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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

#271

Post by jacksmith21006 »

_sdegutis wrote: post #99
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…

This is my same experience. The only things I can get Siri to do reliably is to route me home, or to do simple math problems. Also very simple short term reminders.

Siri messes up so much just not worth the effort.

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

#272

Post by jacksmith21006 »

remir wrote: post #101

In my opinion, the problem with these assistants is that interacting with them using voice give you the impression that they're intelligent, but it's just a trick. When it works, it can be useful for certain tasks, but when it doesn't work, you lose trust in the system pretty quickly, especially if you're in a situation where you expect and need the assistant to work, like when driving.

Would agree with Siri but the Google Assistant is pretty incredible at figuring out what you want.

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

#273

Post by jacksmith21006 »

arvinsim wrote: post #181
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.

TL;DR I don't find it useful so it must be the same for other people

Problem is people that put Siri in the same bucket as the Google Assistant and assume they are all not helpful. The issue is how bad Siri is.

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

#274

Post by viraptor »

mstade wrote: post #239
matthewmacleod wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri integrates with the "find my friends" app, so it's all current-location based. Quite swish.

In my family we call this the stalker app. It's very good for finding out where specifically where someone is, even in malls and other places you might not expect GPS location to work all that well. (Thanks surveil– I mean wifi!) It is a system where you have to give permission for people to see your location, and you can revoke it at any time should you wish, but it's still real creepy. The good for us (knowing wher…

I'm using google maps location sharing for that. It's built-in and easy to toggle.

It's pretty useful for knowing when your partner will arrive if they're driving a long way, or for things like "going on a long bike ride, if I break down / go missing, you know where to look".

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

#275

Post by AlphaSite »

ak217 wrote: post #236
sjwright wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ma…

In reality Google Maps is farther ahead of its competitors than most people realize. Google Maps now provides wholly personalized points of interest and attention affordances in its UI. It's also well on its way to 3D scanning and annotating POIs in every structure in the world, including very large pedestrian-only interiors. It also has realtime transit and traffic feeds, and more pedestrian trails and venue detail…

I don’t know if I’d say most of these things matter enough at the end of the day, just to cherry pick, Apple has 3D, interiors, traffic, transit and pedestrians. Not everywhere, but it’s a problem which time and money can fix. Both of which apple has in abundance.

Also anecdotally I’m not sure if I can agree that Google’s POIs are vastly better, mostly just different but of a similar low quality (which is to say neither pleases me).

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

#276

Post by romwell »

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…

Personally, I get the most mileage out of Google's voice assistant when I'm driving.

It's a situation when I can't (well, shouldn't) use the phone's UI, so it's great to ask it to:

-find a place and check its hours of operation

-navigate to said place

-find a gas station along the way

-etc.

On an occasion, I've asked it to add things to a calendar.

As a lazy person, I prefer to do things with the minimal number of steps. Scheduling things in a calendar requires an inordinate amount of clicks. On the other hand, it's something that a CLI could be well-suited for. For such things, voice control is natural.

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

#277

Post by enos_feedler »

Angostura wrote: post #267
Woofles wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking hours of the business works well. The integration with Yelp has that done pretty well. I've actually been super impressed with Siri. You can have it call you an uber, get the leading scorer from your favorite hockey team, contextually ask followup questions about a person you were searching, etc. I haven't used Siri in a long time (besides timers, weather, etc) and it has come so far since I did.

Sounds like I need go get a favourite hockey team lickety-spit.

its the Toronto Maple Leafs

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

#278

Post by tschwimmer »

AlphaSite wrote: post #275
ak217 wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality Google Maps is farther ahead of its competitors than most people realize. Google Maps now provides wholly personalized points of interest and attention affordances in its UI. It's also well on its way to 3D scanning and annotating POIs in every structure in the world, including very large pedestrian-only interiors. It also has realtime transit and traffic feeds, and more pedestrian trails and venue detail…

I don’t know if I’d say most of these things matter enough at the end of the day, just to cherry pick, Apple has 3D, interiors, traffic, transit and pedestrians. Not everywhere, but it’s a problem which time and money can fix. Both of which apple has in abundance. Also anecdotally I’m not sure if I can agree that Google’s POIs are vastly better, mostly just different but of a similar low quality (which is to say neit…

I can't speak to your usecase and preferences, but a cartographer points out how much richer Google Maps are here: https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat

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

#279

Post by gambiting »

ak217 wrote: post #236
sjwright wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ma…

In reality Google Maps is farther ahead of its competitors than most people realize. Google Maps now provides wholly personalized points of interest and attention affordances in its UI. It's also well on its way to 3D scanning and annotating POIs in every structure in the world, including very large pedestrian-only interiors. It also has realtime transit and traffic feeds, and more pedestrian trails and venue detail…

It still feels years behind any dedicated maps though(like TomTom), at least in those countries that I've tried it(UK, Spain, Poland, Germany). It's just consistently wrong about which roads are connected with each other, it doesn't know that certain roads are one-way or that you can't make a left/right turn out of a certain street. I've reported dozens of mistakes and they just don't get fixed. Every single morning on my way to work it tries to route me left on a no-left-turn intersection - I've literally filed a map correction report for this 3 or 4 times, still nothing.

TomTom just don't have this issue, I've been using it for 5 years now and it's never done anything like that. Also TomTom Traffic is vastly better than Google Traffic, consistently beating it for time and route prediction(I've been driving with Android Auto and TomTom 5000 set up side by side for a while, and if TomTom suggests a detour it's usually a good one - take the one google suggests and you're getting stuck on some small street that google thinks you can drive through but you actually can't).

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

#280

Post by _Tev »

astrange wrote: post #197
hellofunk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do you want to connect your phone to your laptop?

Transfering files (mp3, photos, random stuff I am transfering between laptops, esp. when not connected to the internet) and charging.
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