Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#201

Post by jonnrb » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

spyke112 wrote: post #127

mrweasel wrote: post #116

It's hard to imagine that just killing off Siri would hurt iPhone sales. It would be interesting to know how many people actually use, or even want Siri, or any type of voice assistant for that matter. The primary value of Siri is to check a box for investors, who are riding the AI wave. The same people how rode the voice assistant wave 15 years ago. There's a lot of AI features that makes sense for Apple to include…

Anecdotal data coming in hot. I use Siri daily for controlling HomeKit devices. She's not always on point though. I've named a light basically "Radiohouse", because that's what the designer called it, but 25% of the time she insists of playing radio instead of turning on the light. I'm not a native english speaker and communicate with Siri in Danish, but still. Siri is definitely not useless and I would love for her…

I used to run into this and I use Siri enough to control HomeKit that I give things really mundane names ("Upstairs Bathroom Vanity", "Guest Bedroom Front Shades") to ensure that we have no miscommunication between me and Siri.

If you name your Hue light "House Music" and you're confused when you ask to "turn on house music", you've played yourself. I am interested to see if such a light was in the LLM context window or there were memories recorded of past bad encounters if an LLM would predict better...

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#202

Post by MrBuddyCasino » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 1:53 PM UTC

eitally wrote: post #169

lacker wrote: post #11

It doesn't surprise me that Siri continues to be bad - Apple's current plan is to use a low-quality LLM to build a top-quality product, which turned out to be impossible. What does surprise me is that Google Home is still so bad. They rolled out the new Gemini-based version, but if anything it's even worse than the old one. Same capabilities but more long-winded talking about them. It is still unable to answer basic…

From several engineer answers over a few years from inside Google, the consistent answer was that they created a highly fragmented ecosystem of devices over the years, almost none of which were capable of running the same software stack/versions, which led to an enormous mountain of technical debt and spaghetti code. There was a big effort a couple years ago to resolve this by creating a single new software version t…

Whats the problem? The LLM runs on a big fat server, the devices only have to call APIs, no?

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#203

Post by FranklinJabar » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 2:14 PM UTC

seec wrote: post #103

neya wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I think it's exactly the opposite, actually. They've integrated AI flawlessly into existing products to an extent nobody else has even come close to. Photos, for instance" Have you used a Samsung? Apple's AI miserably fails in every comparison out there in the photos app. There's also Google Photos with Gemini which helps you find any photo you want with AI better than anyone else. But sure, Apple has the best AI in…

That's just the typical Apple distortion field. I have been using Apple devices and supporting many of their users for over 20 years, and they are all extremely invested in their choice of computing device. It's really a source of pride for many of them, weirdly. For this reason, anything Apple does is necessarily better than everything else on the market. It's a bit pointless to argue because they come from an emoti…

I'm not saying apple is perfect, but it's still more usable than android (and certainly google's web stuff) when I looked three months ago.

Samsung is just straight-up spyware infested crap that's somehow even worse than the other android options.

I'm really pulling for Huawei to rescue us at this point.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#204

Post by dpkirchner » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 2:16 PM UTC

Lio wrote: post #108

GeekyBear wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that after the Apple Maps launch, Tim Cook learned a lesson about allowing features that need additional work the time they need to fully bake. Google just launched the Pixel 10 with several promised AI features broken, and could really stand to learn the same lesson. https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-magic-cue-o... https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/09/google-pulls-daily-hu...

Apple Maps is still such a sucky service, at least where I live and where I travel to. It regularly directs me to incorrect addresses and businesses and labels places obviously incorrectly. Every use of the search function promotes guide content for a single city I'm not currently in, with no way to configure or turn them off. Good products should go out of their way to annoy you IMHO. They only managed to get their…

Google Maps regularly sends contractors, delivery drivers, etc to a blocked off utility "road" that has never allowed traffic. Apple Maps doesn't. I've given up reporting the problem to Google. (And besides, Google eventually took away the report feature from either desktop or mobile, I forget which, telling me their engineers don't care at all about quality.)

So at least for me Apple Maps wins.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#205

Post by nilkn » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 2:16 PM UTC

halapro wrote: post #93

nilkn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my opinion: Apple doesn't need to solve AI. It's not core to their business in the same way that search engines aren't core to their business. What Apple does best lies at the combination of hardware, software, physical materials, and human-computer interface design. This is why they're spending so much more on mixed reality than AI, even knowing that a product like the Vision Pro today isn't going to be a big s…

> It's not core to their business You're not thinking ahead. AI isn't just chat bots and image editing. I want to tell my phone: I'm road tripping to XYZ tomorrow, 10 am to 5 pm. and have my phone become a guide for the day, including stops it knows I like and hotel in my price range with the amenities it knows I need. If I get hungry it just slips in a stop wherever I ask. This can come as an "everything app" or it…

Can you not already do nearly that right now with Gemini on any device, iOS or not? I just gave a similar prompt to Gemini. It activated Gemini's "personal intelligence" feature and gave me the kind of highly personalized itinerary and advice you just suggested. It's not quite as seamless as being built directly into the OS, but I actually prefer it this way -- it's mildly sandboxed for safety while still giving me almost everything you just described if I want it. I certainly wouldn't switch away from my iPhone just to remove that sandboxing.

It doesn't even need to be coming from a single AI vendor either. For instance, I can already use Grok's voice mode inside our Model Y to add stops along the route if we're hungry.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#206

Post by QuantumGood » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

nilkn wrote: post #26

dabinat wrote: post #14

I feel like the difference between Steve Jobs’ and Tim Cook’s leadership styles is that Cook is really good at optimizing existing processes, but does not have the vision to capitalize on what’s next. Apple got into the smartphone game at the right time with a lot of new ideas. But whatever the next big shift in technology is, they will be left behind. I don’t know if that is AI, but it’s clear that in AI they are al…

Just my opinion: Apple doesn't need to solve AI. It's not core to their business in the same way that search engines aren't core to their business. What Apple does best lies at the combination of hardware, software, physical materials, and human-computer interface design. This is why they're spending so much more on mixed reality than AI, even knowing that a product like the Vision Pro today isn't going to be a big s…

Similarly, they didn't need to solve search.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#207

Post by chaostheory » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 2:21 PM UTC

alex43578 wrote: post #101

chaostheory wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right or wrong, at least he takes risks. Apple Vision Pro was launched two years too early, but you can’t say that he just realized on existing products.

2 years early? I don’t think the time for Vision is now, or even 3 years from now based on the hardware and use cases.

My point is that the product they marketed only matches the product they released recently.

In terms of something that adults want, you’re right. It would take about 10 years before the only generation who is into it, Gen Alpha, would come of age and be able to make that transition to AR/VR like how Gen X did with high speed internet.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#208

Post by Jgrubb » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 2:50 PM UTC

PlunderBunny wrote: post #67

Jgrubb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll settle for "gets voice to text right most of the time". Seriously, Apple is so far behind on the cheapest table stakes at this point I highly doubt their high standards is the issue.

Yeah, but isn't the voice recognition (as opposed to voice comprehension) separate from the supposedly LLM powered bit of Siri? I want better voice comprehension too, but I don't think that moving to a LLM powered Siri will solve that.

I agree with the other poster and gladly converted to a paying customer of Wispr because they did this right.

Honestly, I bet your question is exactly what every team adjacent to this problem at Apple is doing. Pointing fingers at each other and saying, "This isn't my problem. This is some other team." It's so egregiously broken that obviously no one inside there considers it their problem. I think this must be rampant at Apple currently. There's just no explanation for how their software has gone so completely to shit over the last ten years.

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#209

Post by padjo » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 2:52 PM UTC

AmbroseBierce wrote: post #89

siva7 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to be forgotten?

We will all be forgotten given enough timeframe.

"It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarrelled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now."

Re: Apple's latest attempt to launch the new Siri runs into snags

#210

Post by nilkn » Thu, Feb 12, 2026, 2:54 PM UTC

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #194

nilkn wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my opinion: Apple doesn't need to solve AI. It's not core to their business in the same way that search engines aren't core to their business. What Apple does best lies at the combination of hardware, software, physical materials, and human-computer interface design. This is why they're spending so much more on mixed reality than AI, even knowing that a product like the Vision Pro today isn't going to be a big s…

> Apple doesn't need to solve AI. It's not core to their business Perhaps, but it depends on what business they are really in... One classic business failure ("Marketing Myopia") is to define the business you are in as the product or service you sell, rather than the customer need that you fill. It's certainly been a long time since Apple was in the "phone business", and Nokia is an example of what happened to a comp…

My take is that the future will look something like this:

- You pay for a personal AI assistant from a cloud vendor (most people) or you run it yourself on your own hardware (not yet common, likely somewhat common in the future as hardware becomes cheaper and open weight models keep getting better). This assistant won't be a chatbot but an autonomous agent (like OpenClaw today). Some of these will be free but heavily subsidized through aggressive ads.

- This AI assistant has hooks into whatever personal services you want (email, cloud storage, photos, messages, etc.).

- You own a variety of devices in different form factors, each of which increasingly acts as a way of interacting with the same AI assistant, which exists independent of device. Some of these form factors will be new ones that don't meaningfully exist yet today, like true high-end AR glasses.

- Many apps and websites will eventually just become on-demand generative interfaces spawned by your AI assistant. Some "fixed" or "pre-programmed" interfaces will still exist, though.

For Apple, there are really two questions: (1) do they need to create their own frontier AI assistant to play a significant role in this future long-term? (2) if the answer to the former is "yes", when do they need that by, and how does it strategically weigh against creating the next generation of compute form factors that show up in the third item above?

Given that Apple has openly stated that they intend to create personalized intelligence across their ecosystem and that they don't know that the smartphone will be the dominant form factor in a decade, I think their answers are: (1) yes; (2) they need to have one eventually, but it's even more important that they prepare for next-gen form factors, and so they're okay being late to the game on AI assistants as long as they get there soon enough.