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I got myself an iPhone 16 Pro because of the promised AI features. I had a vision in my mind of what it ought be like: While driving past a restaurant, I wante

I got myself an iPhone 16 Pro because of the promised AI features. I had a vision in my mind of what it ought be like: While driving past a restaurant, I wanted to know if they were open for lunch and if they had gluten-free items on their menu. I asked the "new" Siri to check this for me while driving, so I gave it a shot. "I did some web searches for you but I can't read it out to you while driving." Then what on earth is its purpose if not that!? THAT! That is what it's for! It's meant to be a voice assistant, not a laptop with a web browser! I checked while stopped, and it literally just googled "restaurant gluten free menu" and... that's it. Nothing specific about my location. That's nuts. Think about what data and access the phone has: 1. It knows I'm driving -- it is literally plugged into the car's Apple CarPlay port. 2. It knows where I am because it is doing the navigating. 3. It can look at the map and see the restaurant and access its metadata such as its online menu. 4. Any modern LLM can read the text of the web page and summarize it given a prompt like "does this have GF items?" 5. Text-to-voice has been a thing for a decade now. How hard can this be? Siri seems to have 10x more developer effort sunk into refusing to do the things it can already do instead of... I don't know... just doing the thing.

microtonal 8mo ago
Siri on the Apple Watch is even more fun. It can never answer a question and always opens up a webpage. Then you try to read it on the teensy display and then you are rewarded for your effort by the Siri/WatchOS/whatever closing the view after just a few seconds (even when you were scrolling with the crown). I am pretty sure they aren't doing any QA or the QA results don't get to the developers. With Pixel Watch I can still understand all the little bugs, it is well-known by now that (some of) the Pixel Watch PMs themselves use iPhones and Apple Watches. But you'd think that the Apple Watch PMs themselves use Apple Watches? The only other explanation that I can think of is that the org is pretty dysfunctional by now.

microtonal 8mo ago

Siri on the Apple Watch is even more fun. It can never answer a question and always opens up a webpage. Then you try to read it on the teensy display and then you are rewarded for your effort by the Siri/WatchOS/whatever closing the view after just a few seconds (even when you were scrolling with the crown). I am pretty sure they aren't doing any QA or the QA results don't get to the developers. With Pixel Watch I can still understand all the little bugs, it is well-known by now that (some of) the Pixel Watch PMs themselves use iPhones and Apple Watches. But you'd think that the Apple Watch PMs themselves use Apple Watches? The only other explanation that I can think of is that the org is pretty dysfunctional by now.