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How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

mashable.com

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

#121

Post by scarface74 »

kirykl wrote: post #19
jameskilton wrote: post #7

You can probably point to a lot of quality failings at Apple as starting with Steve Job's death. Apparently he failed to teach and instill a culture of high quality and instead just focused on micro-managing everything himself. Steve Jobs may go down as both the best and worst CEO Apple ever had.

I think what really hurts Apple is the lack of the “reality distortion field” at keynotes and media events. Those set the tone for products and the company with users and Apple hasn’t been nearly as effective at this without him.

Apple's revenues, profits, and market cap have increased dramatically since 2011. How else do you measure effectiveness?

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

#122

Post by tinus_hn »

IBM wrote: post #110
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.

So Forstall and his direct report were responsible for two botched product launches, Siri and Maps. This is a big blow to the camp suggesting firing Forstall was a mistake.

Siri may have stalled now but it definitely wasn’t a botched launch. And Apple maps may not work great in all cases but it did succeed in forcing Google to provide decent maps on iOS. Before Apple Maps the vector maps were an Android exclusive.

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

#123

Post by jd20 »

killion wrote: post #98

Not being able to flag requests that Siri failed to parse tells me that the Siri team isn't serious about making Siri better. Just adding a small "That isn't what I asked" button or letting me say something like "Hey Siri, you got my last request wrong" would give Apple a mountain of usable data.

There's actually a way to do this, for a long time. In older versions, you'd see a wavy underline on certain words it was less confident about, letting you choose alternatives. The current version has a "Tap to edit" link.

Problem is discoverability. And having a mountain of "this request was wrong", without knowing what the answer should have been, would require too much manual sifting.

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

#124

Post by spentdeath »

All the known techniques for NLP and NLU are mediocre. From Apples perspective, it makes a lot of sense to not invest so much money for such little gain. Google Assistant is supposedly better, but I don’t notice/care. Google/Amazon pour a lot of money into their personal assistant tech, but the end result is hardly noticeable or useful.

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

#125

Post by scarface74 »

FrancoisBosun wrote: post #94

Siri is very dumb. I use for for reminders and alarms. I speak fr-ca as opposed to fr-fr, and some conversations go like this: Siri, call X on cell Sorry, can’t call X Siri, call X on mobile Calling X on cell In fr-ca, we talk about cell phones. In the contact app, the mobile phone is registered as cell phone, but in fr-fr, they use mobile. I also sometimes have this conversation: Siri, rappelle-moi de mettre des mou…

Seeing that Alexa only works in English and German (https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...)

Siri is still better than Alexa for most of the world....

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

#126

Post by robotkdick »

Siri has 20x more active users than Alexa. Not sure about Google.

While they are perceived as having fallen behind, Apple is still way, way ahead.

And when she works, like driving directions, people aren't even aware they're using Siri.

Damned impressive given the car is moving through a vast network of roads/traffic/construction while instructions are being given.

Meanwhile, Alexa gets to sit at home and help with baking timers...

The competition will help everyone (no matter what platforms you choose).

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

#127

Post by jacksmith21006 »

spentdeath wrote: post #124

All the known techniques for NLP and NLU are mediocre. From Apples perspective, it makes a lot of sense to not invest so much money for such little gain. Google Assistant is supposedly better, but I don’t notice/care. Google/Amazon pour a lot of money into their personal assistant tech, but the end result is hardly noticeable or useful.

Find the Google Assistant very useful.

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

#128

Post by jd20 »

rixrax wrote: post #48

How/for what do people actually use Siri, or Alexa for? I mean I can't think of having seen anyone use them for a long time for anything but to either test them out for curiositys sake, or for demoing their new Alexa controlled drapes. Hopefully this wasn't too off-topic. Maybe HN should have an ability to create a poll and attach them to a thread. ;-)

Having two newborns has made me come to appreciate Alexa in a whole new way: my hands are almost always full with one (or both) babies and being able to use my voice to control the lights, play music for them, set reminders or alarms for myself, has been a godsend.

While my wife was bedridden after her C-Section surgery, she loved being able to use Echo's ability to call other Echo's in the house (or outside the home) when she needed something. Kind of like an intercom system. The problem with the iPhone is that it was usually either on the charger, or battery was dead, or it was left on vibrate. The Echo was always 100% reliable for her, which is really critical when you can't even get out of bed.

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

#129

Post by madeofpalk »

robotkdick wrote: post #126

Siri has 20x more active users than Alexa. Not sure about Google. While they are perceived as having fallen behind, Apple is still way, way ahead. And when she works, like driving directions, people aren't even aware they're using Siri. Damned impressive given the car is moving through a vast network of roads/traffic/construction while instructions are being given. Meanwhile, Alexa gets to sit at home and help with b…

> And when she works, like driving directions, people aren't even aware they're using Siri.

What does that actually mean? When people talk about Siri; they’re talking about the thing that you talk to. I don’t think anyone thinks they’re not using Siri when they’d actually are.

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

#130

Post by madeofpalk »

IBM wrote: post #119
jarjoura wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an engineer who reported to Williamson, I’ve got to say I was far more intimidated by him than I ever was of Forstall. He rarely smiled in a meeting and his old school heavy handed management style always took the fun out of the work. Honestly, I don’t know the full details, but I still hold that Forstall took the fall for the poor execution of Williamson in the Maps debacle.

>Honestly, I don’t know the full details, but I still hold that Forstall took the fall for the poor execution of Williamson in the Maps debacle. Well that's not true because Eddy Cue fired Williamson [1]. Maps might have been the straw that broke the camel's back, but Forstall was fired also because he couldn't work well with Bob Mansfield (who came back out of retirement after he was gone [2]) and Jony Ive. [1] http…

Let’s be honest here - none of us actually know what went on.
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