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Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

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Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#81

Post by DHPersonal »

jandrese wrote: post #49
dna_polymerase wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“This is what I found on the web for XYZ”… all the time! At this point, they should just pipe the #1 search result into ChatGPT for a nice summary and have Siri read that out loud. It would be so much better.

Yes! My big complaint about Siri is that she's just the same old "here is a list of preprogrammed actions you can perform, with a fallback to just dumping it in a Google searchbox" but you don't get access to the list. So finding what she can do involves outright guessing, scouring the web, or closely watching Apple demos. She can do quite a bit, but you'll never find 90+% of the options because Apple only shows you…

Try "Hey Siri, open Words with Friends"; at least on my iPhone, Siri can usually open apps for me when I use that phrasing.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#82

Post by throwaway_ab »

bparsons wrote: post #33

Outside of driving, I never really understood the popular use case for these voice assistants. In most situations it is easier to type your query rather than say it out loud. It was a novelty touted as a big leap in technology.

I use Siri to turn on voice control when I drive. I have voice control number every item on the screen.

This lets me have 100% control of every feature/button and every app whilst I drive.

I can swipe on the screen using my voice.

I can write notes and messages.

I can switch to any app.

Voice control is a world leading accessibility feature that is a complete touch replacement controlled via voice.

Once I no longer need voice control I turn it off via Siri. The entire action of turning it on, using it, turning it off occurs with no touch at any point.

Also it's great for when I am cooking or doing diy and don't want to touch my phone.

In comparison Siri is better at a few narrowly defined actions but has less than 1% of the scope of voice control.

Reading people's complaints about Siri in this thread I feel what most people actually want is voice control.

But no one outside the visually impaired community knows about it.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#84

Post by kgwxd »

OkGoDoIt wrote: post #43
neurobama wrote: post #7

I generally like Siri and rarely experience bugs. I use it to set timers, get the weather, play music via Spotify, occasionally dictate text messages, and look up trivia mid-conversation. It's been my replacement for Alexa ever since I got creeped out by Amazon's audio data retention. In this context I'm suprised to hear Apple employees are unhappy with it.

I use Siri to set reminders except it is completely unable to handle reminders like “remind me this afternoon to follow up with Joe about the event on June 25”. It sees the June 25 and the reminder is now for the afternoon of June 25. I manage a theater, so this is a very very common scenario and it’s super frustrating. It speaks to there being no real understanding going on, just pattern matching on things that look…

You could use shorthand for date and times in the title. I tried your prompt saying "J N 2 5" instead but apparently "this afternoon" is 5PM, so that's odd.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#85

Post by rickreynoldssf »

It doesn't help that Apple doesn't let third party developers use it. The only SDK available for Homepod, is locked behind a bunch of approvals and the only thing it does is allow developers to implement music players. It's very specific to playing music. Not even Podcasts.

Why can't an eCommerce app implement, "Hey Siri, tell Online Store to add Tidepods to my weekly order". ?

What about Audible implementing, "Hey Siri, tell Audible to add Tale of Two Cities to my reading list." ?

There's remnants of a car service interface that never got used or shipped AFAIK. If you ask "Hey Siri, get me an Uber to the train station". It just replies "sorry, I help with rides".

Or maybe even work with other Apple stuff better. I can say "Hey Siri, turn on Television" and that works and then say "Hey Siri, mute television" and it will reply, "There are no televisions to control".

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#86

Post by WonderBuilder »

Honestly, I find Siri the most powerful popular voice assistant out there. Once you starting using Shortcuts, you can use Siri for literally anything. With just holding the power button, and a couple words, I can start tracking a run, schedule message a friend, record my thoughts, close all my tabs that contain the word "youtube"... And so much more!

Shortcuts & Siri is honestly the main reason I switched from Android to iOS.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#88

Post by idk1 »

Two pretty consistent frustrating issues I have are:

Me: "Hey Siri, tell my Mike I'll send that document over in ten mins. How about pizza for lunch. I also spoke to Jenny and she would come for lunch too."

Siri: "Calling mike."

So cannot tell the difference between 'tell' and 'call', however Siri could use context and assume if I'm talking for quite a while after saying maybe tell or maybe call then it's most likely 'tell' because of the sentences afterwards. This is by far the most frustrating.

Second issue is:

Me: "Hey Siri - what's in my calendar today."

Siri: "Playing alternative radio station."

Such a tremendous amount of times music has started playing, I think the top thing on their "can't understand" code is to try and play music. About once a week Siri will take something I say about anything and start playing music instead. It's infuriating. I've deleting music from my phone but I can't delete it from TV / Homepod Mini / Mac.

Edit: I've thought of a third which isn't so bad.

Me: "Ask Hassan has the mortgage has gone out yet?"

Siri: "Here's your message. `has the Moorgate has gone out yet.`"

It will replace random words in sentences with locations, and locations, in the UK, any word it cannot get, it will first assume I'm talking about any town in the UK and use one of those. It is ludicrous the amount of priority it gives to names of towns, I've even had tiny villages inserted into sentences before.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#89

Post by locusofself »

I'm excited for a GPT or similar voice assistant. Asking siri basic questions and having it tell me it will send me some links on my phone is annoying. I have homepods in the living room and they aren't good for much besides music.

Re: Even Apple employees hate Siri and are skeptical of its future, new report says

#90

Post by nimbleplum40 »

idk1 wrote: post #88

Two pretty consistent frustrating issues I have are: Me: "Hey Siri, tell my Mike I'll send that document over in ten mins. How about pizza for lunch. I also spoke to Jenny and she would come for lunch too." Siri: "Calling mike." So cannot tell the difference between 'tell' and 'call', however Siri could use context and assume if I'm talking for quite a while after saying maybe tell or maybe call then it's most likely…

I have the same experience…

Me before bed: “Hey siri - turn off the lights”

Siri: “Playing death metal”

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