I like Siri. Sometimes. She works great for a small number of things. But I’m extremely aggravated by how primitive she is in other, hugely important ways. There are too many areas where she is way too limited, or just bad, and needs immediate and swift improvement.
1. Actual voice recognition and dictation is way behind the other voice assistants. Trying to dictate a text to someone is still so hit or miss, it’s an exercise in frustration.
2. There needs to be a simple way to correct Siri’s mispronounciations of proper nouns like names, places, etc. This could be as simple as the ability to type in a word and then phonetically spell or speak outloud how it’s pronounced (or something else Apple comes up with)
3. There needs to be a simple way to teach Siri how you say a particular word. I text my friends about baseball games all the time, and none of us is able to get Siri to successfully write “pitcher” when we say that word. She always writes “picture”. Even though we are clearly, and emphatically, all saying pitch-er. This happens many times every day, with dozens of words that she confuses. It would be relatively simple to teach Siri how a user pronounces a worD, or two words that she confuses regularly.
4. Siri needs much better search capabilities, information recall, and information presentation. Right now, everything just sends you to Wikipedia. Which is barely acceptable on a phone or tablet or computer, but not even close to ok on a speaker or when you are hands free. Apple is missing a huge opportunity to cut into Google’s main business by making Siri cut into a large number of the querries people currently use Google for. Siri needs to be capable of summarizing information in plain English (or whatever language) and also present compelling visuals on devices with screens.
5. Siri needs to increase the number of types of things that she can do for a user, everything from answering homework questions to recipes.
6. Siri needs to be licensed to way more third party manufacturers and become a more ubiquitous brand.
I’m am beyond disappointed at how incomplete and underdeveloped Siri is, especially compared to a retailer like Amazon. I am also kinda surprised by Apple’s lack of pride and lack of competitive spirit when it comes to providing Apple coroners with the best possible experience.
AR glasses, a car, and whatever else Apple thinks it’s going to unveil in the future will all be doomed to failure without massive, wholesale improvements to Siri. The further and further Siri falls behind, the more Apple products with become beautiful shells that are hollow inside.
