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Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

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Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#461

Post by hosh »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #454
hosh wrote: post #442

My Google Maps experience has gone downhill over the past two years. It has gotten bad enough that I started using Apple Maps. I was blown away by the difference, not just from how far they have come along since launch, but that how the navigation gives directions in a way that matters to me while I am driving. I don't know why Siri has had a bad user experience, but if there is one company that can do a better job a…

Counterpoint - Google maps has been fine for me, my only annoyance being that iPhone often defaults to Apple Maps and I have to manually switch over. Nonetheless, your comment convinces me that I should try Apple Maps more seriously. Maybe I’m missing out.

My wife doesn't have that problem with Google Maps on her iPhone, so I'm aware of that counter-point. It might have something to do with that I use offline maps. Things started breaking -- points of interest doesn't load, or maps freezes, etc. I have not been able to unbork it. And it had been noticeably getting worse.

But even when it had been working, I had started noticing navigation errors started creeping in. It was nice that I hear things like, "at the next McDonald's, turn left" ... but I also get other strange navigational errors. Even just last year, my wife and I hear the directions, and it is having us go in a confused way. I don't trust it as much. (And there is a lot I can say about this using Promise Theory to analyze all of this).

Last night, at a town I do not reside in, I'm making an errand to got to the grocery store, and Google Maps breaks again. So I use Apple Maps. Apple Maps navigation tells me to turn in, and that I am in the parking lot for my destination. I have never heard Google Maps doing that. Another time just last night, it told me that I am crossing this light, and to turn at the next light. I also never heard Google Maps tell me that. Those were literally the kinds of things I would ask my human navigator to tell me in addition to the standard Google Maps navigation (on my wife's phone).

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#462

Post by boplicity »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #454
hosh wrote: post #442

My Google Maps experience has gone downhill over the past two years. It has gotten bad enough that I started using Apple Maps. I was blown away by the difference, not just from how far they have come along since launch, but that how the navigation gives directions in a way that matters to me while I am driving. I don't know why Siri has had a bad user experience, but if there is one company that can do a better job a…

Counterpoint - Google maps has been fine for me, my only annoyance being that iPhone often defaults to Apple Maps and I have to manually switch over. Nonetheless, your comment convinces me that I should try Apple Maps more seriously. Maybe I’m missing out.

I used to trust Google Maps, but in the last year it has given me some very bad directions that not only were wrong, but were sometimes dangerous. I've started to very much not trust its directions, which is unfortunate, because it used to be so great.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#464

Post by kmeisthax »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #386
MPSFounder wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. This is a founder problem. Once founders go away, you are left with the MBAs and characters that are fit for business, but lack the umph you are describing.

Yeah, agree with your take. I think it's especially odd to describe Apple as suffering from this "big company problem" given that it seems like the execs there have tenures much longer than the norm. Cook has been at Apple since 1998, shortly after Jobs' return. Federighi originally worked at NeXT when it was acquired by Apple. Eddy Cue has been at Apple since 1989 and his Wikipedia page says he was instrumental in c…

If I had a nickel for every time someone complains about Apple's monopolistic bullshit with the equivalent of "Steve Jobs would have never done this", I'd buy out enough Apple stock to impose myself as the CEO and demand they allow root access on iPads.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#465

Post by [deleted] »

epohs wrote: post #152
ejoso wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps largely exists because of Apple. Do you remember when the iPhone was released? AirPods? The iMac? The Mac? The Apple II? Broaden scope a bit to understand what this comment meant. You’re right that Apple botches things in the small scale and especially in software, but they’ve been a great aggregator of amazing tech in the total lifespan.

Google Maps had already launched and had really surprised everyone at how much better it was than any other mapping tool a few years before iPhone launched. and just the interactivity of it in general independent of it being a “map” was a paradigm shifter. Yes, the iPhone put it in everyone’s pocket, but if Apple had built a handheld device that was powerful enough to run any interactive mapping tool Google Maps was…

[deleted]

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#466

Post by dostick »

kccqzy wrote: post #248
dostick wrote: post #246

Almost every comment is negative. From Apple’s point of view, this is not worrying. Look at people you know who are not in IT and software. They use AI for information and solutions, not expecting an agent. And since Apple Intelligence successfully proxies that function to ChatGPT, this is covered for Apple. You don’t have your relative asking when it’s going to be agent-level help from it. Regular people don’t expec…

> since Apple Intelligence successfully proxies that function to ChatGPT I don't know how it's implemented, but Apple Intelligence's proxying to ChatGPT ends up being far worse than using ChatGPT directly. You could ask the same question to ChatGPT and Siri powered by Apple Intelligence proxied by ChatGPT, and the former gives the right answer while the latter gives the wrong answer. > Regular people don’t expect new…

- Yes chatGPT experience is worse. Likely due to censorship. - When Apple advertised that in keynote, it wasn’t something anticipated and needed by general public and still not, otherwise like with serious delays in the past Apple would have said something. And after new iOS was released it was said a lot that this is a solution looking for a problem.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#467

Post by kelseydh »

hu3 wrote: post #56
kelseydh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, Siri is a damaged brand. Microsoft had the insight to drop Cortana when it flopped too. In the age of LLMs I also increasingly view my experience with "Hey Google" and "Alexa... " with similar contempt. Their output feels so bad compared to what ChatGPT's voice gets me. All of the big tech companies seem to be struggling immensely to deploy the latest in AI advancements.

I never tried advanced things with "Hey Google" but it always gets the basics right for me: "go home" opens maps app with a route to my home. "alarm in", "alarm at", "what time is it?" works well too. In fact I'm afraid they'll break it by shoving down Gemini. Alexa is the same with basics, works well for me with "reminder in X hours", "reminder at 10am on every workday", "alarm at", "play The Strokes", "add coffee t…

I agree Alexa/Hey Google are generally great at following commands.. but lately I find myself most wanting to use voice primarily for getting quick answers to factual or opinion based questions. There the results are abysmal vs ChatGPT voice.

It also doesn't help that ChatGPT's voice cadence is much closer to sounding like a real human.

Siri meanwhile is still far behind both Alexa and Google Assistant in its basic voice-to-text conversion capabilities -- a pain point I experience everytime I talk into my Apple TV remote to search for content.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#468

Post by rowanG077 »

kstrauser wrote: post #435
rowanG077 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iphone 6, 2015 MBP, thrashcan where all under Cook. To me this precisely shows Cook did not have Ive under control.

But there's a dev pipeline. I'm certain those didn't all start their lives 6 months before release.

sure, but I don't think that's really relevant here since the products are years after cooks rise to power.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#469

Post by spandrew »

From a GTM perspective, Apple is fine to be behind OpenAI and others. Other than Search and studying, most consumers just aren't finding compelling use cases for a lot of this tech. The news woman herself said it herself that

> I've had iPhone 16 and haven't used any of these features.

Not only did she not use it, she wasn't even sure how she would start to use it. Emoji customization is kinda fun, but hardly a killer offer.

Folks in business are finding a lot of use: Research summation, data structuring, rapid prototyping, copy editing, and all sorts of business-grade use cases are phenomenal. None of them are central to Apple's core business or user experience. Use cases might be found closer to the Macbook/Pro line-up... but most of these are already accessible via a web layer through Chrome/Safari. They're making good use of Apple's performant M-chips. Of course, we all know Siri really should be able to do a helluva lot more than it currently does.

Apple being behind tech-wise is a *huge* risk bc it puts them on the back foot, but short-term not enshittifying their tech with worthless AI use cases may be the right move.

Re: Apple shuffles AI executive ranks in bid to turn around Siri

#470

Post by finnh »

kmeisthax wrote: post #437
lsllc wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a big company problem. When companies grow, they eschew the folks who helped build it from the ground up and are intimately familiar with the business, products and customers in favor of people who have "worked at big companies". But in most cases, they didn't actually build them. So all they have to offer is the "big company baggage" that they were exposed to previously. You can imagine how it usually works…

One thing to note about "big companies" is that everyone involved at the upper levels are rich enough to engage in recreational lawsuits. So if you say anything true about their performance, you get hit with a defamation lawsuit, possibly in a speech-hostile venue like England. The end result is a conspiracy where it's in everyone's best interest to lie about their peer's performance. These are "APE[0] hires". Their…

Do you have any examples of defamation lawsuits? I've sold two companies, and have plenty of rich and upper-level exec friends, and I have never heard of a defamation lawsuit amongst tech execs.

There is definitely a stupid game where people don't tell it like it is, but in my experience it's because people don't want to deal with HR at all, and so don't do or say anything that might bring a tut-tut from HR. Because people in HR are beyond annoying...

And HR fears a wrongful-termination lawsuit, not a defamation lawsuit.

This is all in the US, though. The UK has quite different libel laws and so maybe lawsuits are more common there.

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