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It's because they're a cost center. They don't generate revenue for any big tech company. No one makes purchase decisions based on the voice assistant quality.

by smt88 3y ago

It's because they're a cost center. They don't generate revenue for any big tech company. No one makes purchase decisions based on the voice assistant quality. I know a few people who lightly use them for timers or music, but almost no one goes deeper than that.

samuelg123 3y ago
Yeah, makes sense (but still disheartening). I wonder if Apple will roll out a paid Siri Pro tier (with LLM). Maybe that would incentivize investment into tablestake features (ie. responding reliably).
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fl0id 3y ago
  Actually apple should have most incentive to make it reliable, as they sell least amount of other stuff based on ads and recommendations, afaik.
  - smt88 3y ago
    They should, but Siri is astonishingly, impossibly bad. It's the worst of the bunch. I guess that's evidence that Apple really isn't competing on quality of most of their products. Once you're locked in their ecosystem, you just take what you get.
- al_borland 3y ago
  I think Amazon is the main one being talked about. Alexa was created with the thought that people would use it to order more stuff, they didn’t. They even gave away the Amazon Dash for free, thinking it would be the Alexa for the kitchen that would get people to order food, it had a barcode scanner. Amazon items and prices are too inconsistent for anyone to order anything with a voice assistant and they never solved for this. They’d need to end the entire 3rd party seller program to even have a shot. Siri is more of a value add for people buying Apple hardware, like everything else in iOS and macOS. It can also be seen as an accessibility feature. It was never really meant to be its own revenue stream. It’s funded by hardware sales.
smitty1e 3y ago
The technology as such isn't bad. It's just the idea that the gear is spying on me, and I don't know where the data go for processing, that is the big downer.
- jinushaun 3y ago
  It’s not that. Otherwise no one would use gmail. The difference is that gmail works

by smt88 3y ago

samuelg123 3y ago

Yeah, makes sense (but still disheartening). I wonder if Apple will roll out a paid Siri Pro tier (with LLM). Maybe that would incentivize investment into tablestake features (ie. responding reliably).

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fl0id 3y ago
Actually apple should have most incentive to make it reliable, as they sell least amount of other stuff based on ads and recommendations, afaik.
- smt88 3y ago
  They should, but Siri is astonishingly, impossibly bad. It's the worst of the bunch. I guess that's evidence that Apple really isn't competing on quality of most of their products. Once you're locked in their ecosystem, you just take what you get.
al_borland 3y ago
I think Amazon is the main one being talked about. Alexa was created with the thought that people would use it to order more stuff, they didn’t. They even gave away the Amazon Dash for free, thinking it would be the Alexa for the kitchen that would get people to order food, it had a barcode scanner. Amazon items and prices are too inconsistent for anyone to order anything with a voice assistant and they never solved for this. They’d need to end the entire 3rd party seller program to even have a shot. Siri is more of a value add for people buying Apple hardware, like everything else in iOS and macOS. It can also be seen as an accessibility feature. It was never really meant to be its own revenue stream. It’s funded by hardware sales.

smitty1e 3y ago

The technology as such isn't bad. It's just the idea that the gear is spying on me, and I don't know where the data go for processing, that is the big downer.

jinushaun 3y ago
It’s not that. Otherwise no one would use gmail. The difference is that gmail works