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

luckysob

macrumors regular
Mar 29, 2011
136
18
Siri, the least used 'feature' on my iPhone. Maybe someday I'll take the time to really understand how to make it work for me, but in the meantime, I'd rather type something into Google, or Yelp, or Maps, or....
 

HenryDJP

Suspended
Nov 25, 2012
5,084
843
United States
Never defend a technology! Technology is meant to develop to serve the requirements/limitations of existing human behaviour; human behaviour shouldn't be expected to adapt to meet the requirements/limitations of technology.

You're being ridiculous. So you're saying a person should be able to mumble, speak in a lazy manner, speak unusually fast or mispronounce words and a "computer" is suppose to fully understand a human??? GTFOH.
 

mknopp

macrumors member
Jan 27, 2010
31
0
When I got iOS 7 I did notice a pronunciation correction. There's a town nearby called Braselton, pronounced "Brah-zel-ton." Siri had been pronouncing it "Bray-zel-ton." It's correct on TBT directions now. But she still can't pronounce "sugar" like there's an h after the s.

This last line really points out the true difficulty of what Apple and Google and anyone in voice recognition have to deal with. In my local dialect of Midwestern English sugar is pronounced as if there is an h after the s. Is there a pronunciation difference between aunt and ant? How about pin and pen? Is drag a regular or irregular verb? And I could go on and on for days, and this is all just within the umbrella of US English. Try adding in the various dialects of British English, Canadian English, Australian English, etc.

How about the Spanglish spoken in places like Gibraltar or Southern California where the speaker will switch mid-sentence between English and Spanish? Heck, as one poster pointed out, even humans have a hard time understanding each other a lot of the time. So, why do we expect a machine as stupid as a computer to be perfect?

Could it improve? Yeah. Will it improve? Yeah. Will it ever be perfect? Heck no.

That being said, I have to really question just how much this is really an article concerning Apple doing well. Doesn't Apple still use Nuance for the voice to text conversion which is then fed into Siri's knolwedge base search engine? If that is true then isn't an improvement in understanding what is asked an improvement for Nuance? While the drop in returning a correct response when the question is understood (nuance did its job) actually a bad thing for Apple?
 

JHankwitz

macrumors 68000
Oct 31, 2005
1,911
58
Wisconsin
It's truly amazing that Apple and Google are able to create these apps. The variation in voice, pronunciation, tone, pitch, amplitude, dialects, languages, and so on is amazing. Having a machine be able to sort this all out with such speed and accuracy is even more amazing.

I finally was able to upgrade to a 5s, and am starting to use Siri more and more every day.
 

Wurm5150

macrumors regular
Apr 28, 2010
161
27
Until Apple adds on-device voice parsing (like Google does) and rely less on server based transcription, Siri will never be as good and fast as Google Now.

Apple created a separate Motion coprocessor, maybe it's time for Siri to have its own chip.
 

JHankwitz

macrumors 68000
Oct 31, 2005
1,911
58
Wisconsin
There is no way these charts are accurate. Even when I speak as clearly as possible and enunciate every syllable, Siri understands me about 40% of the time.

Siri amazes me whenever I speak to her. She understands and displays every word I say well over 95% of the time, even with the TV blasting away in the background.
 

bozzykid

macrumors 68020
Aug 11, 2009
2,431
492
Until Apple adds on-device voice parsing (like Google does) and rely less on server based transcription, Siri will never be as good and fast as Google Now.

Offline parsing is rarely done on Android. It is there as a backup. What makes Google fast is it is able to translate it in real time and not have to wait for you to finish. You can see this happening live as it tends to guess what you say but when you are done it will go back and correct some words based on the totality of what you said.
 

NightFox

macrumors 68040
May 10, 2005
3,240
4,487
Shropshire, UK
You're being ridiculous. So you're saying a person should be able to mumble, speak in a lazy manner, speak unusually fast or mispronounce words and a "computer" is suppose to fully understand a human??? GTFOH.

No, I'm saying when you've got that situation, the response should be to continue to improve the technology until it can understand the way real people speak in the real world, rather than tell people they now have to speak differently. Yes, in this instance it may be beyond the bounds of what can be achieved now, but look at how limited voice recognition was 10 years ago and imagine what it could be capable of in another 10 years if driven to improve rather than just adopt the attitude that it's people who are the problem.
 

neilmacd

macrumors 6502
Apr 18, 2010
301
24
UK
It's fun watching Geordies (myself included) trying to talk all posh to get a decent response from Well Spoken British Man Siri :)
 

Amazing Iceman

macrumors 603
Nov 8, 2008
5,304
4,054
Florida, U.S.A.
Haven't you ever heard of the "new math"? It was all the rage back in the 70's and 80's. The kids from that era now work for the media, spewing forth whatever numbers they get without analysis or question.

LOL, do you mean from the 90's and 00's? In the 80's Math was math, no calculator or Computer allowed in class, got to learn to do calculations by hand, and do it right or else...
 

everything-i

macrumors 6502a
Jun 20, 2012
827
2
London, UK
My experience of Siri is one of total frustration. Even simple questions like 'Give me directions to from ____ to ____' yields a totally incorrect answer about something completely unrelated. The conversational stuff shown in the adverts is just impossible and must be carefully scripted when its demonstrated. It understands the words I speak but cannot comprehend anything other than syntactically extremely basic questions. After all this time I thought it would have improved more than it has.
 

anomie

Suspended
Jun 29, 2010
557
152
I never had a Problem with siri. Nonetheless it is a feature that, if Apple decided to remove it from iOS, I'd need about a month to realize it was gone.
 

brianvictor7

macrumors 65816
Oct 24, 2013
1,054
429
United States
It's truly amazing that Apple and Google are able to create these apps. The variation in voice, pronunciation, tone, pitch, amplitude, dialects, languages, and so on is amazing. Having a machine be able to sort this all out with such speed and accuracy is even more amazing.

I finally was able to upgrade to a 5s, and am starting to use Siri more and more every day.

I like your attitude. It truly is amazing that this can be done and I also am using Siri much more since upgrading from my 4S (also switched carriers and got LTE which helped a lot).
 

whootang12

macrumors newbie
Jul 18, 2011
7
0
When iOS 7 first was released, I got a bunch of "Unable to process your request" errors, but lately she has been great. My latest surprise has been asking "what's a turducken" and in < 2 seconds getting a picture and description. A recent dissapointment was being able to ask about my next appointment, but not being able to figure out how to get directions to my next appointment.

Getting a Kinivo BTC450 bluetooth adapter for my car has significantly increased my use of and dependence on SIRI
 
Last edited:
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.