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It's hard to imagine that just killing off Siri would hurt iPhone sales. It would be interesting to know how many people actually use, or even want Siri, or any

It's hard to imagine that just killing off Siri would hurt iPhone sales. It would be interesting to know how many people actually use, or even want Siri, or any type of voice assistant for that matter. The primary value of Siri is to check a box for investors, who are riding the AI wave. The same people how rode the voice assistant wave 15 years ago. There's a lot of AI features that makes sense for Apple to include and develop, a voice assistant isn't one of them. If they want to turn Siri into an Apple ChatGPT, then that's slightly different, and more about getting yet another product that would make users sign up for a monthly iCloud subscription. If it's all on device though, that doesn't really seem like the goal.

lxgr 8mo ago
> It would be interesting to know how many people actually use, or even want Siri, or any type of voice assistant for that matter. Do you drive to work? I don't either, but I suspect anyone that does, and that's hundreds of millions of people in the US alone, would get a lot of value out of a version of Siri that can actually act as a "personal assistant", capable of doing things like booking a doctor's appointment that fits into their calendar, summarizing email, canceling subscriptions etc. And beyond that, I suspect the main reason voice assistants haven't taken off yet is the fact that they just haven't been possible pre-LLMs. Siri has been voice dial on a prescription-free amount of steroids. Imagine what it could do with actual contextual understanding.
- trinix912 8mo ago
  I drive, and right now I honestly can't trust Siri to even add a to-do item properly. Sometimes it creates a calendar entry, sometimes it randomly decides to do a web search instead. They haven't really been doing anything to fix this (until now, that is).
pwagland 8mo ago
You would be surprised I think. I know a bunch of people who use Siri, for all sorts of things. I personally regularly use the "push to activate" Siri for quickly setting up meetings et al. And a *lot* of people want to use Siri while driving, when they can't access the phone, at least not legally.
spyke112 8mo ago
Anecdotal data coming in hot. I use Siri daily for controlling HomeKit devices. She's not always on point though. I've named a light basically "Radiohouse", because that's what the designer called it, but 25% of the time she insists of playing radio instead of turning on the light. I'm not a native english speaker and communicate with Siri in Danish, but still. Siri is definitely not useless and I would love for her to become a lot better. You may be right that the majority probably doesn't use Siri, but that's because it doesn't really make sense to use Siri on the phone. I rely on HomePod speakers to interface with it, that makes a lot more sense for me.
- jonnrb 8mo ago
  I used to run into this and I use Siri enough to control HomeKit that I give things really mundane names ("Upstairs Bathroom Vanity", "Guest Bedroom Front Shades") to ensure that we have no miscommunication between me and Siri. If you name your Hue light "House Music" and you're confused when you ask to "turn on house music", you've played yourself. I am interested to see if such a light was in the LLM context window or there were memories recorded of past bad encounters if an LLM would predict better...
- HaloZero 8mo ago
  I have this same issue with my overcast app. I use it for podcasts and Siri insists it’s the band.
lopis 8mo ago
Just because you can't find use in a voice assistant, it doesn't mean others don't. At the very least, Siri is an important accessibility tool and everyone benefits from accessibility.
lowkj 8mo ago
Designed my entire house around Siri with HomePods in every room. We use it to control the lights, blinds, heated floor, play music, turn on the tv, etc. Would be great if it could do more.
MattRix 8mo ago
This is an absurd take. Of course tons of people use Siri. It’s by far the fastest way to create alarms, reminders, and events. If Apple got rid of it, I would feel like a cave man, having to unlock my phone and navigate multiple screens just to do basic tasks. I’d immediately switch to Android.
- mrweasel 8mo ago
  Apple has spend, and will spend, billions of dollars developing Siri and you use it to create alarms, reminders and events (probably more). The question quickly becomes if that money had been better spend elsewhere, at the cost of losing a small number of customers. Apple will remove successful phones models, because they did sell as well as expected, but they keep pumping money into software that still only does basic voice assistance? The problem for Apple is that they can't NOT invest in turning Siri into an AI product, because the stock would lose value the minute that announcement was made, regardless of how sound the financials of that decision might be. I might be completely wrong and 80% of iPhone users use Siri, but I'd surprised if it's even 20%.
sajithdilshan 8mo ago
I've been using an iPhone since 2017 and the only times I use Siri is to set an alarm or to play Music. Setting an alarm works like 90% of the time. Playing music on the other hand is a coin toss. Most of the time it fails because it plays the wrong song, cannot understand what I say or just refuse to play and ask me to unlock the phone because I'm not using apple music.
- NetMageSCW 8mo ago
  I use it to run Shortcuts I’ve created daily. Just have to careful with the naming - something too short can get confused.

lxgr 8mo ago

> It would be interesting to know how many people actually use, or even want Siri, or any type of voice assistant for that matter. Do you drive to work? I don't either, but I suspect anyone that does, and that's hundreds of millions of people in the US alone, would get a lot of value out of a version of Siri that can actually act as a "personal assistant", capable of doing things like booking a doctor's appointment that fits into their calendar, summarizing email, canceling subscriptions etc. And beyond that, I suspect the main reason voice assistants haven't taken off yet is the fact that they just haven't been possible pre-LLMs. Siri has been voice dial on a prescription-free amount of steroids. Imagine what it could do with actual contextual understanding.

trinix912 8mo ago
I drive, and right now I honestly can't trust Siri to even add a to-do item properly. Sometimes it creates a calendar entry, sometimes it randomly decides to do a web search instead. They haven't really been doing anything to fix this (until now, that is).

pwagland 8mo ago

You would be surprised I think. I know a bunch of people who use Siri, for all sorts of things. I personally regularly use the "push to activate" Siri for quickly setting up meetings et al. And a *lot* of people want to use Siri while driving, when they can't access the phone, at least not legally.

spyke112 8mo ago

Anecdotal data coming in hot. I use Siri daily for controlling HomeKit devices. She's not always on point though. I've named a light basically "Radiohouse", because that's what the designer called it, but 25% of the time she insists of playing radio instead of turning on the light. I'm not a native english speaker and communicate with Siri in Danish, but still. Siri is definitely not useless and I would love for her to become a lot better. You may be right that the majority probably doesn't use Siri, but that's because it doesn't really make sense to use Siri on the phone. I rely on HomePod speakers to interface with it, that makes a lot more sense for me.

jonnrb 8mo ago
I used to run into this and I use Siri enough to control HomeKit that I give things really mundane names ("Upstairs Bathroom Vanity", "Guest Bedroom Front Shades") to ensure that we have no miscommunication between me and Siri. If you name your Hue light "House Music" and you're confused when you ask to "turn on house music", you've played yourself. I am interested to see if such a light was in the LLM context window or there were memories recorded of past bad encounters if an LLM would predict better...
HaloZero 8mo ago
I have this same issue with my overcast app. I use it for podcasts and Siri insists it’s the band.

lopis 8mo ago

Just because you can't find use in a voice assistant, it doesn't mean others don't. At the very least, Siri is an important accessibility tool and everyone benefits from accessibility.

lowkj 8mo ago

Designed my entire house around Siri with HomePods in every room. We use it to control the lights, blinds, heated floor, play music, turn on the tv, etc. Would be great if it could do more.

MattRix 8mo ago

This is an absurd take. Of course tons of people use Siri. It’s by far the fastest way to create alarms, reminders, and events. If Apple got rid of it, I would feel like a cave man, having to unlock my phone and navigate multiple screens just to do basic tasks. I’d immediately switch to Android.

mrweasel 8mo ago
Apple has spend, and will spend, billions of dollars developing Siri and you use it to create alarms, reminders and events (probably more). The question quickly becomes if that money had been better spend elsewhere, at the cost of losing a small number of customers. Apple will remove successful phones models, because they did sell as well as expected, but they keep pumping money into software that still only does basic voice assistance? The problem for Apple is that they can't NOT invest in turning Siri into an AI product, because the stock would lose value the minute that announcement was made, regardless of how sound the financials of that decision might be. I might be completely wrong and 80% of iPhone users use Siri, but I'd surprised if it's even 20%.

sajithdilshan 8mo ago

I've been using an iPhone since 2017 and the only times I use Siri is to set an alarm or to play Music. Setting an alarm works like 90% of the time. Playing music on the other hand is a coin toss. Most of the time it fails because it plays the wrong song, cannot understand what I say or just refuse to play and ask me to unlock the phone because I'm not using apple music.

NetMageSCW 8mo ago
I use it to run Shortcuts I’ve created daily. Just have to careful with the naming - something too short can get confused.