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How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa

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

#151

Post by ddingus »

hellofunk wrote: post #72
1337biz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

But it's not personified to the degree Siri is. I noted this elsewhere in the thread.

Doing that bit of theatre, with some humor, pop culture relevant things, even just good responses, appears to matter more to people than "it can do it", and "it actually did it" hit rates.

OK Google needs a name.

Google is this big, smart thing. People get that.

But, "Ask Siri" has less friction and appears easier to identify with than giving an order to a corporation is, "OK Google."

Maybe just, "Hey Google" would make a subtle difference.

And, in typical Apple fashion, "Ask Siri" is all you need to know to attempt it.

Further, discovery has error. If that can be best guess, combined with some fun, people will play.

"OK Google" lacks these human friendly connotations.

A name would be a follow, hard for Google, but... If it were me, I would flat out own that, get the name, and run ADS. "We hear you... meet [name not common, familiar sounding, friendly, easy to say.]"

There has to be either an old world name with good connotations, or a variant that is catchy, fun, gender fluid.

Lol, use goog. Mostly kidding, but a tiny bit serious.

Better, much better is out there.

Or, let the user name it. Why not?

"OK Google, can I call you inigo?"

"Sure, I will answer to inigo. And OK Google when I'm not properly introduced, OK?"

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

#152

Post by blkhp19 »

hellofunk wrote: post #62
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.

One thing I feel nearly certain is that had Steve Jobs been alive, Apple would have never under any circumstances released a flagship phone and a flagship laptop simultaneously that, out of the box, had no way of connecting to each other. I still can't believe that happened.

I disagree completely. By the time they shipped with incompatible cables / ports, wireless backup with iCloud, wireless sync with iTunes (who even "syncs" at all anymore...), and even wireless deployment and debugging had all been implemented.

Steve wouldn't have wanted you to connect your phone to your computer in the first place. That's why iTunes got wireless sync back before everything was in the cloud. The only really remaining piece was developers needing to plug in for deployment and debugging, but who cares - they're developers, they'll manage.

And now even that's solved!

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

#153

Post by Twisell »

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.

Comparatively I think we could safely say that Microsoft transition from a retiring Bill Gates to Steve Ballmer didn’t go as smoothly as what happened at Apple.

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

#154

Post by refulgentis »

MBCook wrote: post #135
flounder3 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, l…

I always wondered how much of a toll Apple’s multilingual support was compared to the small number that Google and Amazon have.

Google supports all of the same languages as Siri, and also supports Brazilian Portuguese. Amazon supports 2 languages

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

#155

Post by mercer »

ddingus wrote: post #151
hellofunk wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

But it's not personified to the degree Siri is. I noted this elsewhere in the thread. Doing that bit of theatre, with some humor, pop culture relevant things, even just good responses, appears to matter more to people than "it can do it", and "it actually did it" hit rates. OK Google needs a name. Google is this big, smart thing. People get that. But, "Ask Siri" has less friction and appears easier to identify with t…

I'm not a huge fan of Siri's 'jokey' personality, but I could live with it if it actually worked. As it is, it just feels extra frustrating to have a 'personal assistant' that is extremely dumb and cracks jokes.

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

#156

Post by Pokepokalypse »

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?) -…

Google's voice recognition is excellent, and fuck Samsung for putting that stupid Bixby crap and getting in the way.

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

#157

Post by konschubert »

brownbat wrote: post #80
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?) -…

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…

> 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?

I think once somebody finds a good API for that, it will be a watershed moment.

Amazon Alexa has apps called "skills", but they expose their own voice interface which is always inconsistent.

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

#158

Post by ddingus »

mercer wrote: post #155
ddingus wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not personified to the degree Siri is. I noted this elsewhere in the thread. Doing that bit of theatre, with some humor, pop culture relevant things, even just good responses, appears to matter more to people than "it can do it", and "it actually did it" hit rates. OK Google needs a name. Google is this big, smart thing. People get that. But, "Ask Siri" has less friction and appears easier to identify with t…

I'm not a huge fan of Siri's 'jokey' personality, but I could live with it if it actually worked. As it is, it just feels extra frustrating to have a 'personal assistant' that is extremely dumb and cracks jokes.

Oh, I agree. Don't use it myself.

Got downvotes, but it seems to me Google has the superior product. True for me and how I use it anyway.

Add in a little personification, and it's nothing but win, IMHO.

So far, I've seen people like the bit of theatre related to Siri. Whether we do or not isn't necessarily the point.

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

#159

Post by chetanahuja »

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?"

This is a common confusion among iPhone users. I suspect the reason is that if all you're used to is Siri (and it's myriad disappointments), it's hard to conceive of the the quantum leaps that is Google Assistant in product polish and usefulness.

First and foremost is the near flawless voice recognition. I, with my India accent even, can just say things to my Android device (and now, my new google home) it just ... gets it. It's spooky.

Then, after it recognizes the question/request correctly, it is very likely to take the correct action with a high enough probability that it's now almost a surprise to hear "Sorry I don't now how to do that yet" when it does happen.

Outside of the active queries, there are things it does automatically that are at the level of what a particularly attentive human assistant might do for you.

It'll check your calendar and remind you that you should start driving for your 4pm appointment because the traffic is unusually heavy on 101 today.

Or that your flight tomorrow morning has been cancelled. It knows about your flight because of the confirmation email in your gmail account.

Remember, you have to take no action for this sort of reminders. Just have to opt in when assistant is setting itself up on your new phone.

There are myriad other such examples. It has saved my bacon numerous times. We're truly living in the future.

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

#160

Post by sjwright »

tinus_hn wrote: post #122
IBM wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apple Maps is like Bing: almost as good as the #1 service, but almost is not enough to make anyone care.

Apple Maps is remarkably good today, doing nearly all of the important things well. Here in Australia, it's on par with Google Maps for driving (slightly worse for novel route planning, slightly better for guidance) and when travelling to major world cities I've found Apple Maps is frequently better than Google Maps for navigating on foot and public transport.

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