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Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

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Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#371

Post by flybrand »

BlandDuck wrote: post #365
lynx23 wrote: post #91

Siri, don't make me even start. I like much of what Apple does, but Siri is just hilariously bad. The error rate at speech recognition seems to have gone up over the years. Keywords are randomly being changed, sometimes they fire, a day later you have to use a different phrase to get what you want. They even broke "Where am I" at least in German. "Wo bin ich" is sometimes replied to with "Sein oder nicht sein" (to be…

It's unbelievable that Apple hasn't been able to do better. My 'favorite' Siri 'feature' is when I ask for directions to 'home' it gives me directions to the local Home Depot.... really??? EDIT: After thinking about this for a while, the reason this irks me is that 'directions to home' is one of the most basic asks. I am not asking Siri to play some obscure unreleased track from an underground British punk band. I am…

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Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#372

Post by rahoulb »

cubefox wrote: post #338
thaumasiotes wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a name of a concrete person which has only one correct pronunciation. This is an insane standard. The [x] at the end of the German word doesn't exist in English; most English speakers wouldn't be able to pronounce it if they wanted to. When the demands you're making are literally impossible, the problem is you.

So just because the "th" sound doesn't exist in many languages, like German, they should pronounce "Heath Ledger" or "Anthony Hopkins" or "The Beatles" incorrectly? That seems to me a way more "insane" standard. By the way, the Scottish are perfectly able to pronounce "Loch Ness", which has the same sound for "ch" as "Bach".

I think there's something about sounds that you learn early on in language acquisition - maybe your brain develops differently.

'th' is the obvious one that non-english speakers struggle with. I remember a dutch guy laughing at my attempts at various dutch words - I literally could not hear the difference between his pronunciation and mine.

And 'ch' (as in Loch or Bach) is a sound in Scottish english but not in English english.

I lived in Scotland till I was 4, then moved to England and all traces of my previous Scottish accent are long long gone. But my friend, whose surname is Donnachie, says I'm the only English person she's met who pronounces her name correctly - I guess because I learnt that sound early on.

Similarly, my dad, who learnt english in India, still struggles with a "j" sound (he says "zudge" instead of "judge"), despite living here for 50 years and having a posh middle-class English accent that sounds just like a "native" english speaker.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#373

Post by hashtag-til »

BlandDuck wrote: post #365
lynx23 wrote: post #91

Siri, don't make me even start. I like much of what Apple does, but Siri is just hilariously bad. The error rate at speech recognition seems to have gone up over the years. Keywords are randomly being changed, sometimes they fire, a day later you have to use a different phrase to get what you want. They even broke "Where am I" at least in German. "Wo bin ich" is sometimes replied to with "Sein oder nicht sein" (to be…

It's unbelievable that Apple hasn't been able to do better. My 'favorite' Siri 'feature' is when I ask for directions to 'home' it gives me directions to the local Home Depot.... really??? EDIT: After thinking about this for a while, the reason this irks me is that 'directions to home' is one of the most basic asks. I am not asking Siri to play some obscure unreleased track from an underground British punk band. I am…

Or when it unexpectedly decides to "call" someone when I asked it to play some song while I'm driving.

I'm mindful my English pronunciation is not 100% accurate, but Alexa gives me no problem at all.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#374

Post by blululu »

Polyphonie wrote: post #360
c0m wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree so I installed SwiftKey. It worked great for years and I’ve been super happy! Then in the last year, SwiftKey has been randomly crashing so while I type I swap between the SwiftKey and normal keyboard unwillingly several times per message. The built-in keyboard seems absolutely determined to believe that the word 'fuck' does not exist.

You can easily add fuck into your dictionary: Settings>General>Keyboard >Text Replacement.

This is useful advice but, the frustration is warranted if a user needs to modify a sub-sub-sub menu to undo a default that is not even grammatically correct.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#375

Post by dm319 »

qwertox wrote: post #355
epaga wrote: post #245

Siri is without a doubt in my mind the most embarrassing thing Apple has had on the market in the past 20 years. With ChatGPT it is now feeling like Siri the broken tricycle is being compared to a Lamborghini. Honestly I would have been concerned if Apple employees weren’t frustrated with Siri. Pretty sure they need to take Siri out to pasture and start some LLM-based project from scratch.

It's odd to hear this. As an Android user I've always felt I'm missing out something really great, judging from the keynotes.

Gotta say I'm not especially impressed with my Google assistant on my pixel either. The hit rate makes it worthwhile only when I have to use it.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#376

Post by srg0 »

There is one killer application for voice assistants: answering phone calls. I wish Siri could respond to all unknown phone numbers, screen promotional and robocalls, take notes if necessary and report what's important to me (and I need to be able to tell her what's NOT important). This is what the assistants should do, not switching lights or trying to play a random song.

Neither Siri nor its competition can do this. Speech recognition accuracy is not really important, it can just take voice notes as a fallback, or ask to "press 1" to talk to me directly.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#377

Post by kaicianflone »

srg0 wrote: post #376

There is one killer application for voice assistants: answering phone calls. I wish Siri could respond to all unknown phone numbers, screen promotional and robocalls, take notes if necessary and report what's important to me (and I need to be able to tell her what's NOT important). This is what the assistants should do, not switching lights or trying to play a random song. Neither Siri nor its competition can do this…

I remember Google showing this kind of tech off a year or two at their dev conference. Was it just vaporware with a person in the back using a synthesized voice? We’re waiting google

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#378

Post by MrGilbert »

ricardobeat wrote: post #363
MrGilbert wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, but it's not really endorsed by Apple. As such, some folks don't even know about that. Personally, I like to use SwiftKey. //Edit: Would really like to know for what I got down voted for?

I haven’t downvoted, but might be because third-party keyboards have been officially supported for many year in iOS. Your comment gives the impression they’re some kind of hack.

Thank you! No, that wasn't how I intend to mean it. If I recall correctly, the implementation was very restricted when the feature first launched in 2016. And if I recall correctly, it's not a feature which Apple would mention ever again.

Therefore, I have the impression that this is not a feature Apple would endorse much.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#379

Post by Zach_the_Lizard »

cubefox wrote: post #338
thaumasiotes wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a name of a concrete person which has only one correct pronunciation. This is an insane standard. The [x] at the end of the German word doesn't exist in English; most English speakers wouldn't be able to pronounce it if they wanted to. When the demands you're making are literally impossible, the problem is you.

So just because the "th" sound doesn't exist in many languages, like German, they should pronounce "Heath Ledger" or "Anthony Hopkins" or "The Beatles" incorrectly? That seems to me a way more "insane" standard. By the way, the Scottish are perfectly able to pronounce "Loch Ness", which has the same sound for "ch" as "Bach".

I lived in Japan for a while. My name contains sounds that just didn't work for them. No one pronounced it correctly.

I was not upset, annoyed, or confused. It's just the way language acquisition works. You learn the sounds you need and the rest are hard to acquire later in life.

Be strict in what you send, forgiving in what you receive.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#380

Post by TexanFeller »

MrGilbert wrote: post #340
aembleton wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't you just change the keyboard on your iPhone?

You can, but it's not really endorsed by Apple. As such, some folks don't even know about that. Personally, I like to use SwiftKey. //Edit: Would really like to know for what I got down voted for?

It's completely supported, you can get keyboard replacements on the app store.

It's just less secure to use them than the one built into the OS because the third party keyboards might run input through some web service instead of keeping it completely local.

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