Siri's ranking in virtual assistance land.

A study published yesterday by Indiana-based Butler University compared the performance of a range of search engines and Q&A sites on mobile devices. It found that ChaCha delivered the highest quality responses consistently across the largest group of categories and question types. It has been widely believe among the Apple community that the current version of the software is not in it's final state. It's almost akin to Apple's Maps, that had been rushed out before it was really ready. Popularity can hurt a brand, I've seen this happen again and again, it's this habit they've gotten into where they're forced to release something great year on year on year. Apple cannot catch up.

Both Siri and Maps are in unfinished states.

I tried this for myself, little did I know anything about Chacha, but it did give legit answers on things that I was actually interested in, which didn't happen to be Sports or Movies by the way.

The most nonsensical thing that Siri does is direct you to Google. I mean, I'd rather get an answer that sounds almost like something I wanted to know. Chacha will give you that.

err404 said:

Was this a comparison of virtual assistants, or just search engines with voice recognition? It makes me wonder what people think Siri is meant for. Personally I don’t have much need for Siri to perform a voice web search, rather I use it as a virtual assistant. I find that Siri does a great job at handling taking notes, reminders, appointments, timers, alarms, SMS, email, navigation, etc… Basically it excels in the areas that I want to use hands free.
That doesn’t mean Siri is perfect. I’d love to see it be a better research assistant, but interacting with my personal information is more important.

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I understand why Apple shut down marketing for Siri and used a different campaign, almost as if they took a step back and said,"Okay, let's be realistic this time."

The first marketing for Siri was completely and irreverently false.

I don't know when this program is going to actually become something of which I can dedicate my attention to, but currently. I don't care for it.

The thing about Siri is that it's not three-dimensional, it serves one purpose: to do things one would normally do only with voice control.

How is it a virtual assistant when it says the exact same things over and over again. Like a real toy.

It seemed like back then it had more to say, but now, the responses seem to have been cut back to about no more than 4.

There had been rumors that Apple's recent Siri commercials served as admittance that Siri is a joke. Do you think there's some truth to it?

vastoholic said:

link? Source?

If you use Siri for what it's made for (a personal assistant to streamline your daily activities) and not a random useless fact finder, then Siri is great. Yes, it still has it's moments for me when the voice recognition messes up a few words in my sentence, but overall it's been great.

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Suddenly Apple gets that Siri is a huge joke

That's the story that multiple news sites ran. I was disappointed because it's not what I wanted to Siri doing. It wouldn't just be a useless fact finder. I think Evi effectively proved what that direction will take the company and the user.

But doing the things that it currently does in a smarter way. Part if the reason people respect Siri is because if the characterization they gave it. So it must be approached in many different ways.

We're talking about a virtual assistant who's command is your wish. There's an infinite amount of things a technology like that could do, but we're only bound by its intelligence.

That binding has proved to be substantial.

It's funny that they would actually put "virtual assistant" for Siri and not structured data, crowdsourcing, or algorithm. Yes, with cha-cha the answers are a tad bit off-topic. But I get more of a sense that it understands what I'm saying than with Siri.

I don't really trust Siri.

macingman said:

No way is Siri 80% accurate. It's accurate if you ask one of the few pre defined novelty sentences but once you start actually giving it more complicated commands it doesn't work at least 80% of the time.

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Yes, 50% is the base here. Never