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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

#151

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

saagarjha wrote: post #135
wuliwong wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i use siri to turn off and on hue lights (sometimes) and sometimes to set reminders. I do feel that since I dont have Siri on an "always on" speaker, it becomes less useful. I dislike the idea of having an "always on" speaker, so I'm not sure what to do. :)

If it makes you feel better, the “always on” recordings never leave your device. They’re not even that great at recognizing anything other than “this sounds like a ‘hey Siri’”.

For a fun experiment, yell RED FIRE TRUCK into your phone then immediately activate Siri manually.

With Hey Siri turned on, you will reliably get all three words. With it off, you will usually get Chuck or Truck, or sometimes FIRETRUCK depending on timing.

This seems to be for people who start talking before the Siri prompt is fully active like “Set Timer for 5 minutes”.

But shows that Apple is typically pre-recording if not also pre-processing.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#152

Post by matwood »

talkingtab wrote: post #115
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?

I've always found the mythical-man-month thing to be completely at odds with reality. Cities and ant colonies work because they use sophisticated collaboration technologies instead of top down rigid hierarchies. But maybe I'm wrong and there is a better explanation for NYC.

> sophisticated collaboration technologies instead of top down rigid hierarchies

Let me know when you find sophisticated collaboration technologies working beyond a team of say, 5-10.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#153

Post by dr_ »

skizm wrote: post #122

Lots of comments about improving Siri here. This is interesting to me for several reasons I won't address, but I will ask this: Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? From a purely functional standpoint, they seem super awkward to me. I like buttons that click and reassure me of every input. I like to feel confident my actions won't be misinterpreted. I like that no one else near me will get weirded…

Yes, in the car via CarPlay. It makes for safer driving. I just plug my phone in and put it away so I can’t reach it to text and drive. I then ask it to text, look up directions or play whatever song I want.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#154

Post by roganartu »

yaseenk wrote: post #147
skizm wrote: post #122

Lots of comments about improving Siri here. This is interesting to me for several reasons I won't address, but I will ask this: Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? From a purely functional standpoint, they seem super awkward to me. I like buttons that click and reassure me of every input. I like to feel confident my actions won't be misinterpreted. I like that no one else near me will get weirded…

20% of Google searches are made by voice. https://searchengineland.com/google-reveals-20-percent-queri... That number is probably a little outdated now. But it’s definitely not targeting a niche audience.

I find this absolutely fascinating when I compare it to my personal experience. It begs the question: how frequently does the average person Google something compared to power users? I consider myself to have above average googling skills, and I'm a developer so there's obviously a lot of documentation searching regularly, but even excluding all of that I surely perform a good 10-20 non-programming searches a day and it could easily be an order of magnitude more if I'm actively researching something.

Does the average user perform significantly less searches, and so the novelty or occasional voice search moves the needle 20%, or are they performing as many searches as me but using voice for many of them. I personally only ever found voice search useful for things that are more like questions and not research ("how old is _______" is a classic example) so I find it difficult to believe the latter. The former would be quite the revelation though because I always assumed _everyone_ googled as much as I do but it seems that might not be the case.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#155

Post by js2 »

dr_ wrote: post #153
skizm wrote: post #122

Lots of comments about improving Siri here. This is interesting to me for several reasons I won't address, but I will ask this: Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? From a purely functional standpoint, they seem super awkward to me. I like buttons that click and reassure me of every input. I like to feel confident my actions won't be misinterpreted. I like that no one else near me will get weirded…

Yes, in the car via CarPlay. It makes for safer driving. I just plug my phone in and put it away so I can’t reach it to text and drive. I then ask it to text, look up directions or play whatever song I want.

This would be great if Siri ever reliably worked for me. It works just often enough that I keep trying to use it before giving up in frustration for the umpteenth time. I recently retrofitted CarPlay to my Mazda and it's better than Mazda's voice recognition, but that's a very low bar.

Here's an example of something that seems obviously should work: I'm driving to pick someone up. Apple maps is navigating. "Hey siri, text my ETA."

Yeah, that doesn't work. The only thing I reliable get out of Siri is setting a timer and opening the camera.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#156

Post by geofft »

m0zg wrote: post #28
geofft wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Magic is about management. The most talented ICs can't do much unless management supports them in it. (And I say this as an IC.)

Not in research.

Anyone with a successful research lab is a manager: they're spending a good chunk of their time herding grad students, writing grant proposals, hiring junior faculty, etc. This model works.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#157

Post by wuliwong »

giobox wrote: post #35
wuliwong wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i use siri to turn off and on hue lights (sometimes) and sometimes to set reminders. I do feel that since I dont have Siri on an "always on" speaker, it becomes less useful. I dislike the idea of having an "always on" speaker, so I'm not sure what to do. :)

How old is your iPhone? I don’t recall the first model to introduce it, but all iPhones now I believe have supported an “always on” hey Siri mode for a while, even if phone is in standby.

Oh, well maybe it is on then...

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#158

Post by zjaffee »

whatusername wrote: post #148
skizm wrote: post #122

Lots of comments about improving Siri here. This is interesting to me for several reasons I won't address, but I will ask this: Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? From a purely functional standpoint, they seem super awkward to me. I like buttons that click and reassure me of every input. I like to feel confident my actions won't be misinterpreted. I like that no one else near me will get weirded…

There are some use-cases where voice is a better interaction method. Driving alone in a car is one -- so you can keep both hands on the wheel and both eyes on the road. Another one is in the kitchen. My hands are often full/busy/messy when I'm cooking -- which is a pain when I need to set a timer on my phone. Being able to say "Alexa - set a timer for 12 minutes" is great. The novelty of the Echo has faded almost com…

That's the thing though, given how cheap they an echo dot is, especially during promotions, there's very little reason not to get one. They're the perfect small gift.

Virtually every other hot gadget from the last decade has been far more expensive at this stage to the point where it slowed down the adoption rate (smartwatches, certain cameras), or made it absolutely never go anywhere near what the hype train lead us to believe (VR/AR products).

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#159

Post by scarface74 »

skizm wrote: post #122

Lots of comments about improving Siri here. This is interesting to me for several reasons I won't address, but I will ask this: Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? From a purely functional standpoint, they seem super awkward to me. I like buttons that click and reassure me of every input. I like to feel confident my actions won't be misinterpreted. I like that no one else near me will get weirded…

Two scenerios:

- when I’m driving is the big one

- and for reminders.

It’s lot easier to say:

- remind me to call my mom when I get home.

- remind me to call my wife when I get in the car.

- remind me to get milk when I get to $grocery_store

Than to set up the reminder manually.

Re: John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team

#160

Post by scott_s »

skizm wrote: post #122

Lots of comments about improving Siri here. This is interesting to me for several reasons I won't address, but I will ask this: Do people really use voice commands for, well, anything? From a purely functional standpoint, they seem super awkward to me. I like buttons that click and reassure me of every input. I like to feel confident my actions won't be misinterpreted. I like that no one else near me will get weirded…

I say "Wake me up at 7" and "Turn off my alarm" every work night and work morning. If I'm ever timing something (like how long to let my French press steep), I say "Set a timer for x minutes."
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