John Giannandrea to retire from Apple • Hacker News Board

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#171

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:33 AM UTC

highwaylights wrote: post #100

epistasis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri was also completely miscommunicated from the beginning. I could never get Siri to do what I wanted, because I didn't realize that it had a very strict and narrow menu, but it never communicated what that menu was, and had no way of saying "here are the 5 things you can tell me about." And then there were the network communication issues where you don't know why you're not getting a response, or if Siri is going…

I get this pain with Apple in a bunch of different areas. The things they do well, they do better than anyone, but part of the design language is to never admit defeat so very few of the interfaces will ever show you an error message of any kind. The silent failure modes everywhere gets really frustrating. I’m looking at you, Photos sync. EDIT: just noticed this exact problem is on the front page in its own right ( h…

Photos is horrific for this. No progress, no indicators. And what little status you get has no connection to reality.

Will it sync? When? Who knows? You’re on WiFi with a full battery and charging? So? Might be a minute, might be an hour. Oh, you restarted Photos? Who cares? Not Photos.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#172

Post by FireBeyond » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:35 AM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #47

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…

Siri is really a pretty useless product. Its annoying that sometimes I can say “siri is x y” and it will answer me but other times it will respond “sorry I cant google this while youre driving” or whatever response. I see no reason I cant say “siri read me the wikipedia page on the thirty years war”. Why cant I query with siri? “Siri where is the closest gas station coming up?” I basically only want siri whilst drivi…

My favorite is when you have Siri off but CarPlay on. You can be actively navigating, but say “find me the nearest X” and it’ll say “I’m sorry, I don’t know where you are”

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#173

Post by evan_ » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:36 AM UTC

the_snooze wrote: post #120

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…

Alexa is in the same boat. Compared to old-fashioned finger-and-screen interfaces, maybe voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case. It's inconvenient, unreliable, and even if it works quite slow. Yet you see companies continue to chase the dream in the current generative AI craze. I get the sci-fi "wow" appeal, but even the folks who tried to build Minority Report-style 3D interfac…

Alexa has gotten significantly worse with the "Alexa+" AI updates. I used to be able to say stuff like "Alexa, set the lights to 5" and it would turn the lights to 5% in the room I was currently in. Now half the time it tries to start a conversation about the number 5, or the northern lights, or other random nonsense. Absolute garbage.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#174

Post by torben-friis » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:38 AM UTC

jacobgkau wrote: post #133

torben-friis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's a company who could ever afford to be late to the party is apple though. Not the first to bring mp3 players to the market, nor phones, nor tablets. Market leader every time. They could have just stayed in a corner talking about privacy, offer a solid experience while everything else drowns in slop, researched UX for llms and come 5 years later with a killer product. I don't get why they went for the rush.…

That's a great point and an easy way to visualize it as an outsider, but it's not necessarily that simple. For one thing, the iPad (market-leading tablet) and the iPhone (market-leading pocket touchscreen device) were not their first attempt at doing that. That would be the Newton, which was an actual launched product and a commercial failure. For another thing, even Apple can't just become the market leader by doing…

I see your point, but I see nothing to indicate they’re doing the “polish and wait”. No reason to believe they’re cooking behind the scenes or that this product was a learning exercise for them.

Most of their current products seem to be decaying in the dead march towards the next yearly release. ux and ui are becoming more and more poorly thought (see their last design language). They half pursue ideas and don’t manage to deliver (vr, apple car, etc).

I see cargo culting and fad chasing like any average leadership, only with a fatter stack of cash supporting the endeavour.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#175

Post by QuercusMax » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:39 AM UTC

thatjoeoverthr wrote: post #154

epistasis wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri was also completely miscommunicated from the beginning. I could never get Siri to do what I wanted, because I didn't realize that it had a very strict and narrow menu, but it never communicated what that menu was, and had no way of saying "here are the 5 things you can tell me about." And then there were the network communication issues where you don't know why you're not getting a response, or if Siri is going…

In game design we used to call this opacity “hunt the verb” in text adventures. All chat bots suffer this flaw. GUIs solve it. CLIs could be said to have it, but there is no invitation to guess, and no one pretends you don’t need the manual.

For CLIs - most reasonable commands either have a `-h`, `--help`, `-help`, `/?`, or what have you. And manpages exist. Hunt the verb isn't really a problem for CLIs.

And furthermore - aren't there shells that will give you the --help if you try to tab-complete certain commands? Obviously there's the issue of a lack of standardization for how command-line switches work, but broadly speaking it's not difficult to have a list of common (or even uncommon) commands and how their args work.

(spends a few minutes researching...)

This project evidently exists, and I think it's even fairly well supported in e.g. Debian-based systems: https://github.com/scop/bash-completion.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#176

Post by layer8 » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:40 AM UTC

ignoramous wrote: post #148

warbaker wrote: post #141

Unfortunate that JG is the fall guy for Siri. He was very successful at Google (e.g. BERT was published just after he left), but it looks like he wasn't able to save Apple from itself.

> Unfortunate that JG is the fall guy for Siri... From TFA Some of the teams that Giannandrea oversaw will move to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue, such as AI Infrastructure and Search and Knowledge. Khan is Apple's new Chief Operating Officer who took over for Jeff Williams earlier this year ... Apple CEO Tim Cook thanked Giannandrea ... Seems like Khan is preparing the mothership for when he eventually assumes the CEO role…

John Ternus is rumored to be the leading candidate for the next CEO. That would also make more sense in terms of age.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#177

Post by quenix » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:44 AM UTC

zeristor wrote: post #161

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…

It’s got worse in the past few years, I think thought they might have impeded it so that the waited for improvements were that much more apparent.

Does anyone have an actual technical theory of how it’s possible for commands that used to work , say a month ago, to just stop working?

What is it about Siri’s architecture that causes “Set bedroom light to 30%”, a command that worked for years, to randomly stops working on a random Tuesday with no OS update or home change?

I mean, what on earth are they doing on the back end…?

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#178

Post by fragmede » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:45 AM UTC

FireBeyond wrote: post #172

ecshafer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri is really a pretty useless product. Its annoying that sometimes I can say “siri is x y” and it will answer me but other times it will respond “sorry I cant google this while youre driving” or whatever response. I see no reason I cant say “siri read me the wikipedia page on the thirty years war”. Why cant I query with siri? “Siri where is the closest gas station coming up?” I basically only want siri whilst drivi…

My favorite is when you have Siri off but CarPlay on. You can be actively navigating, but say “find me the nearest X” and it’ll say “I’m sorry, I don’t know where you are”

Yeah there should just be a global option when you're settling up the phone called "I want my shit to work and don't care that Apple has my location", and then allow all the relevant apps location access, rather than the piecemeal per-apple-app setting. I mean, as a developer I can understand the difference between the weather app always having my location and apple maps only having my location when open, but what the hell Apple? Just have a button for "make it work" vs "I'm paranoid", and let the paranoid micromanage to their hearts desire. (Not pejoratively, other people have a different threat model from me. I know people who have legitimate reason for enabling lockdown mode.)

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#179

Post by dhussoe » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:45 AM UTC

the_snooze wrote: post #146

kshacker wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case You know I have talked to chatGPT for maybe a 100 hours over the past 6 months. It gets my accent, it switches languages, it humors. It understands what I am saying even if it hallucinates once in a while. If you can have chatGPT level of comprehension, you can do a lot with computers. Maybe not vim level of editing, but every single func…

I think the utility of voice commands is marginal at best in a car. In isolation, voice commands don't make sense if you have passengers. You basically have to tell everyone to shut up to ensure the car understands your commands over any ongoing conversation. And in the context of old fashioned knobs and buttons, voice is seriously a lot of complex engineering to solve problems that have long been non-issues. Not to…

> Not to mention the likely need for continuous internet connectivity and service upkeep. Car companies aren't exactly known for good software governance.

I don't own a car but rent them occasionally on vacation in every one I've rented that I can remember since they started having the big touch screens that connect with your phone, the voice button on the steering wheel would just launch Siri (on CarPlay), which seems optimal—just have the phone software deal with it because the car companies are bad at software.

It seems to work fine for changing music when there's no passenger to do that, subject to only the usual limitations with Siri sucking—but I don't expect a car company to do better, and honestly the worst case I've can remember with music is that played the title track of an album rather than the album, which is admittedly ambiguous. Now I just say explicitly "play the album 'foo' by 'bar' on Spotify" and it works. It's definitely a lot safer than fumbling around with the touchscreen (and Spotify's CarPlay app is very limited for browsing anyways, for safety I assume but then my partner can't browse music either, which would be fine) or trying to juggle CDs back in the day.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#180

Post by phantasmish » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 12:46 AM UTC

PlunderBunny wrote: post #96

markus_zhang wrote: post #34

The only usage of Siri to me is to set hot spot so that it doesn’t shut down itself in a few mins. (And BTW why the f does it do that?) But it has failed to switch on Hotspot recently so I don’t use it anymore.

'Hot spot' as in Settings->Personal Hotspot? I've had that enabled for more than 10 years, and could count the number of times I've found it off and had to turn it on again using one hand. Sounds like a regional/carrier-specific thing. I recall that in the early days, carriers could disable hotspot functionality on their network. I hear hotspot functionality is pretty broken on iOS 26 though.

GP’s behavior is what I see, it usually doesn’t shut itself off while I’m connected but once it’s on I have to act fast to get connected or it’ll shut itself off in a minute or two. And if I disconnect for a second, it’ll be off and I have to turn it on again. Really annoying the rare times I use it.

Been like this many versions, but dunno if it does it with the latest.