How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa • Hacker News Board

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#71

Post by flounder3 » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #31

It's sort of sad to read a story about a story, and not be able to figure out which problems were created in the source vs. the retelling. Mashable: "Right now, it looks like Siri won't be blown up and a [sp] rebuilt". Yeah, well, that'd most likely be a huge mistake[1] depending on your definition of "blown up" and "rebuilt", and also Siri's already been rebuilt twice.[2] The Information: "One of Apple’s original pl…

Regarding [1], the move to Mesos was not a rewrite. Some core components had to be improved, but [2] was primarily an infrastructure upgrade that happened to make Siri considerably faster by ditching hypervisors. It was a massive feat that was accomplished by relatively few engineers.

There were always many components under review for reengineering; keep in mind that Siri was released before WebSockets was a thing, let alone RFC.

The snowball effect of Siri's failures originated from iOS Program Management pushing us to expand into as many other languages as soon as possible from the beginning, thus diverting resources from implementing or polishing original "Siri, Inc." features and various "nice to have" improvements to en-US usage.

Source: I worked on Siri from the moment it was acquired, and no longer work at Apple. Richard Williamson's recent comments are pathetic.

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#72

Post by hellofunk » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:41 PM UTC

1337biz wrote: post #65

hellofunk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is strictly anecdotal but a friend of mine is an exec at Facebook and we were recently discussing phones. He had an iPhone for a few years and has now had an Android for a couple years. He said that by far the most drastic difference between the two platforms is Siri vs. Assistant (or whatever Google's assistant is called in the phone). He said it is no contest how much more useful and functional Assistant is, c…

Obligatory question is why? What usefullness or functionality made that much of a difference to him?

I want to like Siri but I spend so much time correcting what it has misunderstood, it's nearly not worth using it.

The Google alternative is, from what I understand, something that just works.

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#73

Post by melling » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:43 PM UTC

spullara wrote: post #39

veesahni wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's voice recognition is excellent. I trust Assistant to help me throughout my day with a number of things now: - Cooking & laundry timers - Reminders (remind me to do X when I get home) - Directions (Take me to the nearest X, take me home, etc) - Checking hours of business (what time does X close today) - Initiating phone calls (Call X) - Checking weather (is it going to snow today? How cold is it right now?) -…

All of those Siri can do. Anything else?

Yeah, Siri doesn’t hear as well. It can’t pause music by me asking it. It also has some annoying bugs:

http://h4labs.org/siri-next-monday-isnt-christmas/

Another one is when Siri tries to update an existing reminder when I say “create reminder”

I have Apple Music and I’ll often use my little Echo Dot when I want to play a song just because I can simply talk to Alexa from across the room and it will hear me.

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#74

Post by ebikelaw » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:44 PM UTC

Twisell wrote: post #28

Something always make me scratch my head. Is there any proof that actual people use and value Google and Amazon assistant more than Siri? Or is the leadership only designed by autoproclaimed experts and funky ad-hoc metrics? I totally confess that I use Siri for only 3 things: -Desactivating all wake up alarm during my morning poo -Setting timers while baking -Sending a « I’m coming » text to my loved one before ridi…

So far unmentioned in this discussion is the only reason I use Android voice assistant: Android Auto. When I'm driving my car I obviously can't type on my phone, so I use my voice for everything: changing the navigation destination, calling for music to be played, dialing the phone and sending text messages, amusing children by asking it stupid questions, etc.

I carry an iPhone on my person but I use Android in my car. I don't ever find myself using Siri, but I use Google Assistant a lot. I tried using CarPlay a few times but the voice recognition just wasn't there. I distinctly remember trying to get it to navigate to a restaurant called Da Nang Quan and it just was stumped. Google can recognize these kinds of things. I've also noticed it has no problem recognizing the spoken commands of my young children which generally speaking Siri can't figure out at all.

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#75

Post by kahnjw » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:45 PM UTC

spullara wrote: post #39

veesahni wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google's voice recognition is excellent. I trust Assistant to help me throughout my day with a number of things now: - Cooking & laundry timers - Reminders (remind me to do X when I get home) - Directions (Take me to the nearest X, take me home, etc) - Checking hours of business (what time does X close today) - Initiating phone calls (Call X) - Checking weather (is it going to snow today? How cold is it right now?) -…

All of those Siri can do. Anything else?

All of those Siri can do maybe half the time. In my experience, it's a completely unreliable service. Sort of embarrassing when your voice assistant can't perform the most basic possible task on an iPhone: locking the screen.

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#76

Post by ebikelaw » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:47 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #43

Twisell wrote: post #28

Something always make me scratch my head. Is there any proof that actual people use and value Google and Amazon assistant more than Siri? Or is the leadership only designed by autoproclaimed experts and funky ad-hoc metrics? I totally confess that I use Siri for only 3 things: -Desactivating all wake up alarm during my morning poo -Setting timers while baking -Sending a « I’m coming » text to my loved one before ridi…

> Is there any proof that actual people use and value Google and Amazon assistant more than Siri? I found at least one measurement report: As of July 2017 Verto Analytics showed Siri on top[1] with 41.4M unique users per month (but falling), and Alexa with only 2.6M (but rising fast). [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/11/siri-usage-and-engagement-...

Honestly my own experience makes me wonder how many of those "users per month" either accidentally invoked it by holding down the button on their phones or had Siri just pop up and start yakking because its hotword detection went wrong.

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#77

Post by jsmith99 » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:48 PM UTC

veesahni wrote: post #36

Twisell wrote: post #28

Something always make me scratch my head. Is there any proof that actual people use and value Google and Amazon assistant more than Siri? Or is the leadership only designed by autoproclaimed experts and funky ad-hoc metrics? I totally confess that I use Siri for only 3 things: -Desactivating all wake up alarm during my morning poo -Setting timers while baking -Sending a « I’m coming » text to my loved one before ridi…

Google's voice recognition is excellent. I trust Assistant to help me throughout my day with a number of things now: - Cooking & laundry timers - Reminders (remind me to do X when I get home) - Directions (Take me to the nearest X, take me home, etc) - Checking hours of business (what time does X close today) - Initiating phone calls (Call X) - Checking weather (is it going to snow today? How cold is it right now?) -…

> - Reminders (remind me to do X when I get home)

One thing it can't do is 'remind me to do X when I leave work'. Can siri?

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#78

Post by maltalex » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:48 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #47

Twisell wrote: post #28

Something always make me scratch my head. Is there any proof that actual people use and value Google and Amazon assistant more than Siri? Or is the leadership only designed by autoproclaimed experts and funky ad-hoc metrics? I totally confess that I use Siri for only 3 things: -Desactivating all wake up alarm during my morning poo -Setting timers while baking -Sending a « I’m coming » text to my loved one before ridi…

I've had similar confusion based on the anecdata: none of the android users i know (including myself) ever use the Google Assistant. Or if they do, they don't do it in public. most iPhone users i know use siri at least a little bit. So is Siri actually better? Or is there something else going on that makes it more usable even if it's technically not as "good" And the quantity of articles complaining about siri would…

I have a related anecdote. After being on Android since version 1.5 I’ve recently switched over to an iPhone (8) due to privacy and security concerns. Thats when I begun using the voice assistance for the first time. For me, it was a trust issue - I simply had an easier time trusting Apple’s Siri with my voice. On Android I would disable every non-essential Google feature that I could. I don’t feel like I need to do that on IOS.

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#79

Post by blisterpeanuts » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:52 PM UTC

xiaq wrote: post #67

> "It was slow, when it worked at all," Williamson said. "The software was riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me." Wow. It those were his original words, I don't doubt a bit that this guy should be responsible for Siri being left behind.

I know, I couldn't believe the chief of a major software product at Apple would talk smack about the previous team. It's what a newbie might do when he has screwed something up. Classic dodging.

Re: How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

#80

Post by brownbat » Wed, Mar 14, 2018, 11:52 PM UTC

veesahni wrote: post #36

Twisell wrote: post #28

Something always make me scratch my head. Is there any proof that actual people use and value Google and Amazon assistant more than Siri? Or is the leadership only designed by autoproclaimed experts and funky ad-hoc metrics? I totally confess that I use Siri for only 3 things: -Desactivating all wake up alarm during my morning poo -Setting timers while baking -Sending a « I’m coming » text to my loved one before ridi…

Google's voice recognition is excellent. I trust Assistant to help me throughout my day with a number of things now: - Cooking & laundry timers - Reminders (remind me to do X when I get home) - Directions (Take me to the nearest X, take me home, etc) - Checking hours of business (what time does X close today) - Initiating phone calls (Call X) - Checking weather (is it going to snow today? How cold is it right now?) -…

I use it for these things, they're ok. I occasionally try to get it to control an app, it usually fails, but that's my dream state: I'd like to be able to say, "Hey Google, open app X and do Y task."

But I don't know if there's enough incentive for apps to add an assistant interface. How easy is it to add commands on your app that it will accept via assistant? Are there common APIs or structures for this to shift the incentives, allow it to proliferate app by app, rather than waiting on the assistant developers to manually do each one?

After that we need to go back to Aza Raskin's project, uh, Ubiquity? Anyone could build little scripts, verbs, that helped build a natural language input from the ground up. That's how we get to stuff like, "Hey Google, take a screenshot of news.ycombinator.com and email it to Joe."