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Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

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Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#71

Post by seec »

JadoJodo wrote: post #61
softwaredoug wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure I want / need an LLM for the handful of basic commands I want Siri to do in the car with no complication. Siri is good at some straightforward command patterns. And that’s how users have been trained. Adding an LLM feels like a solution looking for a problem

I have a pretty good grasp on Siri commands and it's still _terrible_. Here are a few from the past few weeks: “Siri, drive to ” → “Now driving to .” “Siri, send a message on .” → One of _two_ responses (seems random): “Sorry, I can't do that while you're in the car” OR “What would you like to say to ?” “Siri, play ' '.” → “Now playing .” “Siri, remind me when I get home to .” → “Sorry, I don't have your address.” (M…

That's pretty much my experience as well. Even something as dumb and simple as setting timers is getting messed up some times. To the point where I'm just considering buying a hardware multi-timer.

I'm not sure how good Google is at this but it seems this sort of technology has hard limits anyway. It's already hard for humans to understand each other so I wonder if all of this isn't just a giant distraction and a big waste of time.

Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#72

Post by seec »

EPWN3D wrote: post #50
harrall wrote: post #12

I know Apple has been known to wait until a technology was very mature before putting it into a product, sometimes years after competitors had already done so. But Apple Intelligence seems like the complete opposite… like they had to have something now .

The same year the tech industry got taken by storm by LLMs, Apple announced a brutally expensive, niche VR/AR headset with no particular use case. That product was essentially DOA. I think this is the first time in decades where Apple took a step from their back foot. The Vision Pro announcement during the initial hype cycle of ChatGPT made it look like they were just totally out of step with the industry. It was a d…

Vision Pro is a vanity product for Tim Cook. Once you understand that it makes a lot more sense. It's the only product he has ever pushed, and I believe it's because of the shallow wow factor which fits TC very well. In any case it would always have been a nice product, regardless of price, but at this price it's just nonsensical.

Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#73

Post by seec »

cblum wrote: post #65
binarymax wrote: post #27

The personal context issue could have been solved long before LLMs appeared. My foil for this has always been the simple request from Siri: "Take me home". Apple and my device know where I live. I have even registered "home" in Apple maps. This is not a huge leap, and this is not even something that requires an LLM. But it does force the featureset and capability to be better. This was a problem in 2015. 10 years lat…

On a related note, I don’t know how Apple has managed to mess up so badly the idea of storing your own information like address, phone number, etc. Every time I’ve moved, for months afterwards I keep having to fix my address when using Apple Pay or setting directions to home, etc. because it seems like they keep multiple copies of that information all over the place, instead of referring to a single piece of informat…

Yes it's extremely dumb and annoying. It's everywhere in Apple products, for example your Health ID cannot get your weight for your latest recorded weight in the app. I mean, it's even the same app, it's like the devs can't be bothered to make a smart product.

I think this is because of the way they silo everything, the way they are paranoid about privacy/security (mostly for their marketing, they don't care that much) and the culture that isn't very competitive anymore.

It finally hurts them because the experience isn't coherent and very frustrating for the user. It's funny because the marketing is all about the "ecosystem" but in reality, the coherence is mostly about how things look.

The rumor of a big redesign isn't surprising; instead of working on how things actually work (they wouldn't need to back off some marketing choice and that seems impossible) they will put a coat of paint and make people focus on good looks.

The last redesign was terrible and it took an awful lot of time to get things back to half-decent. It's just one more motivation to not renew for an iPhone I guess...

Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#74

Post by seec »

rgovostes wrote: post #49

My speculation is that the small on-device models are simply not useful enough for practical purposes. The on-device transformer models are described as having 3B parameters[0]. Their own figures from 6 months ago show that humans prefer other models' output 25-40% of the time, which aligns with Gurman's reporting. I don't know how well Apple's A-series chips can handle transformers, but if you play with their on-dev…

Apple's approach makes no sense but they don't have a choice because of all the past marketing nonsense.

They need to justify their hardware quality/price which is becoming irrelevant because even the cheapest phone work just fine without lags nowadays. AI will be something to be done on servers for the foreseeable future but Apple put itself in a hole with their privacy nonsense.

If instead they had truly invested on Macs and allowed their customers to build their own personal cloud, they would have a business case. Instead, they were extremely greedy and tried to double dip with high hardware price and "service" subscriptions (their low storage devices are made just for that). They are going to pay for this short-term thinking, eventually...

Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#75

Post by replyifuagree »

seec wrote: post #71
JadoJodo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a pretty good grasp on Siri commands and it's still _terrible_. Here are a few from the past few weeks: “Siri, drive to ” → “Now driving to .” “Siri, send a message on .” → One of _two_ responses (seems random): “Sorry, I can't do that while you're in the car” OR “What would you like to say to ?” “Siri, play ' '.” → “Now playing .” “Siri, remind me when I get home to .” → “Sorry, I don't have your address.” (M…

That's pretty much my experience as well. Even something as dumb and simple as setting timers is getting messed up some times. To the point where I'm just considering buying a hardware multi-timer. I'm not sure how good Google is at this but it seems this sort of technology has hard limits anyway. It's already hard for humans to understand each other so I wonder if all of this isn't just a giant distraction and a big…

One feature I love on my android phone is how reliably it sets timers based on a voice command:

"Ok google, set a timer for 8 minutes" has kept me from burning my food on the stove for at least a year now!

Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#76

Post by replyifuagree »

resoluteteeth wrote: post #4

I have an android phone and switching google assistant to gemini made it worse for the fairly basic things I actually use google assistant for, like setting reminders, so I switched it back. Are people really clamoring for AI in the voice assistant on their phone?

+1 OMG I was going die using that Gemini garbage! Was so glad they had a way to switch back!

Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#77

Post by replyifuagree »

pram wrote: post #6
resoluteteeth wrote: post #4

I have an android phone and switching google assistant to gemini made it worse for the fairly basic things I actually use google assistant for, like setting reminders, so I switched it back. Are people really clamoring for AI in the voice assistant on their phone?

My Nest can still only get “ok google turn on the light” the second time I say it. Good shit!

This is why I still haven't pulled the trigger on home automation stuff. Bad enough keeping my laptop functioning, don't want that experience extending to the rest of my life!

Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#78

Post by replyifuagree »

dehrmann wrote: post #23
harrall wrote: post #12

I know Apple has been known to wait until a technology was very mature before putting it into a product, sometimes years after competitors had already done so. But Apple Intelligence seems like the complete opposite… like they had to have something now .

It's not even to the level of Apple Intelligence. If I tell Siri to set a timer for 5 minutes, it goes off, and I say "Hey Siri, stop alarm," it stops my daily wake-up alarm, not the timer. It feels like Siri hasn't gotten any better in the past decade.

It is almost like Apple has an operations guy at the helm who doesn't understand software at all!

Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#79

Post by replyifuagree »

seec wrote: post #72
EPWN3D wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same year the tech industry got taken by storm by LLMs, Apple announced a brutally expensive, niche VR/AR headset with no particular use case. That product was essentially DOA. I think this is the first time in decades where Apple took a step from their back foot. The Vision Pro announcement during the initial hype cycle of ChatGPT made it look like they were just totally out of step with the industry. It was a d…

Vision Pro is a vanity product for Tim Cook. Once you understand that it makes a lot more sense. It's the only product he has ever pushed, and I believe it's because of the shallow wow factor which fits TC very well. In any case it would always have been a nice product, regardless of price, but at this price it's just nonsensical.

Yep, Tim Cook = Steve Ballmer

Re: Leaked Apple meeting shows how dire the Siri situation is

#80

Post by replyifuagree »

jrockway wrote: post #11

I only want one feature from Siri. When I say "hey Siri, set a timer for 10 minutes" while in my kitchen, I'd like it show up as a live activity on my phone. (You can see it in your phone, but it's buried deeply inside the Home app, which is dumb.) I use a Mac at work, have an Apple Watch and iPhone, and have yet to use any AI features. I just don't need them. I'm overjoyed when I add a meeting in Calendar and it sho…

yeah, adding "AI" to something like that really means add in random nonsensical failures
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