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John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

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Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#361

Post by NaOH »

bombcar wrote: post #359
NaOH wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Activate Siri and then say the amount of time you'd like on the timer. For me, that's holding the side button then only saying, "20 minutes." The one caveat is that once the timer you want is two and a half hours or longer, then Siri replies by asking what you would like to convert to.

That may be it - we’re always asking a HomePod to do it - “hey siri set timer for five minutes”

My Siri-initiated timers are always done with my phone, probably 50 or more each week (work stuff). The only time I get a failure is when I release the side button too quickly. I've made certain the spoken feedback is enabled to reduce the risk of me making that mistake. (Settings > Siri > Siri Responses > Prefer Spoken Responses)

As for, "What time is it?"... Try activating Siri and only saying, "Time."

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#362

Post by jldugger »

jldugger wrote: post #226
ignoramous wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>Seems like Khan is preparing the mothership Nah, IS&T has always been under the CFO, and apparently some fraction of AIML is headed under them.

Ahh jeez, Khan is COO not CFO.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#363

Post by eitland »

swores wrote: post #340
eitland wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is they are just stubborn. They once did it this way and now it is "the Apple way". Recent example: Apple used to hide "search in page" in the share menu in mobile safari. Far from obvious, but at some point one discovers it because there is no other place to look for it. Now they have finally decided to make a standard fly dropping overflow menu and hide the share button there. But interestingly you…

FYI, an easier way to search in pages in Safari is to just type what you want to search for in the address bar, and then at the bottom of the list of suggestions (you may need to scroll it down) you can tap "On this page".

After 7 years I learned. Thank you!

How did you learn this hack?

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#364

Post by s1mplicissimus »

stavros wrote: post #166
s1mplicissimus wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> once you give them enough tools are there solutions to the error rates when picking from dozens or even hundreds of tools i'm not aware of?

Yes, there are a few. Anthropic released one just last week.

Any hints on how it works? Or is it unscrutainizable secret sauce?

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#366

Post by swores »

eitland wrote: post #363
swores wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, an easier way to search in pages in Safari is to just type what you want to search for in the address bar, and then at the bottom of the list of suggestions (you may need to scroll it down) you can tap "On this page".

After 7 years I learned. Thank you! How did you learn this hack?

Glad to have helped!

I just noticed it randomly many years ago, I don't remember the occasion but I guess I was scrolling trying to find a page in history lazily and noticed it at the bottom.

It's an example that sums up feature discoverability (well, lack of) on iPhones - there are so many things like this, that are really useful to know if you find out about them but the only way to find out is luck or having a friend tell you. Occasionally the official Apple "Tips" app has useful stuff, but not much.

I actually have a thing in my family Signal chat of every few weeks sharing a new random iPhone tip, as I'm by far the nerdiest in the group. Maybe I should collate them all into a "hard to discover Tips" blog and share on HN...

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#367

Post by bombcar »

NaOH wrote: post #361
bombcar wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be it - we’re always asking a HomePod to do it - “hey siri set timer for five minutes”

My Siri-initiated timers are always done with my phone, probably 50 or more each week (work stuff). The only time I get a failure is when I release the side button too quickly. I've made certain the spoken feedback is enabled to reduce the risk of me making that mistake. (Settings > Siri > Siri Responses > Prefer Spoken Responses) As for, "What time is it?"... Try activating Siri and only saying, "Time."

I suspect that's the main difference; if you're trying to use hands-free voice activation via "hey Siri" you get a much different experience than if you can touch the watch/phone to trigger Siri first.

And thinking back over it, more than half the failures are complete - e.g., it likely never activated at all. Very few are "it set a timer, but for the wrong time".

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#368

Post by kulahan »

baggy_trough wrote: post #127
kulahan wrote: post #117

This is a serious question that's partially mine, but I'm asking because of all the comments here: Specifically, what HAS Apple done with Siri over 15 years? Are there new functions I don't know about? I... can't think of anything else they'd add, but I literally do not understand what their engineers and managers working on Siri were doing on a daily basis. They must have been writing some code at some point. Did it…

They changed it from responding to "Hey Siri" to just "Siri".

My new iPhone no longer responds to Siri lol. I used to say "Siri, stop" to shut off an alarm. Now I actually have to say "Hey Siri, stop". :(

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#369

Post by NaOH »

bombcar wrote: post #367
NaOH wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Siri-initiated timers are always done with my phone, probably 50 or more each week (work stuff). The only time I get a failure is when I release the side button too quickly. I've made certain the spoken feedback is enabled to reduce the risk of me making that mistake. (Settings > Siri > Siri Responses > Prefer Spoken Responses) As for, "What time is it?"... Try activating Siri and only saying, "Time."

I suspect that's the main difference; if you're trying to use hands-free voice activation via "hey Siri" you get a much different experience than if you can touch the watch/phone to trigger Siri first. And thinking back over it, more than half the failures are complete - e.g., it likely never activated at all. Very few are "it set a timer, but for the wrong time".

Good chance that's what captures our different Siri experiences. The few times I've done it spoken was always with AirPods and I always waited for the Siri reply (been a while; is it, "Uh-huh"?) after I said, "Hey, Siri." But my experience activating Siri with speech is so minimal as to be untrustworthy of anything broader.

Re: John Giannandrea to retire from Apple

#370

Post by jacobgkau »

torben-friis wrote: post #174
jacobgkau wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mana…

I guess I'm not necessarily saying they're secretly working on it now, but I'm responding to your "I don't get why they went for the rush" with "it doesn't seem like they really went for the rush" (any more than the Newton was evidence that they "went for the rush" of smartphones or tablets).
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