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John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

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Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#101

Post by threatofrain »

reaperducer wrote: post #85
threatofrain wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see how Google Assistant handles the nearest McDonald’s request? Google doesn’t ask you which McDonald’s is the closest one, tap the one you want.

I'd rather have the list than a single choice. That way I can pick one that isn't in a crappy neighborhood, or is on the way to a place I'm going anyway. My biggest frustration with my car's built-in navigation is that when I ask it for the "nearest" item, more than 50% of the time it tells me to make a U-turn because it picked the mathematically nearest item, rather than picking the conventionally nearest item.

I actually think if you said "closest" or "nearest" and Siri just gives you a list, then Siri has missed out on useful information. You can also say "Nearby McDonald's" to Google and get a list, versus "Go to the nearest McDonalds" and you'll get navigation.

There are all sorts of ways to handle this request, but Siri's is the laziest, and in doing so asks more of the user's attention. If you just say "McDonalds" to either voice assistant, you also get a list. From that perspective, it's as if Siri ignores any information that might be gleaned from the rest of your sentence.

Siri learns from us but we also learn from Siri, and we might find that some words don't matter. You mind as well just say "McDonalds" if Siri is going to ignore the rest.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#102

Post by trhway »

m0zg wrote: post #16

It's just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best in order to fix the very thing that will kill their cash cow in the next 5 years. I'm on iOS myself (and have been faithful since the first iPhone), but $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future. Understands me perfectly, comes up with decent…

>It's just unbelievable to me that the company sitting on a quarter trillion dollars is unwilling to spend a small fraction of that hoard to hire the best of the best

Their current B people do hire the best of the best ... of B people. It like my current BigCo (we are straight C people) feels no talent shortage even right now in the Bay Area while also supposedly hiring only the best people - there is no shortage of C people. We enjoy our work/life balance while of course we can't even dream of producing anything even just slightly resembling Siri.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#103

Post by todipa »

starshadowx2 wrote: post #29
e1ven wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't just throw more random people at the problem - Adding too many developers can slow projects down and make them less likely to work. (9 women can't make a baby in a month, and all that..) The guy this post is about just came from Google, where he lead on the stuff you're praising. He can push these efforts in the right direction, and help make other strategic hires.. Isn't this exactly what you want?

9 women can't make a baby in a month but 9 women can make 9 babies in 9 months instead of 1 woman making 1 in 9 months. More people can work on more/different things in the same period of time, thereby increasing total work done. (Parallel vs sequential and all that..)

This example took a life of its own.

Just wanted to clarify an irrelevant point to this discussion - Length of the pregnancy isn't 9 months.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3777570/

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#104

Post by Grazester »

reaperducer wrote: post #85
threatofrain wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see how Google Assistant handles the nearest McDonald’s request? Google doesn’t ask you which McDonald’s is the closest one, tap the one you want.

I'd rather have the list than a single choice. That way I can pick one that isn't in a crappy neighborhood, or is on the way to a place I'm going anyway. My biggest frustration with my car's built-in navigation is that when I ask it for the "nearest" item, more than 50% of the time it tells me to make a U-turn because it picked the mathematically nearest item, rather than picking the conventionally nearest item.

Yeah sure you rather have a list. Why not have it return a list of answers for every question that had a definite answer like this then? Options are better.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#105

Post by phaus »

Despegar wrote: post #47
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

15-20 years? How are you SURE that smartphones will still be a thing in 20 years? Let alone that Apple will still be the hip premium brand? 20 years is a LONG time. The average lifespan for an S&P 500 company is less than that these days.

Shifts in computing paradigms are incredibly rare. The smartphone is unlikely to be replaced for a long time to come. There will be plenty of head fakes along the way no doubt (smart speakers and voice bots come to mind), but the smartphone is simply too good and has too much utility to be easily challenged. And you also have to make a bet that Apple won't come to dominate that area as well (even if they aren't first…

All its going to take for the next paradigm shift will be for voice assistants and batteries to get better, and for google glass-like devices get so good that they match the feature set of smartphones and standalone VR systems and also become so small that they fit in a regular looking pair of sunglasses.

I'm not sure how long it will take, but it honestly seems inevitable.

Maybe it won't be glasses, but it will almost certainly be something we wear instead of a thing that we carry around forever.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#106

Post by gxs »

Dwolb wrote: post #100
smileysteve wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but then you try to make the children be playmates, and only 3 might work for a while, 1 might be a jerk that hurts the others; and 5 years down the road, you move anyway, so you only have 1 baby. ^ Sticking to the analogy when it comes to integrating into business; competing products, and which one actually maintains adoption. 9 babies in 9 months is basically what Google has done with its messaging apps.

Off topic question: is there a word or phrase for this conversation? Something to describe arguing about the issue at hand completely through the metaphor and not directly referring to the issue at hand.

The word is pretty much analogy and counter analogy.

See this wikipedia article that discusses it in the context of logic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_analogy

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#107

Post by LgWoodenBadger »

baxtr wrote: post #6
mjlee wrote: post #3

Hopefully this is a signal that Apple is going to take steps to improve Siri. If Apple can find a way to get the best of both worlds from data privacy and machine learning then it will have been well worth the wait.

I am really annoyed by Siri these days. I was so excited when they introduced it in 2011 (?). But I feel like there was almost no progress since then. It’s so painful to use Siri even for the simplest of tasks

I would suggest trying Shortcuts, because Shortcuts are so phenominally easy to create, share, and modify that it blows my mind.

It took me all of 3 minutes to create a Shortcut that lets me message my wife with my ETA at my house when I say "hey siri coming home" (or use the Siri activation in my car) and then "yes" when she asks for confirmation to send it. Takes my current location, finds the route to my house, grabs the time, and plops it into a custom message that I typed up that's sent to my wife's iPhone.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#108

Post by threatofrain »

scarface74 wrote: post #71
threatofrain wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you see how Google Assistant handles the nearest McDonald’s request? Google doesn’t ask you which McDonald’s is the closest one, tap the one you want.

But that’s more of an interface choice than a technical limitation. Siri both understood the question and had the ability to navigate to it. In my case, there were 9 McDonalds within a 10 mile radius. In cases where there was only one location nearby, it took me right to it.

I think you give Siri too much of the benefit of the doubt when you say that Siri understands your request. You may be correct, but maybe Siri just looks for a location like "McDonalds" and most of the time just shows you a list? It's easier when you're ignoring the rest of the sentence as if it has no relevance to improving your response.

It's very hard for us to discuss Siri's internal state; by contrast it's easier to discuss Google's observable performance, which is to semantically differentiate between these two requests.

You can just ask Google, "Nearby McDonalds" and you'll get a list. "Go to the nearest McDonalds" and you get navigation.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#109

Post by UseStrict »

threeseed wrote: post #86
symfoniq wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ. Unreliable keyboards and security chips that frequently crash the computer are feature regressions.

The keyboard issues were fixed in the 2018 MacBook Pros. And there is no systemic issues with the security chips. We have entire floors of developers using MacBook Pros and no one has had “frequent crashes” from the T2 chip.

I know it tends to be more preference, but even on the 2018 MacBook Pros I find the keyboards terrible. Dust and spill resistant sure, slightly improved tactile response yes, but unlike my 2015 MacBook Pro my fingers seem to get strained and sore from the butterfly keyboards. I like travel in my keys.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#110

Post by miles »

kissickas wrote: post #87
scrollaway wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $30 Google Home puck feels like it's from the future Is it ? Is the $30 puck better than the Home assistant or does it just suck that much more in French than it does in English? (Not being snarky, genuinely asking) It doesn't understand followup commands, the Hue integration is rotten bad, and the commands definitely have to be rigid. Things like "What were my meetings on the 12th of December" aren't understood. A…

I'm with you. I was severely unimpressed - I can't say "go to sleep in a half hour," but must say "go to sleep in 30 minutes." If I accidentally say "go to bed" I've got to start up a whole new "Hey Google" cycle again. At least I know it's not listening to me all the time.

> At least I know it's not listening to me all the time.

Do you really though?

Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/11/technology/google-home-mini...

And while Google responded quickly:

Google just permanently killed the feature that made some Home Minis eavesdrop https://www.the-ambient.com/news/google-home-mini-spy-proble...

who is to say what the next update brings?

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