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I don't use Siri all day, every day. It's certainly not perfect. But did you know you can say things like... "Turn off the Apple TV." "Turn off low power mode

I don't use Siri all day, every day. It's certainly not perfect. But did you know you can say things like... "Turn off the Apple TV." "Turn off low power mode." "Stop navigating." "Open [name of app I don't want to spend time finding in my iOS folders]" "What song is this?" (Listens and usually is able to discover the name/artist of the song in the background.) So when people say things like, "Siri is mostly useless," I think – wow, that is a very hyperbolic statement.

mthoms 3y ago
It's useless beyond manipulating iDevices, navigation tasks and simple questions. Even then, if you don't ask in the exact right way it often doesn't work.
- lolinder 3y ago
  Is this any different than Alexa or Google, though? I guess Google is probably better at looking up facts and Alexa at ordering stuff (if buying things without even seeing a picture is your thing), but neither is that useful. Is this not just a case of voice interfaces being much harder to do right than people originally hoped? (I say this as someone who has a Google Home that I use regularly, but mostly as a kitchen timer and music player.)
  - 8ytecoder 3y ago
    I mentioned an example in another comment - basic manipulation of timers don’t work well - like, adding time to an existing timer. When I’m working in the kitchen this is really useful. There are also major performance issues - “working on it” and “sorry can you say that again” are probably two of it’s most common utterances. Random bus like “there’s nothing playing” and the wrong siri taking over the request from a million miles away and you just can’t even hear is extra annoying.
    - toast0 3y ago
      Google Home is pretty bad at adding time to existing timers too. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it creates a second timer with a difficult to access name. Personally, I'm become convinced a good talking/listening clock is actually a useful thing, but Google isn't providing it, and it sounds like Apple isn't either.
  - isk517 3y ago
    At this point it will be a race see which virtual assistant can become universally useful first, and from what the article is implying Siri is not anywhere close to where they need it to be.
PaulBGD_ 3y ago
My favorite is on the Apple TV, "search for [some video] on youtube" will actually open the app and search for it. I think the big issue is that a lot of these aren't discoverable, and because Siri isn't very smart at natural language you won't discover them by asking for something similar like you could with Google Assistant. An LLM for parsing requests could be super interesting here.
- shagie 3y ago
  Siri mostly runs on device. Having a LLM needs a much more powerful device or Apple would need to drastically scale up its cloud buys from AWS, GCP, and Azure (which would in turn make the service more expensive).
- brianpan 3y ago
  "Fast-forward 2 minutes" to skip commercials made watching on the Apple TV way better than watching on my laptop, especially for sports.
agentdrtran 3y ago
Siri's functionality is fine for me, it just seems to really struggle to understand me compared to Google
nneonneo 3y ago
My favorite is “[Let’s] go home”, which is what I use to navigate back to my house via Apple Maps. There’s also sending messages to people - you can send voice messages (“send a voice message to X”), which works decently well and avoids transcription failures.
- artificial 3y ago
  This is even better, I usually use "navigate home". Thanks for sharing the voice message bit!

mthoms 3y ago

It's useless beyond manipulating iDevices, navigation tasks and simple questions. Even then, if you don't ask in the exact right way it often doesn't work.

lolinder 3y ago
Is this any different than Alexa or Google, though? I guess Google is probably better at looking up facts and Alexa at ordering stuff (if buying things without even seeing a picture is your thing), but neither is that useful. Is this not just a case of voice interfaces being much harder to do right than people originally hoped? (I say this as someone who has a Google Home that I use regularly, but mostly as a kitchen timer and music player.)
- 8ytecoder 3y ago
  I mentioned an example in another comment - basic manipulation of timers don’t work well - like, adding time to an existing timer. When I’m working in the kitchen this is really useful. There are also major performance issues - “working on it” and “sorry can you say that again” are probably two of it’s most common utterances. Random bus like “there’s nothing playing” and the wrong siri taking over the request from a million miles away and you just can’t even hear is extra annoying.
  - toast0 3y ago
    Google Home is pretty bad at adding time to existing timers too. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it creates a second timer with a difficult to access name. Personally, I'm become convinced a good talking/listening clock is actually a useful thing, but Google isn't providing it, and it sounds like Apple isn't either.
- isk517 3y ago
  At this point it will be a race see which virtual assistant can become universally useful first, and from what the article is implying Siri is not anywhere close to where they need it to be.

PaulBGD_ 3y ago

My favorite is on the Apple TV, "search for [some video] on youtube" will actually open the app and search for it. I think the big issue is that a lot of these aren't discoverable, and because Siri isn't very smart at natural language you won't discover them by asking for something similar like you could with Google Assistant. An LLM for parsing requests could be super interesting here.

shagie 3y ago
Siri mostly runs on device. Having a LLM needs a much more powerful device or Apple would need to drastically scale up its cloud buys from AWS, GCP, and Azure (which would in turn make the service more expensive).
brianpan 3y ago
"Fast-forward 2 minutes" to skip commercials made watching on the Apple TV way better than watching on my laptop, especially for sports.

agentdrtran 3y ago

Siri's functionality is fine for me, it just seems to really struggle to understand me compared to Google

nneonneo 3y ago

My favorite is “[Let’s] go home”, which is what I use to navigate back to my house via Apple Maps. There’s also sending messages to people - you can send voice messages (“send a voice message to X”), which works decently well and avoids transcription failures.

artificial 3y ago
This is even better, I usually use "navigate home". Thanks for sharing the voice message bit!