John Giannandrea to retire from Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#21

Post by DrewADesign » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:08 PM UTC

sfblah wrote: post #11

Siri's awfulness really is a thing to behold. I haven't used an android phone in a while. For those users out there, does its voice assistant actually work?

Could you share a bit about your use case/experience? Siri does what I need it to do— send messages, create reminders and calendar entries, look up basic facts and cites the source, play music, add things to lists, etc. I’m curious if you’re trying to do things that I haven’t, or if you’re just having a very different experience with those same things? Or maybe just have higher expectations for it?

Edit: why in gods name are people downvoting me for politely asking about someone’s differing experience?

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#22

Post by sethops1 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:09 PM UTC

elAhmo wrote: post #9

Siri is probably among the products which had the most exposure to users (probably a billion+ users throughout iPhone's history) without capturing that opportunity to actually do anything meaningful with the huge user base it got for free. A decade and a half is insane timeline in tech industry, and huge majority of users use Siri the same way today as 15 years ago, setting a timer or an alarm clock. If they had 0 im…

I'd throw in the failure to do anything meaningful with home automation, which I guess could fall under the Siri umbrella of failure. Maybe I'm still peeved big tech bought up the industry just to kill any innovation.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#23

Post by gedy » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:10 PM UTC

Onavo wrote: post #7

gedy wrote: post #6

Was anything even attempted? Looking from outside, Siri is same always been, and no improvement in a decade.

Supposedly the main blocker for launching is because Apple would consider it reputational damage if the AI hallucinates. They have a very conservative approach when it comes to LLMs (on the other hand they are happy to scan all your photos and messages in the guise of child safety and send the data to the government and ChatControl). Problem is, Siri is already damaging Apple's reputation with how useless it is..

Yeah, I guess I've always distinguished "hallucinating" as e.g I asked for a chicken soup recipe and it told me how to make cyanide. Vs some social media person prompt hacking it to say fascism is good, etc. I've seen more of the latter than the former.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#24

Post by datadrivenangel » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:10 PM UTC

danielheath wrote: post #8

gedy wrote: post #6

Was anything even attempted? Looking from outside, Siri is same always been, and no improvement in a decade.

Ten years ago, if it didn't understand what I meant, it told me so after 1-2 seconds. Now, it'll show a loading indicator for 5-6 seconds and then do nothing at all... or do something entirely unrelated to my request (eg responding to "hey siri, how much is fourteen kilograms in pounds" by playing a song from my music library).

Apple shot themselves in the foot in the late 2010s by switching to deep learning methods and making things slower and worse, with the spell checker being the worst example.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#25

Post by ares623 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:11 PM UTC

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #17

From the outside looking in it really feels like Apple focused so much on privacy and now has no strategy of how to make that work with AI right now. People increasingly seem to forgo the idea of retaining the data for themselves because they find AI products so fascinating / useful that they're just not caring, at least for the moment. I think this might swing back in the favor of Apple at one point, but right now i…

I personally hope Apple doesn’t get too involved in the madness. If the sentiment changes they’ll be in a great position messaging wise. Microsoft and Google have thrown their reputations away.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#26

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:11 PM UTC

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #17

From the outside looking in it really feels like Apple focused so much on privacy and now has no strategy of how to make that work with AI right now. People increasingly seem to forgo the idea of retaining the data for themselves because they find AI products so fascinating / useful that they're just not caring, at least for the moment. I think this might swing back in the favor of Apple at one point, but right now i…

> it really feels like Apple focused so much on privacy and now has no strategy of how to make that work with AI right now

I see Apple dusting off its OG playbook.

We're in the minicomputing era of AI. If scaling continues to bear fruit, we'll stay there for some time. Potentially indefinitely. If, however, scaling plateaus, miniaturisation retakes precedence. At that point, Apple's hardware (and Google's mindshare) incumbency gains precedence.

In the meantime, Apple builds devices and writes the OS that commands how the richest consumers on Earth store and transmit their data. That gives them a default seat at every AI table, whether they bother to show up or not.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#27

Post by cheeze » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:11 PM UTC

sfblah wrote: post #11

Siri's awfulness really is a thing to behold. I haven't used an android phone in a while. For those users out there, does its voice assistant actually work?

It works pretty well for me, but doesn't do nearly what I'd expect.

EG I can talk to it like I would chatgpt and it works well. But I can't be like "hey I want to get dinner with my wife on our anniversary, please book the best available option in my city for fine dining"

It's still way better than Siri, which feels like a voice CLI to me (same as Alexa, which is very low quality IME)

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#28

Post by npunt » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:12 PM UTC

elAhmo wrote: post #9

Siri is probably among the products which had the most exposure to users (probably a billion+ users throughout iPhone's history) without capturing that opportunity to actually do anything meaningful with the huge user base it got for free. A decade and a half is insane timeline in tech industry, and huge majority of users use Siri the same way today as 15 years ago, setting a timer or an alarm clock. If they had 0 im…

I'm amazed 'set a reminder for x when I leave this location' still doesn't get the 'when I leave this location'. It's clear user expectation created internally (by siri marketing) and externally (by ai tools) has far outpaced capability.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#29

Post by racl101 » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:12 PM UTC

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #17

From the outside looking in it really feels like Apple focused so much on privacy and now has no strategy of how to make that work with AI right now. People increasingly seem to forgo the idea of retaining the data for themselves because they find AI products so fascinating / useful that they're just not caring, at least for the moment. I think this might swing back in the favor of Apple at one point, but right now i…

It could benefit them if they remained an AI free or a NOT AI first alternative once enshitification has really taken hold with AI.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#30

Post by calvinmorrison » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 11:12 PM UTC

elAhmo wrote: post #9

Siri is probably among the products which had the most exposure to users (probably a billion+ users throughout iPhone's history) without capturing that opportunity to actually do anything meaningful with the huge user base it got for free. A decade and a half is insane timeline in tech industry, and huge majority of users use Siri the same way today as 15 years ago, setting a timer or an alarm clock. If they had 0 im…

hey, the most reliable way to send something to yourself is still via email. if it works it works.