3 ms·

Siri still sucks?

shagie 4y ago
Siri isn't supposed to be great - its a voice interface to a few standardized interfaces that applications can hook into. The system provided intents ( https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit ) are rather limited. While we can say "it should be more" the architecture for it doesn't appear to be something that easily extensible by anyone (Apple included). However, for those intents - it does quite well and most processing is done on device rather than in the cloud and that fundamentally changes the economics and capability. It is much less expensive than Alexa to run (where nearly everything is in the cloud), but it is also something that can't do as much. Try this - turn on airplane mode and do "hey Siri what time is it?" or "hey Siri open notes" And while those are indeed a very limited examples (there are other examples such as interacting with HomeKit where it needs the lan), it shows that much of the work is done on the phone. This also means that its capabilities are limited to what you can run on the phone.
- gonehome 4y ago
  That feels like a retroactive explanation of the current status quo to me. I doubt Apple would agree "Siri isn't supposed to be great" - they just failed to live up to what they wanted. We'll see if that changes.
  - shagie 4y ago
    The "what they hoped" is a question of "what who hoped?" When you look at SiriKit when compared to Google and Alexa, it is an entirely different approach that isn't designed for general tooling of a voice assistant but rather the intents show that it is designed for specific functionality of specific types of applications. Asking Siri for things outside of those intents was always delegated out to some other service (Wolfram Alpha was the choice for a while). Siri was never designed to try to monetize the voice interface (compare Alexa and Google) and thus wasn't trying to do everything and SikiKit shows that it can't do quite a bit. So that it can't do everything shouldn't be a surprise to Apple. Comparing Siri to Alexa, they are very different architectures with different goals and support costs. If you look at https://www.apple.com/siri/ https://www.apple.com/siri/ you should get the idea that this is interface to common tasks - not a general "do everything and chat about it" assistant. What's more, it limits what goes off device (whereas Alexa and Google do all speech to text on the cloud).
    - gonehome 4y ago
      Just watch the introduction of the Siri product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzItTz35QQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzItTz35QQ "Your intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking" I suspect Scott Forstall and Jobs wanted it to be what LLMs show the potential for it to be. Not the crappy barely functioning timer setting app it currently is. Siri is dumb as rocks, it's so bad at basic queries it's not worth trying to use.
      - shagie 4y ago
        The tooling that it was designed for was things like https://youtu.be/agzItTz35QQ?t=709 https://youtu.be/agzItTz35QQ?t=709 Those were the intents that were set up. Yes, it would be nice to have LLM style power - but that isn't how Siri was architected even from the very start. Word combinations are recognized as certain intents and parsed for functions to call into apps that register that they are able to handle that function call. If there was no match for the intent, it was sent to Wolfram Alpha to do a knowledge base lookup. While Wolfram is really good, it certainly isn't a chat bot. Siri wasn't supposed to be smart. Siri was intended for an interface to the existing apps of phone, music, messages, calendar, reminders, map routes, email, and weather. When you look at that segment, 12:48 "just take your phone and ask Siri to set a timer for 30 minutes and you're done." Siri was very much intended as a timer setting app. What functionality in there that you see in this segment that isn't designed as an interface to existing apps? What time cue do you see them promising something smarter than what was designed?
        gonehome 4y ago
        They open with what they want it to be “intelligent assistant” and then show the capabilities it currently had. Since that time in 2011 it has gotten no closer to “intelligent assistant”. That’s a failure imo. Google’s is much better at answering basic queries.
        shagie 4y ago
        Google's voice assistant is an interface to google cloud applications. Siri is an interface to a limited set of the apps on the iPhone. These are fundamentally different architectures for how how each was designed along with implications for privacy and where the company has compute resources that can be used. If you are after a general knowledge search engine, Google will certainly out preform Siri. Google has better cloud integration for a lot of their functionality. Apple doesn't have that amount of cloud resources that it can use and is a device first company rather than a cloud first company. If you want to say "android can search google better" Ok. I'll grant that. If that makes it "smarter" - ok. Android is smarter than Siri because it can search google better. If you want to say "android can control apps on its phone better" - I really want to see evidence that the ability for Android to control 3rd party music apps (e.g. Spotify) or report the weather or calendar or set up alarms... I don't believe that android is any better than Siri in that regard. If you want to chat with it (e.g. "what is the answer to life the universe and everything?") then those are cute responses that are programmed in. Do you have other criteria that you are using to compare the different devices other than its ability to search Google?
canadianfella 4y ago
[dead]
withinboredom 4y ago
"Siri, set an alarm for 5pm eastern standard time" ... you get an alarm for 5pm local time, with the memo 'eastern standard time' (assuming aren't located in eastern standard time, this is not the expected behavior).

Siri still sucks?

Siri isn't supposed to be great - its a voice interface to a few standardized interfaces that applications can hook into. The system provided intents ( https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit ) are rather limited. While we can say "it should be more" the architecture for it doesn't appear to be something that easily extensible by anyone (Apple included). However, for those intents - it does quite well and most processing is done on device rather than in the cloud and that fundamentally changes the economics and capability. It is much less expensive than Alexa to run (where nearly everything is in the cloud), but it is also something that can't do as much. Try this - turn on airplane mode and do "hey Siri what time is it?" or "hey Siri open notes" And while those are indeed a very limited examples (there are other examples such as interacting with HomeKit where it needs the lan), it shows that much of the work is done on the phone. This also means that its capabilities are limited to what you can run on the phone.

gonehome 4y ago
That feels like a retroactive explanation of the current status quo to me. I doubt Apple would agree "Siri isn't supposed to be great" - they just failed to live up to what they wanted. We'll see if that changes.
- shagie 4y ago
  The "what they hoped" is a question of "what who hoped?" When you look at SiriKit when compared to Google and Alexa, it is an entirely different approach that isn't designed for general tooling of a voice assistant but rather the intents show that it is designed for specific functionality of specific types of applications. Asking Siri for things outside of those intents was always delegated out to some other service (Wolfram Alpha was the choice for a while). Siri was never designed to try to monetize the voice interface (compare Alexa and Google) and thus wasn't trying to do everything and SikiKit shows that it can't do quite a bit. So that it can't do everything shouldn't be a surprise to Apple. Comparing Siri to Alexa, they are very different architectures with different goals and support costs. If you look at https://www.apple.com/siri/ https://www.apple.com/siri/ you should get the idea that this is interface to common tasks - not a general "do everything and chat about it" assistant. What's more, it limits what goes off device (whereas Alexa and Google do all speech to text on the cloud).
  - gonehome 4y ago
    Just watch the introduction of the Siri product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzItTz35QQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzItTz35QQ "Your intelligent assistant that helps you get things done just by asking" I suspect Scott Forstall and Jobs wanted it to be what LLMs show the potential for it to be. Not the crappy barely functioning timer setting app it currently is. Siri is dumb as rocks, it's so bad at basic queries it's not worth trying to use.
    - shagie 4y ago
      The tooling that it was designed for was things like https://youtu.be/agzItTz35QQ?t=709 https://youtu.be/agzItTz35QQ?t=709 Those were the intents that were set up. Yes, it would be nice to have LLM style power - but that isn't how Siri was architected even from the very start. Word combinations are recognized as certain intents and parsed for functions to call into apps that register that they are able to handle that function call. If there was no match for the intent, it was sent to Wolfram Alpha to do a knowledge base lookup. While Wolfram is really good, it certainly isn't a chat bot. Siri wasn't supposed to be smart. Siri was intended for an interface to the existing apps of phone, music, messages, calendar, reminders, map routes, email, and weather. When you look at that segment, 12:48 "just take your phone and ask Siri to set a timer for 30 minutes and you're done." Siri was very much intended as a timer setting app. What functionality in there that you see in this segment that isn't designed as an interface to existing apps? What time cue do you see them promising something smarter than what was designed?
      - gonehome 4y ago
        They open with what they want it to be “intelligent assistant” and then show the capabilities it currently had. Since that time in 2011 it has gotten no closer to “intelligent assistant”. That’s a failure imo. Google’s is much better at answering basic queries.
        shagie 4y ago
        Google's voice assistant is an interface to google cloud applications. Siri is an interface to a limited set of the apps on the iPhone. These are fundamentally different architectures for how how each was designed along with implications for privacy and where the company has compute resources that can be used. If you are after a general knowledge search engine, Google will certainly out preform Siri. Google has better cloud integration for a lot of their functionality. Apple doesn't have that amount of cloud resources that it can use and is a device first company rather than a cloud first company. If you want to say "android can search google better" Ok. I'll grant that. If that makes it "smarter" - ok. Android is smarter than Siri because it can search google better. If you want to say "android can control apps on its phone better" - I really want to see evidence that the ability for Android to control 3rd party music apps (e.g. Spotify) or report the weather or calendar or set up alarms... I don't believe that android is any better than Siri in that regard. If you want to chat with it (e.g. "what is the answer to life the universe and everything?") then those are cute responses that are programmed in. Do you have other criteria that you are using to compare the different devices other than its ability to search Google?

canadianfella 4y ago

[dead]

withinboredom 4y ago

"Siri, set an alarm for 5pm eastern standard time" ... you get an alarm for 5pm local time, with the memo 'eastern standard time' (assuming aren't located in eastern standard time, this is not the expected behavior).