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John Gruber also ripped Apple a new one: https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of_cupertino https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/som

John Gruber also ripped Apple a new one: https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of_cupertino https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_th... Personally, I don't really care if they ever ship a working AI feature as long as they don't neglect and shittify the rest of iOS/macOS in the process.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
That ship has unfortunately sailed.
colechristensen 2y ago
If I had to guess, I'd say they're coming up against the limits of LLMs where LLMs are ... stupid. There's a quality issue that is difficult to get around when you try to make an LLM do something out of its comfort zone and it can suggest you to do dangerous things very easily. I wish they would forget the really advanced features and just focus on little ones. Like particularly with Alexa back when I used to use that, one of the major frustrations was figuring out the magical word order that would get it to do what I wanted, it would only do a thing if I said it in a certain way otherwise it would get condfused or do the wrong thing. An LLM would be great at making that not happen. But instead of just that little bit, they're trying to do Star Trek levels of computer voice control, missing out on incremental improvements.
- tigeroil 2y ago
  I really don't think so. Their competitors have much, much better offerings here, so it's clearly not a limitation of the technology.
  - aaomidi 2y ago
    Their competitors don’t have the restriction of keeping nearly everything on device that Apple does and is a selling point for them.
mac-mc 2y ago
IMO there has been something rotten in the Siri house for 7+ years. It was bad even back then compared to competitors like alexa or google on a pure voice assistant basis. Open-ish models like Whisper translated speech to text far better for years, with local models, and they just sit on their worse software anyway. The hardware for their microphones is phenomenal too, which makes it an extra worse shame.
- mercer 2y ago
  To me it's been wild to be using whisper for stunningly good transcriptions and whenever I ask siri to set a reminder for "vacuuming", I end up getting a reminder to "fuck you". which /is/ funny, to be fair.
rcarmo 2y ago
Yeah, John seemed pretty upset. I do think they’ve already compromised iOS/macOS enough, though: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/03/14/1830 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/03/14/1830
throwaway48476 2y ago
The macOS desktop is fully neglected. They haven't touched the activity monitor in 20 years. Keyboard input for Java swing never gets fixed. Alt tab on mac doesn't show window previews.
- ioands 2y ago
  What's wrong with Activity Monitor? Seems fine to me. Alt-Tab doesn't show window previews because it switches between apps and not windows. Previews are in Mission Control which is for switching between windows.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago

That ship has unfortunately sailed.

colechristensen 2y ago

If I had to guess, I'd say they're coming up against the limits of LLMs where LLMs are ... stupid. There's a quality issue that is difficult to get around when you try to make an LLM do something out of its comfort zone and it can suggest you to do dangerous things very easily. I wish they would forget the really advanced features and just focus on little ones. Like particularly with Alexa back when I used to use that, one of the major frustrations was figuring out the magical word order that would get it to do what I wanted, it would only do a thing if I said it in a certain way otherwise it would get condfused or do the wrong thing. An LLM would be great at making that not happen. But instead of just that little bit, they're trying to do Star Trek levels of computer voice control, missing out on incremental improvements.

tigeroil 2y ago
I really don't think so. Their competitors have much, much better offerings here, so it's clearly not a limitation of the technology.
- aaomidi 2y ago
  Their competitors don’t have the restriction of keeping nearly everything on device that Apple does and is a selling point for them.

mac-mc 2y ago

IMO there has been something rotten in the Siri house for 7+ years. It was bad even back then compared to competitors like alexa or google on a pure voice assistant basis. Open-ish models like Whisper translated speech to text far better for years, with local models, and they just sit on their worse software anyway. The hardware for their microphones is phenomenal too, which makes it an extra worse shame.

mercer 2y ago
To me it's been wild to be using whisper for stunningly good transcriptions and whenever I ask siri to set a reminder for "vacuuming", I end up getting a reminder to "fuck you". which /is/ funny, to be fair.

rcarmo 2y ago

Yeah, John seemed pretty upset. I do think they’ve already compromised iOS/macOS enough, though: https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/03/14/1830 https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/03/14/1830

throwaway48476 2y ago

The macOS desktop is fully neglected. They haven't touched the activity monitor in 20 years. Keyboard input for Java swing never gets fixed. Alt tab on mac doesn't show window previews.

ioands 2y ago
What's wrong with Activity Monitor? Seems fine to me. Alt-Tab doesn't show window previews because it switches between apps and not windows. Previews are in Mission Control which is for switching between windows.