car, I find Siri frustratingly difficult to instruct to perform specific tasks, especially without taking my eyes off the road or hands off the wheel. Even setting a GPS destination by voice alone is hit or miss much less finding a podcast that hasn't been pre-loaded.
- Scarblac 5y ago
  I stutter, and as a result just don't like talking. I'll never use an interface like this.
  - m463 5y ago
fumblebee 5y ago
There's probably scores of Apple employees working on Siri week-in, week-out. But in all the time I've had it, I use it for literally two commands, both of which I use often: 1. "Set timer for x minutes" 2. "What song is this?" Using it for anything else bubbles up too many false positives to make the experience worthwhile.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Apple would improve their ecosystem if they let the consumers they supposedly love choose a default voice assistant. Siri is so bad compared to Alexa, I laugh out loud when I occasionally try to use it and it has no idea what is going on. This would be a boom for competition and the entire ecosystem. Will Apple’s ego allow it to be bruised like this? No.
- michelb 5y ago
  If they can guarantee my data never leaves the device I might want this. Otherwise, hard pass.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    For people that don’t expect the entire internet to be stored on their device, it should be an option.
tristor 5y ago
My experience has been that Google Assistant has always been better than Siri because Siri does all NLP on-device and Google Assistant offloads this to the cloud, where it can improve over time due to ML. Nonetheless, both are horrible in their own ways, and neither is very good from a societal perspective. I've taken the stance that voice assistances are fundamentally bad because they teach people that it's acceptable to carry on conversation with a computer that is likely being used to spy on them, either directly or indirectly. I don't allow voice assistant products in my house, and on devices where it's non-optional (mobile phones), they are turned off on all devices in my house. I also personally find it absurd that there would be anything /so/ important you can't wait a handful of seconds to use your hands to do with higher fidelity. Everyone always talks about using maps or something in your car... you shouldn't be changing destination while you're driving anyway, you should have a destination in mind (or not) and be focused entirely on driving with both hands on the wheel. If you need to futz with your GPS, pull over, whether you're talking to it or using your hands.
- criddell 5y ago
  What's the difference from a surveillance perspective if you say "hey google, what's the weather today" vs typing "today's weather" into Google? If the assistant is processing the language on device, is there any difference at all? > I also personally find it absurd that there would be anything /so/ important you can't wait a handful of seconds to use your hands to do with higher fidelity. I think people often choose a voice assistance because the opposite is true - the tasks they send to their voice assistant are very unimportant. They are playing a song, starting a timer, or finding out what time a baseball game starts.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  Smart lights. Music. Timers. Changing the brightness level using an app sucks. You have to dig out your phone, unlock it, open the app or go the widget, find the light you want to dim, click on it and then slide the brightness to where you want it. With a voice assistant like Alexa I can just tell it what light or room to dim and what level to dim. It's WAY WAY faster to say "Alexa, dim the kitchen to 50%" than to go through the app. Similarly with music or timers. It's just way easier to tell Alexa to play that radio station or album or song or to set a 10 minute timer than dig through smartphone apps and deal with hooking up speakers somehow. Of course it COULD spy on me, but so could any of my electronics with microphones and a net connection which is most of them these days. What's stopping your smartphone from spying on you or your laptop even with the voice assistant disabled?
everdrive 5y ago
Digital assistants are the height of sloth. Older technological inventions were truly transformative. Prior to the intention of the washing machine people wasted hours a week doing moderately hard physical labor. The washing machine of course still requires that somebody be present to change the loads, but otherwise people are free to do more or less anything else while the load is running. This was truly transformative. What does a digital assistant get you? It possibly saves you a few seconds, or allows you to set a task while walking or driving rather than forcing you to remember the task all by yourself and then later use the phone with your hands when the time is available. This does not save you time, instead it only saves you impulse control. ie, the task takes the same amount of time, but now feels like it requires no declarative action on the part of the user. It's not even clear that voice commands are better than using a GUI. If I'm unfamiliar with a GUI, I can look visibly for cues which point to the function I'd like to use. Voice commands require me to memorize the commands and syntax which might be used. It's more of a "simplified command line" than it is a GUI. And then of course, n% of the time, a perfectly-formatted voice command fails for invisible reasons. And so n% of the time it does not save you time.
- clairity 5y ago
  that’s a valid criticism, that digital assistants don’t bring much time savings, but they’re also a necessary stepping stone to a (far?) future where we talk naturally with our computers rather than type/tap (transformation via incrementalism). beyond the phone, apple clearly sees siri as a necessary component of its glasses, home, and car initiatives.
efields 5y ago
"the job" is different for everyone. I've accepted that siri can do reminders, conversion, timers, and simple HomeKit commands pretty well. I've never seen a more complicated tech demo of Siri that implies I should get more out of it, so saying it fails broadly in any way is meaningless. (edit: typo) It's a piece of software on your phone you effectively get "for free" that you can completely ignore if you so choose.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  My problem with these assistants is that you can ignore them but not truly disable them or remove them. Cortana is always waiting for me to talk on Windows. Google Assistant is always waiting to hear "Ok Google" on my phone. I never want to talk to my computers, ever. I wish I could remove this functionality entirely.
ng12 5y ago
I switched from Android to iPhone a few months ago. The hardware is much better but my god does the phone feel dumb. Ok Google is leagues better than Siri and I miss the hell out of certain Android features like better spam detection and the on-hold service.
- somenewaccount1 5y ago
  to hell if I will use a phone again without the on-hold service. absolute god send when you have to call any corporation in modern times.
asiachick 5y ago
This is not a diss on Apple or their employee, only an example of a common fallacy. But, I was in an online meeting with an Apple dev. Someone was giving a presentation. After the presentation that Apple dev said "There were zero mistakes in the captions, your English was so clear" and my first thought was that thinking there is a "correct English" is why these systems don't work. For myself, it took me a long time to stop thinking of English with different pronunciations and usages as wrong. For example Singapore. They are not speaking incorrect English. They are speaking their form of English which is fully valid and they have no problem communicating with each other. It's tech's job to understand all of it, not to get everyone to speak "California news broadcast English"
michelb 5y ago
Using siri on my iPhone is 'okay' for really simple things, like setting timers, asking for the weather. Sometimes setting a reminder works. But I also have a Homepod in my livingroom and using Siri on the Homepod is really useless, it just feels abandonded. The worst is when Homepod handles my Siri commands, which always happens because the iPhone sends the requests there, except in random occurences. Then it fails almost always ("can't do this on Homepod") but then there is no way I can force it to handle it on my iPhone. Madness. I don't know who at Apple actually uses this.
CountDrewku 5y ago
Do people really need these assistants that badly? I use siri to text and call in my vehicle occasionally and that's it. I wouldn't really care if phones came with no assistant. In fact, I think I'd prefer it.
nkotov 5y ago
I can count on my hand the numbers of times I intentionally wanted to use Siri. 98% of my interactions with Siri were accidental to the point that I ended up disabling Siri until I wanted to use CarPlay. It's just not good and it doesn't serve me any useful purpose.
- handrous 5y ago
  About 80% of my Siri use is setting kitchen timers, 15% setting alarms, 5% setting reminders. It's really good at the first two things and adequate for the last. I don't trust it for anything else.
makz 5y ago
I use Siri several times a week on my computer to find my iPhone. And that’s about the only thing I use it for, but it’s super useful.
barcoder 5y ago
If you have two contacts with the same name and you ask siri to call or add them to a calendar event she'll ask you which one. And won't be smart enough to understand when you say first or second.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gremloni 5y ago
I have a couple of good things to say about Bank of Americas virtual assistant Erica. It’s very niche but I’ve always found relevant information when I use it.
LuisMondragon 5y ago
Is there an objective benchmark to measure the performance of voice assistants? Usually, NLP tasks have ways to measure their performance.
fallingfrog 5y ago
My personal experience has been that on a few occasions I’ve tried things like “navigate to 123 oak street, Harrisburg Pennsylvania” or “play ‘all you need is love’ by the Beatles” or “dial John smith”. And so far Siri has a zero percent success rate with any query no matter how simple. So I gave up trying. Really those 3 things are all I really want, because the only time I need Siri is when my hands are busy because I’m driving. And the 3 things I want to do are: navigate somewhere, play music, or call someone. That should be any digital assistants bread and butter. Siri just can’t seem to do any of those things.

146 points by 1cvmask 5y ago

what is the current state of the art in open CSR/transcription? it feels to me that theres a lot of potential in these assistants that seems locked ip by the big players

martythemaniak 5y ago

Ten years ago I hated the fact that they gave these assistants a female name and voice. Today I hate the fact that after 10 years they still have not changed this. At least Google didn't give theirs a stupid female name, but they still use a female voice. It's not hard. Give this software a neutral name and a neutral voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRauhbZqJCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRauhbZqJCY

asiachick 5y ago
You've been able to change the voice in Siri for years under settings https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/change-siris-voice-on-iphone-or-ipad/ https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/change-siris-voice-on-iphon...

yellow_lead 5y ago

As the article points out, it seems apple missed the ball with integration into other apps. I'm not completely certain, but I don't think apps have the capability to "hook-in" to Siri in any useful way. Apple's obsession with maintaining control means they never nurtured this kind of development.

solarkraft 5y ago
It exists now. You don’t even have to say “on Spotify” for every song anymore (holy shit!!!!). They’re certainly moving late, but they’re moving.
can16358p 5y ago
Actually they do, for the most use cases. Sending messages, performing certain actions like switching things are the biggest use cases for most 3rd party apps for regular users. For the rest (power users), adding a Siri shortcut within the app almost covers every possible scenario.
Veen 5y ago
There is app integration with Siri, via tasks and intents. There's also Siri Shortcuts, which can integrate with custom intents. https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/siri/overview/introduction/ https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline... https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit/adding_user_interactivity_with_siri_shortcuts_and_the_shortcuts_app https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit/adding_use...
- yellow_lead 5y ago
  Ah, thanks for the info.

can16358p 5y ago

Am I the only one who thinks Siri "just works" as it should? Sure it's far from perfect, but it almost never failed me to call or text someone, ask about weather, take a note/reminder, switch the lights using my smart outlet, or to set an alarm (my personal highest use-case). Sure it could do more, but I don't thik it didn't "figure out the job".

amelius 5y ago
You are probably talking to Siri like you're talking to a computer. However, most people talk to Siri like they're talking to a human being.
- can16358p 5y ago
  Yes and no. As a computer engineer I'm probably biased about what it can and can't do technically, so I ask things that it can do. From a user perspective, I use a very natural language instead of robotic/feelingless commands and it just works anyway.
withinboredom 5y ago
I've asked what time it is in PST once. It told me the current time in my timezone, with the PST timezone qualifier.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  Wow, this is a great example of how crap Siri is. Let's do this – all of these work perfectly with Google Assistant: "Time in PST" gives me 3 links. The first 404's, the second has no clock but alerts "No locations currently on PST" (which is true, its PDT right now – but come on), and the 3rd has no clock but prompts me to install a "FREE iOS app." Fail, big time. "What time is it in PST" gets me a web snippet showing "PST is 8 hours behind UTC." Fail. "What's the current time in Pacific Standard Time" runs it through Wolfram, giving me a LOT of unrelated info but admittedly also a clock showing the correct time. Success... sort of. Wouldn't help while driving. "What's the current time in PST" gives me "Sorry, I can't help with that, but you can ask me the time for a specific city." Fail. "What's the current time in Los Angeles" correctly shows me a Siri prompt with the time. Success.

durnygbur 5y ago

Open Siri and say "hey google, what's amazon's stock price?"

withinboredom 5y ago

I feel the pain with setting an alarm... I have my phone set to 24 hour time. When I say 16:04, it's distinctly different than 04:04. Yet, I tell Siri to set an alarm for 09:40, it sets one for 21:40 like an idiot.

1cvmask 5y ago
A minute off from the 09:41 of Apple ads and screenshots: https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-the-time-is-always-set-to-941-in-apple-ads-2014-11 https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-the-time-is-always...
dgellow 5y ago
I face the same annoying issues with Siri when I’m trying to set reminders from the Apple Watch. I often have to repeat 2-3 times then remove the incorrect ones. But you have worst IMHO in other languages! When speaking German units are spoken before the tenths (fünf-und-dreizig to say 35). That completely confuses Siri when saying dates, hours/minutes, or just big numbers.
- nextstep 5y ago
  Dreissig* I speak German to Siri everyday and she never has this issue with setting alarms. Maybe it’s a dialectical difference?
  - dgellow 5y ago
    I’m not native and would be lying if I would say my German is great. But I don’t think it’s just about my prononciation, I see it often with German auto-generated subtitles or transcriptions, that dates or big numbers are transcribed incorrectly due to the unit-before-tenths grammatical construct.
wartijn_ 5y ago
In some countries that use 24 hour time notation it's really uncommon to use that in spoken language[0]. When I say four past four in Dutch, it could be 04:04 or 16:04. So even if you've set the clock to 24 hours, that doesn't mean you would actually say sixteen when referring to 16:xx. You can set the region in the settings, maybe that influences the way Siri interprets time? (I would be surprised if it does, but you never know) [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_representation_by_country#/media/File:12_24_Hours_World_Map.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Date_and_time_representation_b...

whywhywhywhy 5y ago

I'm convinced they've swapped out the microphones used by Siri for cheaper and cheaper ones over the years because it no longer seems to be able to pick up your requests across the room which it could at the launch of Hey Siri reliably. Presumably because the whole AI assistant thing kinda turned out to be a fad and not as world changing as people were thinking around the time Siri/Alexa launched. Turns out the thing it's good for it setting timers not ordering soup like Apple originally envisioned. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP1YAatv1Mc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EP1YAatv1Mc

mettamage 5y ago
Edit: forgive my enthusiasm. Voice assistants seen as command-lines make me excited. No it's not! The issue is that we as developers can't actually innovate on it. Look at what Apple did in its heyday with the App Store. Now it's commonplace, back then it was mindblowingly innovative unicorn goodness (I'm a bit biased :) ). And I understand, you can critique the App Store for many things, but the iPhone would be worse without it. And they didn't create an "App Store" or any other free extensible model for Siri. They should have, because people are on aggregate more creative than any big company including Apple -- thanks to survivorship bias. What Siri is actually quite good at is interpreting single words or small sentences. So it would be a perfect spoken command-line interface. I have had genuine situations where I needed to talk and couldn't type, but apps aren't allowed to make use of Siri, so I can't talk to apps, I need to type. Siri and other voice assistants are amazing when you look at it as we look at a command-line.
- mlang23 5y ago
  Well, looking at the skills offers by alexa, I am not sure if a siri appstore would be worthwhile. 99.9% of alexa skills are totally and utterly useless.
- veidr 5y ago
  Interesting take. I am kinda excited about voice assistants and the command-line style use cases for them, too, except the closed nature of Siri and the dominance of Apple has probably set them back 10 or 20 years. Yes, if Siri was open and any iOS app could easily make a "voice CLI" to their apps that would awesome. But, that's not the case at all. I am a heavy user of Siri, too, with an Apple Watch and a HomePod in every room of my house. It's better than nothing. But it is still objectively terrible. It can barely do more than set timers, send text messages, and control the lights and music. That's not useless, but it's not even close to what I wish I could do with my voice (which is basically what you describe).

frou_dh 5y ago

I still have zero desire to speak to any computer with my voice. Not saying it's a bad product feature. Probably just a psychological profile some of us fall into. EDIT: Yes I'm already aware it can be useful/quick for doing X :)

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
I find it works well for a few use cases: - play some song or playlist - open all the blinds, or a set of blinds, or all lights, or some lights. And close then close them/turn them off. That’s about it. The only reason it works well for those use cases is because the equivalent menu/physical controls take too much time to use vs voice commands.
- Closi 5y ago
  Also it’s really useful if you are in a car - getting directions, calling people, texting etc without touching your phone. Sure lots of cars have this already with voice, but Siri et al are much more reliable at it.
  - nerbert 5y ago
    Meh, the ~90% success rate kills that purpose for me.
fedreserved 5y ago
I felt the same way until I started experiencing carpel tunnel typing with both thumbs
yakubin 5y ago
Same here. I'm curious if it has any correlation to having an internal voice. Do you have an internal voice for your thoughts?
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Wait, don't all people have that? If not, then how do they think?

jebronie 5y ago

its really terrible, apple should just delete siri, its too embarrassing

mrweasel 5y ago

I'm still not convinced that any of the digital assistants have their job figured out. They are useful when driving, or if you want to listen to music when cooking. Beyond that I fail to see an actual use case. They could be a major benefit to disabled people I suppose.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Pretty much the only thing I use it for is setting a timer or alarm. For anything more complex than that it always seems easier to just use the app.
suction 5y ago
That's where Siri absolutely and completely fails for me. It doesn't understand 90% of the song or band names I ask to play. Maybe it's good when all you ask it to play is "The Beatles" or "Kanye West", but anything more ambiguous than that, it will produce a wrong result. Google Assistant is way better at nuances.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  I am impressed that it gets Khruangbin right, but I'm guessing that apple feeds Siri with artists that are popular with their target market.
veidr 5y ago
I felt like it was really helping me when we had kids, and I was like, holding a baby a lot of the time. But that is form of temporary disability, maybe.

suction 5y ago

I like Apple in general, but using Siri is the most frustrating experience Apple has ever rolled out to the public. It's absolutely awful and useless in its current state for anything but setting a timer or alarm. Google Assistant is several galaxies above it in every aspect.

ubermonkey 5y ago
Wow, opinions vary here a LOT. I find Siri very capable and useful. It's surprising to me when I don't get what I want out of it.

mlang23 5y ago

My favourite Siri bug: If it fails to understand the name of the person I want to call, it suggests to call myself! "OK, so you want to call <your name>?" This bug exists since about 10 years, and apparently has never been fixed.

virgilp 5y ago
Did you try answering "yes"?
- mlang23 5y ago
  Yes, believe it or not, it will try to call itself, and fail.

waisbrot 5y ago

Siri the voice assistant is disappointing, but I find Google's and Amazon's to be disappointing also and I think it's an inherent problem of voice assistants and AI. If Google Assistant can get basic tasks correct more often, I just end up irritated that it can't get more complex tasks correct. But Apple's been branding some simpler heuristics as Siri and those are excellent: - Suggesting data to add to a contact based on scraping from elsewhere - Associating a phone number that's calling me with a person who emailed me with a phone number in the signature - Suggesting apps to open based on time, location, connected peripherals, or recent activity - Suggesting driving directions based on calendar items or history None of these make me say "wow! AI!" But they do make me feel like my phone "just works" which is even better.

TheJoeMan 5y ago
I believe this article conflates two separate pieces of voice AI: speech-to-text and processing the text. Google’s speech to text is amazing, possibly related to the “less privacy” part. Siri can handle slightly more complicated commands but so many times I see it transcribe what I’m saying… then in a blink change all the words.

dc-programmer 5y ago

Kind of related, but has anyone else noticed iOS text autocorrect has gotten notably worse over the years?

deergomoo 5y ago
I believe at some point in the last couple of years (iOS 13 maybe?) they switched to a machine learning-based system and yes, it's been significantly worse since. I cannot put into words just how frustrating it is to have the device change a correctly spelled, correctly chosen word because it thinks I may have meant something else. Double points if I backspace to change it back and it re-"corrects" me again.
- rusk 5y ago
  It just refuses to learn! This is inarguably worse than what we had with T9 like 20 years ago, all running without cloud support on a limiting embedded platform.
- solarkraft 5y ago
  Love it when it replaces a correctly chosen word while swipe-typing the next few ones because it would fit better in the new context. Boggles my mind how you can let something like that into prod. The things it leads to are - Errors that make the message hard to understand that are (here it replaced “that” with “they and “here” with “get”) only caught while proof-reading or not at all - Having to go back and re-type 3 words for correction. I check the word I just swiped for misrecognition, not one that was previously correctly recognized, god damn it. The actual success rate of that piece of garbage is maybe 5%. That said: Of course I’m happy they have a swipe feature at all, albeit significantly worse than Google’s (about on par with Microsoft’s). But you don’t have to make the feature intentionally worse, do you?
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  The re-correction thing is unacceptable, imho. No predictive text algorithm will be perfect, but why in holy hell would they let it ignore explicit correction is beyond me.
- 5y ago

seddin 5y ago

I find it pretty useful to set up reminders when working without having to unlock the phone or even pick it up.

jordansmithnz 5y ago

As a HomeKit user, I was looking forward to iOS 15, thinking there might be some incremental improvements to Siri’s handling of HomeKit commands. It wasn’t bad before, but it had room for improvement. Unfortunately iOS 15 significantly deteriorated Siri’s understanding of HomeKit in some situations. Here’s a few reproducible examples: ‘Hey Siri, shades down’: sets the shades to 99%, i.e. a 1% adjustment. I now need to say ‘closed’ rather than ‘down’ to close them. ‘Hey Siri, close the living room shades’: responds with the current shade status. I need to switch the ordering to get things working (Hey Siri, living room shades: closed) Did someone delete a mapping file of common HomeKit voice commands to actions or something? At this point, I’d almost prefer no AI, and just a static command list. I guess I could create that with shortcuts, but with 20 or so accessories that’s a big chore to set up.

mattsieren 5y ago
Glad to see I'm not the only one. I feel like a bunch of prior working commands have gone missing or are interpreted entirely wrong. Siri doesn't respond properly to "Turn the radiator in living room off" but when you say "turn heating in living room off" even responds with "turning radiator in living room off". As a consumer, this is downright frustrating.
stevedekorte 5y ago
“Hey Siri, close the living room shades” works for me. The problem I have is that we have both sun shades and black out blinds and Siri treats the words “shades” and “blinds” as the same word, forcing me to create special group labels for each so it can distinguish them. That said, it does feel like magic to be able to easily control all the lights and blinds with voice commands and Siri usually gets it right.
nerdjon 5y ago
This has been driving me insane since iOS 15. Heavily invested in HomeKit (to the point of having several HomePods around the house), and it feels like something changed and much of it I can't quite put my finger on. But a few that I have been able to identify: - Something has changed about how it handles figuring out which device you are talking too. I have had a HomePod in a different room go off (screwing up the room awareness), or my iPhone going off even when I am right next to a HomePod. - All of my HomePod pairs (having 2 linked together) switched to the opposite HomePod for which one speaks, and there is no clear way to change this. - Every action has slowed down, I can't figure out why but most of the time I get "one moment" while it tries to turn in lights or whatever. - They added the ability for the HomePod to turn on and off the Apple TV. Which is great in theory but I have my own custom TV configuration hooked up to Logitech harmony and it will constantly ask me "do you want to control x or y" (one being my custom and one being the Apple TV depending on the room I am in). I want to disable this but I can't. Edit: All I really want is a log. Please. A log of automated events that happen (I still don't know why my lights will randomly turn off... something is triggering it and I can't figure out what) and a log of what it thinks it heard and tried to do so I can address the "nothing with that name or function is found" or whatever it says when I say "Turn off the fan" and it doesn't know what I meant, and then I try again and it works.

solarkraft 5y ago

The assistant I’ve been really impressed with was Alexa. I remember asking it all kinds of complex things and it just knowing the answer. Google seems to be somewhere in between.

JadoJodo 5y ago

> is it a feature focused on search and retrieval, or an assistant that carries out complex tasks? I'd settle for an assistant that carries out simple tasks. I don't expect much from my robot assistant, but the number of times throughout the day that she gets it blatantly wrong has become a running joke in our household. A few recent examples: Me, holding my Apple Watch near my face: "Hey, Siri, drive to Kroger <there's one I go to all the time that is 10 minutes from my house>" Watch: "Now playing <some band I've never heard of, that isn't in my library>" Simultaneously, iPhone: "Getting directions to Kroger <shows results that are ~700 miles away>" Or: Me, to my iPhone: "Hey, Siri, start a yoga workout." iPhone: <starts playing a Yoga video on Fitness+, instead of starting the plain Yoga tracking workout I do every day> Edit: I just remembered another one. I was mowing the lawn on Sunday and wanted to start an outdoor walk. The mower was off, and I had my AirPods in: Me: "Siri, start an outdoor walk" iPhone: "Ok, I've cancelled your alarm for tomorrow"

amluto 5y ago
I’ll bite. Me to watch: Hey Siri, call so-and-so on Bluetooth Siri: calls so-and-so with Bluetooth selected but nonetheless the audio comes out the watch until I touch the phone. Siri on Apple Watch is generally very weak.
FabHK 5y ago
"Hey Siri, is my phone still charging?" - "The current volume is 43%".
retSava 5y ago
When I'm a cynical, I'm thinking bad search and bad implementations (to me) are really good implementations, the difference is that the goal is not my goal. Examples: * when starting to type, Chrome address bar preferring to go to Google search, instead of the friggin site I've gone to a hundred times already! * Google maps, search seemingly doesn't deterministically remember my searches. If I start typing the same search term I did yesterday, well, odds are I'm looking it up again! Show that. * Windows start menu... oh don't get me started on that. :)
moffkalast 5y ago

teekert 5y ago

I just got my first iPhone some months ago. I really wanted to give Siri a chance because of privacy. But more often than being useful it just bothered me during video calls when it suddenly started to speak. So I turned it off again. I would like to have it on when I'm using Apple maps for example, my kids would have fun asking Google stuff in the car. But that doesn't seem to be an option. Edit: I know I can put Siri behind a button too, maybe I can give that another chance.

marcins 5y ago

Google Home can hear me whispering on the other side of the room, and usually do the right thing. Meanwhile, Siri on my watch gets triggered by the hiss of a running tap or a sizzling frying pan.

chadlavi 5y ago

The thing I really want with Siri is better user documentation. Give me a dictionary of all the things I can say to it! I'm only going to guess the obvious ones and then sometimes try a few experiments, but lack of awareness of what it can do means I just do the handful of things I have seen it do successfully.

gruez 5y ago
That will probably cause it to lose a feeling of magic for the user. If the list of supported phrases is listed out, then you'll see it for what it is: a voice based CLI.
- chadlavi 5y ago
  but I WANT it to be a voice-based CLI! which, yeah, I recognize that most users don't want.
eldaisfish 5y ago
this is generally a complaint i have with most modern software. With the older versions of windows like 95 and 98 (that's the oldest experience i have), i read the manuals, tried things and slowly learned the intricacies of the OS. Modern smartphones, tablets and computers seem to come with increasingly sparse manuals, let alone documentation. Take iOS for example - i have no idea how to manage windows on my ipad, i don't know how to close them, window manipulation is not obvious and so on.

drewg123 5y ago

Coming from Android, I used to use the Google assistant in hands free situations. Like when cooking or driving. I've found that Siri is TERRIBLE in these situations, because its more likely to punt to give you some links to click on and say "I found this on the web". I just asked Google and Siri "what temperature do I need to cook fish to". Google came right back with 145F. Siri put up some stuff she found on the web, and didn't give a verbal answer. I like almost everything better about the iPhone, but I really wish I could replace Siri with Google Assistant.

manwe150 5y ago
145F is beyond well-done for fish Edit: I must refrain myself from changing this comment into a pun about it seeming fishy.
- m463 5y ago
  related, I read recently that the temperatures were lowered for some meats for internal temperature from 165. EDIT: ok, here's the chart: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/safe-temperature-chart https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and... some things are still 165, but some are now 145. ham in some cases is 140.
  - tornadron 5y ago
    Came across this last year, which intuitively made sense to me--definitely have had chicken cooked at lower than 165F and didn't get sick. I've not seen charts for other types of meat though. https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-sous-vide-chicken-breast https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-complete-guide-to-s... "The upshot is: Food safety is a function of both temperature and time. What the USDA is looking for is a 7.0 log10 relative reduction in salmonella bacteria in chicken. That is, a reduction that ensures that out of every 10,000,000 bacteria living on that piece of chicken to start, only one will survive."
    - 5y ago

throw7 5y ago

“What we really want to do is just talk to our device,” If we could "just talk to our device", I'd be able to ask it to change her name to whatever I want. But, yeah no. I don't _want_ to really "just talk to my device". Years ago, simple things just worked (i'm on android)... I could just say "e.t.a." to google maps and it would say the eta to my destination. Now it just gets confused or starts talking about the wiki page or some such nonsense.

BitwiseFool 5y ago

I'm averse to any kind of voice assistant. I'm the kind of person who just finds it faster to type in my query or go hunting for the information I want directly. I also come from a time when voice recognition used to be just barely functional, so I'm biased to think the phone will mishear me. I also have a bias towards thinking that computers aren't meant for natural language questions - I'm still very much a keyword query maker. To this day, I have never asked Siri anything, nor Alexa, Cortana, or whatever Google is calling theirs right now. I know I can't be the only one, right?

erulabs 5y ago
Outside of cooking, I'm with you. I use Siri for setting timers while I have my hands full in the kitchen - and even then - it only allows _one timer at a time_. My phone has multiple processor cores, but it requires the assist of my 15 year old microwave to track both rice -and- veggies...
thefounder 5y ago
I find Siri great...while driving(to call, play music, change volume and ask for news). And that's the only use I find for it.
ghaff 5y ago
No. Even asking the weather, I can get a weather report with far more context in about 30 seconds on weather underground either on my phone or on a computer. And for places where I can't just go to a computer or phone, e.g. my car, I find Siri frustratingly difficult to instruct to perform specific tasks, especially without taking my eyes off the road or hands off the wheel. Even setting a GPS destination by voice alone is hit or miss much less finding a podcast that hasn't been pre-loaded.
Scarblac 5y ago
I stutter, and as a result just don't like talking. I'll never use an interface like this.
- m463 5y ago

fumblebee 5y ago

There's probably scores of Apple employees working on Siri week-in, week-out. But in all the time I've had it, I use it for literally two commands, both of which I use often: 1. "Set timer for x minutes" 2. "What song is this?" Using it for anything else bubbles up too many false positives to make the experience worthwhile.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Apple would improve their ecosystem if they let the consumers they supposedly love choose a default voice assistant. Siri is so bad compared to Alexa, I laugh out loud when I occasionally try to use it and it has no idea what is going on. This would be a boom for competition and the entire ecosystem. Will Apple’s ego allow it to be bruised like this? No.

michelb 5y ago
If they can guarantee my data never leaves the device I might want this. Otherwise, hard pass.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  For people that don’t expect the entire internet to be stored on their device, it should be an option.

tristor 5y ago

My experience has been that Google Assistant has always been better than Siri because Siri does all NLP on-device and Google Assistant offloads this to the cloud, where it can improve over time due to ML. Nonetheless, both are horrible in their own ways, and neither is very good from a societal perspective. I've taken the stance that voice assistances are fundamentally bad because they teach people that it's acceptable to carry on conversation with a computer that is likely being used to spy on them, either directly or indirectly. I don't allow voice assistant products in my house, and on devices where it's non-optional (mobile phones), they are turned off on all devices in my house. I also personally find it absurd that there would be anything /so/ important you can't wait a handful of seconds to use your hands to do with higher fidelity. Everyone always talks about using maps or something in your car... you shouldn't be changing destination while you're driving anyway, you should have a destination in mind (or not) and be focused entirely on driving with both hands on the wheel. If you need to futz with your GPS, pull over, whether you're talking to it or using your hands.

criddell 5y ago
What's the difference from a surveillance perspective if you say "hey google, what's the weather today" vs typing "today's weather" into Google? If the assistant is processing the language on device, is there any difference at all? > I also personally find it absurd that there would be anything /so/ important you can't wait a handful of seconds to use your hands to do with higher fidelity. I think people often choose a voice assistance because the opposite is true - the tasks they send to their voice assistant are very unimportant. They are playing a song, starting a timer, or finding out what time a baseball game starts.
salamandersauce 5y ago
Smart lights. Music. Timers. Changing the brightness level using an app sucks. You have to dig out your phone, unlock it, open the app or go the widget, find the light you want to dim, click on it and then slide the brightness to where you want it. With a voice assistant like Alexa I can just tell it what light or room to dim and what level to dim. It's WAY WAY faster to say "Alexa, dim the kitchen to 50%" than to go through the app. Similarly with music or timers. It's just way easier to tell Alexa to play that radio station or album or song or to set a 10 minute timer than dig through smartphone apps and deal with hooking up speakers somehow. Of course it COULD spy on me, but so could any of my electronics with microphones and a net connection which is most of them these days. What's stopping your smartphone from spying on you or your laptop even with the voice assistant disabled?

everdrive 5y ago

Digital assistants are the height of sloth. Older technological inventions were truly transformative. Prior to the intention of the washing machine people wasted hours a week doing moderately hard physical labor. The washing machine of course still requires that somebody be present to change the loads, but otherwise people are free to do more or less anything else while the load is running. This was truly transformative. What does a digital assistant get you? It possibly saves you a few seconds, or allows you to set a task while walking or driving rather than forcing you to remember the task all by yourself and then later use the phone with your hands when the time is available. This does not save you time, instead it only saves you impulse control. ie, the task takes the same amount of time, but now feels like it requires no declarative action on the part of the user. It's not even clear that voice commands are better than using a GUI. If I'm unfamiliar with a GUI, I can look visibly for cues which point to the function I'd like to use. Voice commands require me to memorize the commands and syntax which might be used. It's more of a "simplified command line" than it is a GUI. And then of course, n% of the time, a perfectly-formatted voice command fails for invisible reasons. And so n% of the time it does not save you time.

clairity 5y ago
that’s a valid criticism, that digital assistants don’t bring much time savings, but they’re also a necessary stepping stone to a (far?) future where we talk naturally with our computers rather than type/tap (transformation via incrementalism). beyond the phone, apple clearly sees siri as a necessary component of its glasses, home, and car initiatives.

efields 5y ago

"the job" is different for everyone. I've accepted that siri can do reminders, conversion, timers, and simple HomeKit commands pretty well. I've never seen a more complicated tech demo of Siri that implies I should get more out of it, so saying it fails broadly in any way is meaningless. (edit: typo) It's a piece of software on your phone you effectively get "for free" that you can completely ignore if you so choose.

bluefirebrand 5y ago
My problem with these assistants is that you can ignore them but not truly disable them or remove them. Cortana is always waiting for me to talk on Windows. Google Assistant is always waiting to hear "Ok Google" on my phone. I never want to talk to my computers, ever. I wish I could remove this functionality entirely.

ng12 5y ago

I switched from Android to iPhone a few months ago. The hardware is much better but my god does the phone feel dumb. Ok Google is leagues better than Siri and I miss the hell out of certain Android features like better spam detection and the on-hold service.

somenewaccount1 5y ago
to hell if I will use a phone again without the on-hold service. absolute god send when you have to call any corporation in modern times.

asiachick 5y ago

This is not a diss on Apple or their employee, only an example of a common fallacy. But, I was in an online meeting with an Apple dev. Someone was giving a presentation. After the presentation that Apple dev said "There were zero mistakes in the captions, your English was so clear" and my first thought was that thinking there is a "correct English" is why these systems don't work. For myself, it took me a long time to stop thinking of English with different pronunciations and usages as wrong. For example Singapore. They are not speaking incorrect English. They are speaking their form of English which is fully valid and they have no problem communicating with each other. It's tech's job to understand all of it, not to get everyone to speak "California news broadcast English"

michelb 5y ago

Using siri on my iPhone is 'okay' for really simple things, like setting timers, asking for the weather. Sometimes setting a reminder works. But I also have a Homepod in my livingroom and using Siri on the Homepod is really useless, it just feels abandonded. The worst is when Homepod handles my Siri commands, which always happens because the iPhone sends the requests there, except in random occurences. Then it fails almost always ("can't do this on Homepod") but then there is no way I can force it to handle it on my iPhone. Madness. I don't know who at Apple actually uses this.

CountDrewku 5y ago

Do people really need these assistants that badly? I use siri to text and call in my vehicle occasionally and that's it. I wouldn't really care if phones came with no assistant. In fact, I think I'd prefer it.

nkotov 5y ago

I can count on my hand the numbers of times I intentionally wanted to use Siri. 98% of my interactions with Siri were accidental to the point that I ended up disabling Siri until I wanted to use CarPlay. It's just not good and it doesn't serve me any useful purpose.

handrous 5y ago
About 80% of my Siri use is setting kitchen timers, 15% setting alarms, 5% setting reminders. It's really good at the first two things and adequate for the last. I don't trust it for anything else.

makz 5y ago

I use Siri several times a week on my computer to find my iPhone. And that’s about the only thing I use it for, but it’s super useful.

barcoder 5y ago

If you have two contacts with the same name and you ask siri to call or add them to a calendar event she'll ask you which one. And won't be smart enough to understand when you say first or second.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gremloni 5y ago

I have a couple of good things to say about Bank of Americas virtual assistant Erica. It’s very niche but I’ve always found relevant information when I use it.

LuisMondragon 5y ago

Is there an objective benchmark to measure the performance of voice assistants? Usually, NLP tasks have ways to measure their performance.

fallingfrog 5y ago

My personal experience has been that on a few occasions I’ve tried things like “navigate to 123 oak street, Harrisburg Pennsylvania” or “play ‘all you need is love’ by the Beatles” or “dial John smith”. And so far Siri has a zero percent success rate with any query no matter how simple. So I gave up trying. Really those 3 things are all I really want, because the only time I need Siri is when my hands are busy because I’m driving. And the 3 things I want to do are: navigate somewhere, play music, or call someone. That should be any digital assistants bread and butter. Siri just can’t seem to do any of those things.