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> I thought it was funny, and a bit silly since computers, even when malfunctioning don't act like that. Have you met Siri? Let me relate an interaction I had

by js2 4y ago

> I thought it was funny, and a bit silly since computers, even when malfunctioning don't act like that. Have you met Siri? Let me relate an interaction I had with it last Sunday, driving home from the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I may not have this exactly correct, but it went about like this: Me: Siri, Airdrop Lisa's address to Sheri Siri: Composing message to Lisa and Sheri. What would you like to say? Me: Cancel Siri: Got it. Would you like me to send the message now? Me: Don't send. Siri: "Sent!" Sheri and Lisa received an email titled "Address" with message body "Cancel." There's no way that anyone who works on Siri actually uses Siri. The only thing it does reliably for me is set timers and alarms.

emodendroket 4y ago
> There's no way that anyone who works on Siri actually uses Siri. The only thing it does reliably for me is set timers and alarms. I suspect resources have been pulled with the realization that there's no real way to monetize people asking it to set timers, tell them the weather, or tell them what time the Rams game is on, which is about the extent of what most people use these things for.
- smabie 4y ago
  I mean it's a self fulfilling prophecy: people only use it for that because it's incapable of doing anything else. If Siri didn't suck big time I would use it all the time.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    All the voice assistants have the same problem though. What would you do with it that they can make money from? Are you going to trust their judgment when you ask to buy something?
    - Jolter 4y ago
      Apple phones are full of features. Most of them cost nothing beyond the cost of entry (iPhones are expensive). Presumably all these well engineered features contribute to some holistic image of a “quality product”, whatever that means. You might as well say “the camera does not bring revenue to Apple so they intentionally didn’t develop it any further”, which is nonsense.
      - AnonymousPlanet 4y ago
        I know people who bought their iPhone specifically for the camera. I never heard of anyone buying an iPhone because of Siri.
        emodendroket 4y ago
        I have, when it came out, though I can’t say I’ve heard of anyone being excited about enhancements to it since.
      - Kamq 4y ago
        The camera has one time cost (well, and r&d). Siri has ongoing costs to run the servers.
      - emodendroket 4y ago
        It’s really easy to exhaust the free photo storage and then pay an iCloud storage fee for the rest of time so I see a clear way in which the camera brings in revenue.
        loloquwowndueo 4y ago
        Not if you get a phone with enough local storage for your photos and then download them to your computer. The 5 GB of free cloud storage are a joke anyway.
        emodendroket 4y ago
        If you ever actually connect your phone to your PC for syncing files between the two you are an outlier power user and not representative of the average user at all.
    - gcanyon 4y ago
      For some (Alexa) that's true, but for Apple and Google, voice is/has the potential to be part of the OS itself. You might ask why Apple puts all that effort into developing iOS when they don't charge for it. As an aside, Apple used to charge for OS updates. Then they decided supporting multiple versions of the OS was idiotic (maybe they had other reasons as well) and reduced the cost/then went free.
      - emodendroket 4y ago
        Ars ran an article about Alexa layoffs that suggested Google was having the same troubles and reaching the same conclusions so it seemed like a reasonable surmise that that would also be true of Apple. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/amp/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co... > We have to wonder: Is time running out for Big Tech voice assistants? Everyone seems to be struggling with them. Google expressed basically identical problems with the Google Assistant business model last month. There's an inability to monetize the simple voice commands most consumers actually want to make, and all of Google's attempts to monetize assistants with display ads and company partnerships haven't worked. With the product sucking up server time and being a big money loser, Google responded just like Amazon by cutting resources to the division. > While Google and Amazon hurt each other with an at-cost pricing war, Apple's smart speaker plans focused more on the bottom line. The original HomePod's $350 price was a lot more expensive than the competition, but that was probably a more sustainable business model. Apple's model didn't land with consumers, though, and the OG HomePod was killed in 2021. There's still a $99 "mini" version floating around, and Apple isn't giving up on the idea of a big speaker, with a comeback supposedly in the works. Siri can at least be a loss leader for iPhone sales, but Apple is also hunting around for more continual revenue from ads.
        Tagbert 4y ago
        Amazon likely sells their hardware below cost and hopes to make it up in orders using Alexa. From reports that didn’t seem to be adding up. Apple’s strategy is different where Siri is a convenience feature for the devices that they sell for a premium. I doubt that Apple has invested anywhere close to $10B in Siri. We haven’t heard of Google is bleeding to the degree that Amazon is on the Google assistant. I suspect not.
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  I’ve had a very different experience with Siri while driving hands free. “Siri, put on my focus playlist” “Okay, playing your focus playlist on Deezer” “Siri, take me home” “Getting directions to home” “Siri, take me Cornish Pasty Co.” “Okay, getting directions to Cornish Pasty Co.” “Siri, play DefCon Radio on Soma FM” “Okay, playing DefCon Radio on Soma FM” It integrates with Apple Car play too. Nearly everything I’d interact with the center console for before, Siri does for me now.
tbt 4y ago
Idiocracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVyRkl5qNb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVyRkl5qNb8
nomel 4y ago
You might want to retrain it on your voice. It consistently works poorly for me, but never this poorly, even when yelling at a HomePod in another room.
- js2 4y ago
  I have the Siri setting enabled where it shows on screen what it thinks I’m saying. Siri understands my voice just fine. It just doesn’t know how to interpret the request. Now to be fair I was in my car on the highway and not looking at my phone so I don’t know exactly what it heard in this specific example. I’d made several attempts to word my request to send an address from my contacts to my wife’s phone. I worded it several different ways, and each time Siri didn’t seem to know what to do. This was the final attempt and as I said, perhaps I don’t have the exact exchange correct here. I attempt to use Siri frequently and even when it hears what I’m saying often doesn’t understand the request. Here’s another example: Hey Siri text Jessica, <pause> “Candles question mark” Siri: there’s no one named “Jessica Candles” in your contacts. I’ve learned I have to do this instead: “Hey Siri, send a text”. Then wait for Siri to prompt: “Who would you like to text?” Answer with “Jessica”. Then wait for Siri to prompt: “what would you like to say?” Then answer “candles question mark”. All to get it to text my daughter the message “candles?” Another time I tried to get Siri to tell me when my daughter’s train was due in at the Amtrak station. This was not a request without context. The trip was both in my email and on my calendar, and my phone was already navigating me to the Amtrak station but I wanted an update on the train’s progress. Siri either attempted to give me directions to my daughter’s address 200 miles away or to give me directions to the Amtrak station, and not even the station nearest to me, which the phone was already navigating me to. Is it really so unusual that someone headed to a train station or airport might want an updated ETA for the flight or train they were headed to pickup someone from? Why can’t Siri understand that request? I could go on with dozens of example of things it gets wrong. How about this: “Siri, close the garage door.” Siri replies: “which garage door?” Even though only one door is open. It also doesn’t know what to do with “close both garage doors.” Sometimes saying “close all garage doors” works, but sometimes not. Or how about when I ask Siri on my AppleTV to search for a movie and it starts playing a song instead? I have to very carefully tell it “search for the movie named …” and even then it sometimes gets it wrong. But hey, at least setting timers works. Really well! I do appreciate your attempt to help. Siri hears me fine. It just sucks at understanding what I want, whether I speak to it like an adult or coddle it like the stupid voice assistant that it is.
resters 4y ago
Same with Google home devices. So many silly bugs and glitches.
- jasonm23 4y ago
  Hold on while I get connected to wifi (this will never happen, requires power down.)
thih9 4y ago
Would be nice to have an automatic “sent with siri” sticker for situations like this.
- elijaht 4y ago
  There is

by js2 4y ago

emodendroket 4y ago

> There's no way that anyone who works on Siri actually uses Siri. The only thing it does reliably for me is set timers and alarms. I suspect resources have been pulled with the realization that there's no real way to monetize people asking it to set timers, tell them the weather, or tell them what time the Rams game is on, which is about the extent of what most people use these things for.

smabie 4y ago
I mean it's a self fulfilling prophecy: people only use it for that because it's incapable of doing anything else. If Siri didn't suck big time I would use it all the time.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  All the voice assistants have the same problem though. What would you do with it that they can make money from? Are you going to trust their judgment when you ask to buy something?
  - Jolter 4y ago
    Apple phones are full of features. Most of them cost nothing beyond the cost of entry (iPhones are expensive). Presumably all these well engineered features contribute to some holistic image of a “quality product”, whatever that means. You might as well say “the camera does not bring revenue to Apple so they intentionally didn’t develop it any further”, which is nonsense.
    - AnonymousPlanet 4y ago
      I know people who bought their iPhone specifically for the camera. I never heard of anyone buying an iPhone because of Siri.
      - emodendroket 4y ago
        I have, when it came out, though I can’t say I’ve heard of anyone being excited about enhancements to it since.
    - Kamq 4y ago
      The camera has one time cost (well, and r&d). Siri has ongoing costs to run the servers.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      It’s really easy to exhaust the free photo storage and then pay an iCloud storage fee for the rest of time so I see a clear way in which the camera brings in revenue.
      - loloquwowndueo 4y ago
        Not if you get a phone with enough local storage for your photos and then download them to your computer. The 5 GB of free cloud storage are a joke anyway.
        emodendroket 4y ago
        If you ever actually connect your phone to your PC for syncing files between the two you are an outlier power user and not representative of the average user at all.
  - gcanyon 4y ago
    For some (Alexa) that's true, but for Apple and Google, voice is/has the potential to be part of the OS itself. You might ask why Apple puts all that effort into developing iOS when they don't charge for it. As an aside, Apple used to charge for OS updates. Then they decided supporting multiple versions of the OS was idiotic (maybe they had other reasons as well) and reduced the cost/then went free.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      Ars ran an article about Alexa layoffs that suggested Google was having the same troubles and reaching the same conclusions so it seemed like a reasonable surmise that that would also be true of Apple. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/amp/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co... > We have to wonder: Is time running out for Big Tech voice assistants? Everyone seems to be struggling with them. Google expressed basically identical problems with the Google Assistant business model last month. There's an inability to monetize the simple voice commands most consumers actually want to make, and all of Google's attempts to monetize assistants with display ads and company partnerships haven't worked. With the product sucking up server time and being a big money loser, Google responded just like Amazon by cutting resources to the division. > While Google and Amazon hurt each other with an at-cost pricing war, Apple's smart speaker plans focused more on the bottom line. The original HomePod's $350 price was a lot more expensive than the competition, but that was probably a more sustainable business model. Apple's model didn't land with consumers, though, and the OG HomePod was killed in 2021. There's still a $99 "mini" version floating around, and Apple isn't giving up on the idea of a big speaker, with a comeback supposedly in the works. Siri can at least be a loss leader for iPhone sales, but Apple is also hunting around for more continual revenue from ads.
      - Tagbert 4y ago
        Amazon likely sells their hardware below cost and hopes to make it up in orders using Alexa. From reports that didn’t seem to be adding up. Apple’s strategy is different where Siri is a convenience feature for the devices that they sell for a premium. I doubt that Apple has invested anywhere close to $10B in Siri. We haven’t heard of Google is bleeding to the degree that Amazon is on the Google assistant. I suspect not.
r3trohack3r 4y ago
I’ve had a very different experience with Siri while driving hands free. “Siri, put on my focus playlist” “Okay, playing your focus playlist on Deezer” “Siri, take me home” “Getting directions to home” “Siri, take me Cornish Pasty Co.” “Okay, getting directions to Cornish Pasty Co.” “Siri, play DefCon Radio on Soma FM” “Okay, playing DefCon Radio on Soma FM” It integrates with Apple Car play too. Nearly everything I’d interact with the center console for before, Siri does for me now.

tbt 4y ago

Idiocracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVyRkl5qNb8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVyRkl5qNb8

nomel 4y ago

You might want to retrain it on your voice. It consistently works poorly for me, but never this poorly, even when yelling at a HomePod in another room.

js2 4y ago
I have the Siri setting enabled where it shows on screen what it thinks I’m saying. Siri understands my voice just fine. It just doesn’t know how to interpret the request. Now to be fair I was in my car on the highway and not looking at my phone so I don’t know exactly what it heard in this specific example. I’d made several attempts to word my request to send an address from my contacts to my wife’s phone. I worded it several different ways, and each time Siri didn’t seem to know what to do. This was the final attempt and as I said, perhaps I don’t have the exact exchange correct here. I attempt to use Siri frequently and even when it hears what I’m saying often doesn’t understand the request. Here’s another example: Hey Siri text Jessica, <pause> “Candles question mark” Siri: there’s no one named “Jessica Candles” in your contacts. I’ve learned I have to do this instead: “Hey Siri, send a text”. Then wait for Siri to prompt: “Who would you like to text?” Answer with “Jessica”. Then wait for Siri to prompt: “what would you like to say?” Then answer “candles question mark”. All to get it to text my daughter the message “candles?” Another time I tried to get Siri to tell me when my daughter’s train was due in at the Amtrak station. This was not a request without context. The trip was both in my email and on my calendar, and my phone was already navigating me to the Amtrak station but I wanted an update on the train’s progress. Siri either attempted to give me directions to my daughter’s address 200 miles away or to give me directions to the Amtrak station, and not even the station nearest to me, which the phone was already navigating me to. Is it really so unusual that someone headed to a train station or airport might want an updated ETA for the flight or train they were headed to pickup someone from? Why can’t Siri understand that request? I could go on with dozens of example of things it gets wrong. How about this: “Siri, close the garage door.” Siri replies: “which garage door?” Even though only one door is open. It also doesn’t know what to do with “close both garage doors.” Sometimes saying “close all garage doors” works, but sometimes not. Or how about when I ask Siri on my AppleTV to search for a movie and it starts playing a song instead? I have to very carefully tell it “search for the movie named …” and even then it sometimes gets it wrong. But hey, at least setting timers works. Really well! I do appreciate your attempt to help. Siri hears me fine. It just sucks at understanding what I want, whether I speak to it like an adult or coddle it like the stupid voice assistant that it is.

resters 4y ago

Same with Google home devices. So many silly bugs and glitches.

jasonm23 4y ago
Hold on while I get connected to wifi (this will never happen, requires power down.)

thih9 4y ago

Would be nice to have an automatic “sent with siri” sticker for situations like this.

elijaht 4y ago
There is