Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Siri Updated to Respond to Long Questions With Quotes on Brevity

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,537
30,846



Apple has quietly given Siri the ability to answer user responses with quotes, citing famous passages from notable people like William Strunk and Thomas Jefferson. First noticed by iLounge, the quotes are used when Siri is asked a question that is excessively long, tactfully reminding the user of the value of brevity.

When Siri is given a request that is too lengthy, she will now respond with one of several different quotes that suggest that the user shorten the question. For example, one quote from Thomas Jefferson reads, "The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

siriquotes.jpg
Siri has a range of different quotes in her repertoire, including one from the 1970's television show MASH.

It is unknown when the change to Siri was implemented, but a Reddit thread from last week appears to contain the first known instance of the phrasing, suggesting that Siri's new quoting ability was added within the last week or two.

Article Link: Siri Updated to Respond to Long Questions With Quotes on Brevity
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/05/14/siri-updated-to-respond-to-long-questions-with-quotes-on-brevity/
S

Supermacguy

macrumors 6502
Jan 3, 2008
418
728
I'd rather that Siri could understand my long questions and simply be able to answer them with some semblance of comprehension of what I wanted. Is it so hard to give me directions when I ask for "show me the map to SoAndSo's work address?" Because I've had the give me totally non useful responses. Siri, IMO, still needs a lot of work to be moderately useful. I don't want to have to learn a new way to talk to my computer, my computer should be able to listen to me. What's going on in those Apple data centers anyways? By now Siri should be a friggin expert on all kind of questions, long and short!
 
M

Macdick

macrumors member
Feb 27, 2008
84
0
Siri

Siri is useless I never use it, from 10 questions-9 times I can search web for it
 
Xenomorph

Xenomorph

macrumors 65816
Aug 6, 2008
1,397
829
St. Louis
I can Google for help over dial-up faster than Siri can answer my questions.

It's been in beta since 2011. Why can't Apple make it faster?

Google's voice search seemed to come out of no where and is way better than Siri, already.
 
bushido

bushido

Suspended
Mar 26, 2008
8,070
2,755
Germany
make her multilingual. siri is utterly useless in german always trying to match stuff like english song titles to a german word.

Justin Timberlake becomes "Kerstin Kimbernweg" for example :confused::rolleyes:

needless to say i turned siri off cuz the only time i really used siri was hitting the stupid mic button during class by mistake ^^
 
H

HenryDJP

Suspended
Nov 25, 2012
5,084
843
United States
jonAppleSeed said:
Instead of updating Siri to understand long senescence, they instead make her more quirky. Nice!
Click to expand...

Understandable but the problem with humans is, they talk too much. Many times I completely ignore a post that is laden with endless text. Siri and Google voice are only suppose to assist simple questions, not address soliloquies. :)
 
ValSalva

ValSalva

macrumors 68040
Jun 26, 2009
3,783
259
Burpelson AFB
It kills me how much better Google Now is on iOS. Siri is just embarrassing at this point.

At least Apple maps has improved. Siri seems like a bigger debacle than that. Siri has to improve in iOS 7. It's pretty much useless now, just the butt of jokes.
 
H

HenryDJP

Suspended
Nov 25, 2012
5,084
843
United States
Supermacguy said:
I'd rather that Siri could understand my long questions and simply be able to answer them with some semblance of comprehension of what I wanted. Is it so hard to give me directions when I ask for "show me the map to SoAndSo's work address?" Because I've had the give me totally non useful responses. Siri, IMO, still needs a lot of work to be moderately useful. I don't want to have to learn a new way to talk to my computer, my computer should be able to listen to me. What's going on in those Apple data centers anyways? By now Siri should be a friggin expert on all kind of questions, long and short!
Click to expand...

Exactly my point from post #9. :D
 
SmileyBlast!

SmileyBlast!

macrumors 6502a
Mar 1, 2011
654
43
I see it as a good way to train the Siri user base even as they remind us to use some mental focus.
Apple is not Google. They don't have 100s of 1000s of servers at their disposal. I guess they could but they don't.
 
J

JAT

macrumors 603
Dec 31, 2001
6,473
124
Mpls, MN
I thought the point of Siri was that it was better at conversational understanding. Apparently they've given up on that?
 
A

adildacoolset

macrumors 65816
Sep 5, 2011
1,163
181
Lusaka, Zambia(If you know where it is)
macsrcool1234 said:
Exactly.

Google's voice search is years ahead of Siri (isn't it STILL in 'beta' :rolleyes:).
Click to expand...

I really don't understand comments like this.

Just because it's a little bit quicker, and has slightly better voice recognition, people are making over-the-top statements like this.

In my experience, Siri answers a much broader range of questions, gives far more comprehensive and in-depth answers (à la Wolfram alpha), has better natural-language processing, and has some nice easter eggs in it.

I value those more than slightly faster response times and slightly better voice recognition.
 
T

theheadguy

macrumors 65816
Apr 26, 2005
1,156
1,385
california
HenryDJP said:
Understandable but the problem with humans is, they talk too much. Many times I completely ignore a post that is laden with endless text. Siri and Google voice are only suppose to assist simple questions, not address soliloquies. :)
Click to expand...

Ridiculous. Not everyone has a short attention span. I read long posts, books even. Siri and Google's voice recognition adapt to humans, not the other way around. Good luck with the future of Siri by requiring people to dumb everything down to 'simple questions'.
 
H

HenryDJP

Suspended
Nov 25, 2012
5,084
843
United States
theheadguy said:
Ridiculous. Not everyone has a short attention span. I read long posts, books even. Siri and Google's voice recognition adapt to humans, not the other way around. Good luck with the future of Siri by requiring people to dumb everything down to 'simple questions'.
Click to expand...

Relax, enjoy some sun and have a great day. :)
 
F

FoodSnob

macrumors newbie
May 14, 2013
1
0
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
After three years of daily viewing, I am finally de-lurking.

I started getting these responses from Siri last week, not to questions, but rather when I am trying to use Siri to send texts. Extremely frustrating. I never use Siri for questions because Google smokes Siri in that department.
 
Simplicated

Simplicated

macrumors 65816
Sep 20, 2008
1,422
254
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
macsrcool1234 said:
Exactly.

Google's voice search is years ahead of Siri (isn't it STILL in 'beta' :rolleyes:).
Click to expand...

Don't think so. Yes it's faster, but the fact that there's a vast variety of things you can ask Siri about easily trumps Google Voice Search.

But, still, Apple can do better than just asking the user to rephrase the question...
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom