Apple Launches Comprehensive New Siri Website With Categories, Example Requests

[MentalFloss]

Have you tried the latest version of Google Translate yet? I had a long conversation with a friend in English to French and then Spanish and it worked like a charm .. I also love doing (Siri VS Ok Google) contests with my son who has a iPhone 5s, and my Nexus5. Ok Google .. kills Siri at almost everything we throw at it ..

Yes, from English to French, it works quite well, but e.g. Japanese to English is practically unintelligible. The reason is that Japanese is heavily context dependent, and Google Translate or Siri are completely context-unaware, and that is the big problem. From English to French, even a simple word-by-word replacement would work. The grammar would be dreadful, but you'd understand it. But when the languages are conceptually very different, it all falls apart.

I know that Siri will improve over time, but for now my son does things manually as he says using Siri is a waste of his time....

I still prefer "Remind me at 2pm to call my dentist" over manually going to the Reminders app and entering the reminder, especially when I do that while walking home. So I do use Siri a lot. Judging from the comments, I must be in the top 1% of Siri users. ;-) But I can only use it, because I follow its extremely constrained set of rules. It doesn't come anywhere close to natural language.

 

[nortofthe13th]

all i want is for Siri to accurately understand what Im saying to it. All this other stuff is pointless otherwise.

Maybe I'm wrong... But...
Maybe "you're doing it wrong"?
As juvenile as that sounds, I know - and granted yes it probably won't work for everyone all the time… But, if you don't mumble, and you actually are patient enough to help it understand how you speak, Siri adapts overtime to your speech patterns. I've had great success with Siri, and honestly people are too quick to brush off the incredible functionality it has!
With the obvious exceptions of not always being aware of the last question, and (sometimes) being affected by background noise, it's so awesome and convenient!
( I know I'm not the only one, but hey, maybe I'm one of the few. I'm just tired of people saying, "It's so terrible!", it's really not that bad. Even my 75-year-old mother uses it often.)

 

[norrismantooth]

I quit using Siri long ago because every result I got was a fooking Google search. Piece of $#!T.

 

[elemenohme]

I use Siri quite a lot but am still flummoxed by two things: 1) How to add a new meeting to my calendar; and 2) The many responses that just return a web page rather than the answer to a question. Sometime it just feels like a "**************************" response.

I do find it handy to be able to tell it to do things when my iPhone is sitting on my bedside table charging. But I was watching a video the other day about using the Apple Watch and it included a "hey Siri blah blah blah" command -- my iPhone heard the command and responded. With this on lots of wrists soon, I'm kind of dreading all the "hey Siri" parlor tricks.

It's also sometimes hard to tell it to abandon a misunderstood voice command -- I have yet to figure out how to tell it to "cancel", though sometimes just saying "forget it" can end a wayward interaction.

 

[MacBH928]

all i want is for Siri to accurately understand what Im saying to it. All this other stuff is pointless otherwise.

Google is way better. I was surprised Google understand my foreign language (Not even Romance Language) better than Siri understands my English!

I just hate to use Google because I am paranoid with their data collection.

 

[ksuyen]

Siri is very useful to me. Granted Google has more features, but it's like talking to a machine. Cold and calculated, and certainly not trustworthy enough no to steal my information and sell them for ads Siri at least is more fun. Silly but honest. So I prefer Siri to Google. Also, 99% Siri understood me.

 

[heimo]

Never knew about flip a coin before. I might actually use that sometimes. Maybe. Probably not.

Sounds like you're 50/50 on that.

 

[iLondoner]

Too bad the site appears virtually useless in mobile Safari. Does it work for anyone?

Either everyone else has figured it out or you and I are the only ones commenting on this thread that have actually clicked on the link from an iPhone.

The site doesn't work as standard on the iPhone with either Chrome or Safari, you have to switch to the desktop view. In Safari tap on the URL bar, then swipe down, then select 'request desktop site.' In Chrome click on the options symbol and select 'request desktop site.'

I really get tired of having to do this, isn't there something in settings that I can select saying, 'Please don't keep feeding me the fecking mobile sites.'

And really Apple, fancy designing a Siri demonstration site that won't work for the average iPhone user—are you nuts or something?

 

[Joe HS]

Siris voice recognition and speech synthesis is pretty good. What Apple needs to work on is her personality and intelligence.

She should be able to do conversions, like smart action
http://www.smartaction.com/resources/audio-samples

She is also too passive, if I ask "How's your day been?" she will only reply "Excellent", not follow up with a question, i.e. why I am not at work, if I home on a weekday. Ask me if have problem sleeping, if it is late at night. Be more lika a secretary.

Also third party integration, like Spotify

Personally I'd rather be able to turn off the personality. Audio feedback to make sure I know the action has been carried out as I intended is just fine, anything more is irritating. We're not kidding anybody into thinking this is a person.

 

[Tech198]

Siri: The best companion you'll ever need. I have gone and tried Maps again. and now favor this over TomTom..

However, there are slight differences, how must click "current location", since its not smart smart to know u wanna go back to a favorite...

Still.... siri. wired pronunciation of street names makes me giggle every time i drive

 

[kyjaotkb]

Not a bad move. 99% of the time I forget Siri is even on the phone.

Reminds me of Facetime. Another feature I drooled over but have rarely ever used.

Facetime has practically replaced traditional calls for me. 50% of the time I do audio only. All my family (who live abroad), my girlfriend and all my collaborators in my company use iPhones. Audio quality is dramaticall better. Oh and I don't have cell coverage at home...

Siri, on the other end...

 

[diegogaja]

You're not friending it right.

OK but I don't normally go around ordering my friends to place my calls, make my reservations, or take dictation.

But maybe that's just me.

 

[diegogaja]

Google Translate is not bad for some of the easier languages but gets quite close to useless with more difficult languages such as Chinese or korean.

Have you tried the latest version of Google Translate yet? I had a long conversation with a friend in English to French and then Spanish and it worked like a charm .. I also love doing (Siri VS Ok Google) contests with my son who has a iPhone 5s, and my Nexus5. Ok Google .. kills Siri at almost everything we throw at it ..
I know that Siri will improve over time, but for now my son does things manually as he says using Siri is a waste of his time....

 

[diegogaja]

I use the ***** out of it daily. At least 10 times a day for various activities with a 99% accuracy rate. IM glad it's integrated in the Apple Watch.

Who uses this bloatware?

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On a recent teip to phoenix I asked for direction to Rudy's BBQ. Siri (male version) answer "getting direction to Rudys country store and BBQ" WITH A SOUTHERN TWANG. LOL my friends and I lost it.

Siri: The best companion you'll ever need. I have gone and tried Maps again. and now favor this over TomTom..

However, there are slight differences, how must click "current location", since its not smart smart to know u wanna go back to a favorite...

Still.... siri. wired pronunciation of street names makes me giggle every time i drive

 

[Ramius]

After all these years Siri still cannot speak my native language, which makes all of these fancy features completely useless.

From my perspective as a Norwegian, this is almost a US-only service, and Apple has done a lousy job making it available to the rest of the world.

 

[GreenFreaK]

What is the matter with siri starting/stopping the chronometer / stopwatch ?

Image

It knows what I want to do as it gives me a "open clock app" button while explicitly saying it can't... and it's like that since iOS6.

Dafok Apple, you seriously wrote code to tell us that you didn't want to code this specific & very simple function ?

Yea, if you ask "it" to "start my timer for 35 minutes", it'll start the timer right away. I think what a previous poster said was correct in that the stopwatch is indeterminate whereas the timer is determinate.

 

[shmeffrey]

Upgrading Siri is great but can you PLEASE make auto-correct better!!!!!! When I type someones name I don't want to switch keyboards to add an apostrophe then switch back and add a s. It should just know to do this...

First world problem right here.

 

[76ShovelHead]

i just think its inexcusable at this point that it continues to be a problem. my girlfriend has an HTC One a few weeks ago, i was playing with that phone's speech to text and google now and it was about 99.9% accurate. at one point I even held up both phones and asked them the same question. the HTC was 5 for 5 while my 5S was 1 for 5. it made me have a sad

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you must be one of the rare ones. I dont know many people with iphones who *havent* complained about Siri mangling things at some point.

I've noticed the same with Google's dictation. Has no problem finding a business and connecting me to it whereas Siri can't even call up a auto shop, it just wants to give me an internet search. Android being a proponent of Google it doesn't surprise me though, Google has search down to a science (literally). One thing Siri does better at however, is sending/dictating texts. The word "Edit" doesn't seem to exist for Google, so I have to say "cancel" and start all over again, even retrying more than a couple times... It's quicker to just do it manually.

 

[shk718]

Siri just needs connecting to IBM's watson , it would be amazing. Now who has a partnership with IBM.........

That would be cool!

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Third party app integration should be next. Like "Play <insert song here> on Spotify".

Yes!! Common Apple!

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from what I have seen Google makes siri look like a uneducated peasant. apple has not improved her much over the years now and the longer it takes the less people will rely on her.

Siri has improved dramatically over the years. This year alone I've noticed quite a big difference. What specifically do you think Google does better than Siri? By the way this entire message has been dictated using Siri without a single mistake.

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I've noticed the same with Google's dictation. Has no problem finding a business and connecting me to it whereas Siri can't even call up a auto shop, it just wants to give me an internet search. Android being a proponent of Google it doesn't surprise me though, Google has search down to a science (literally). One thing Siri does better at however, is sending/dictating texts. The word "Edit" doesn't seem to exist for Google, so I have to say "cancel" and start all over again, even retrying more than a couple times... It's quicker to just do it manually.

I don't know about that I recently tried an obscure restaurant in my neighborhood Siri what is able to find it fine and then I said call that restaurant and Siri did it perfectly fine no problems

 

[69650]

Still won't let me create new contacts and the voice recognition is still poor.

 

[luckysob]

The worst part of iOS is Siri. If I could permanently disable that feature I would. For every time I accidentally hold the home button down too long when I unlock my phone and the Siri request comes up, I could have, well, something quieter and more useful.

 

[twochoicestom]

The worst part of iOS is Siri. If I could permanently disable that feature I would. For every time I accidentally hold the home button down too long when I unlock my phone and the Siri request comes up, I could have, well, something quieter and more useful.

Err, Settings > Siri > Off

?

 

[mijail]

Machine translation was actually my minor subject at the university in the 90's. I would have thought machine-based language recognition could have made some progress since then, but Siri can't even do some of the basic stuff that we discussed in class 20 years ago. Quite sad, actually. I rarely say "I can do this better", but in this case, I easily could. I know if I were in charge of that team, Siri would improve drastically very quickly. Yes, sounds like a case of severe over-confidence, but some stuff Siri does ist just mind-numbingly stupid.

<snip>

And the same goes by the way for the pitifully bad Google and Bing Translate sites, which suffer from some similar basic problems like Siri. Someone with my background in language recognition could easily improve these significantly, but I have the impression that the teams working on Siri or Google Translate are purely software engineers with very little knowledge on how language actually works. Bizarre, but it's the only explanation for the bad results. Even more bizarre that Apple actually bought a company specializing in voice recognition to enable Siri. What a waste of money!

Oh wow, "overconfidence" doesn't even begin to cut it! You're amazing!

I'll bet that the very authors of the textbooks that you studied, or more likely the sources for *those* authors, have already been recruited by Google - or Microsoft or Apple or whoever is still at it.

And you not even realizing *that* is much worse than the overconfidence, I'd say.

Just a couple of (humbling?) examples:
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/061106/full/news061106-6.html
http://research.google.com/pubs/MachineTranslation.html

Oh man. "My minor subject at the university". "I can do this better". Oooh, man.

 

[Saucesome2000]

I still have no idea why people keep calling Siri a "her". My Siri has a male voice, and fails the Turing test already at the second sentence of a conversation, so it's an "it" to me. I do use Siri a lot, and I do speak to it like a friend - a mentally handicapped friend, who is rarely able to remember my last sentence.

Referring to her as "her" instead of "it" brings more personality and likability, maybe even patience with her. You're more likely to talk to a friend than an inanimate object. That's why Apple gave her a name and some fun, witty responses to certain questions. The more people use Siri, the better she works and the more feedback and data they have to work with to improve her.

I do agree with you, I expected Siri to be WAY better by this point. I'm holding out hope and I use her as much as I can. If she does improve to the levels you and I both think she SHOULD and COULD easily be at by now, she (or Cortana or any voice assistant software) could revolutionize how we use our phones....wait... live our lives.

Imagine never having to push a button ever again. "Siri, unlock front door" "Siri, unlock car door", "Siri, dim the lights", "Siri, adjust the thermostat to 73 degrees". You get the picture.

That's why I'm on the list for an Amazon Echo. I know a lot of people are dismissing it as basic and it can be a bit redundant to a plugged in iPhone with Siri commands, but I'm excited about the potential of the product. Especially Echo and Siri could interact.

It would be like having TARS and CASE at my house!

 

[Urban Joe]

Facetime has practically replaced traditional calls for me. 50% of the time I do audio only. All my family (who live abroad), my girlfriend and all my collaborators in my company use iPhones. Audio quality is dramaticall better. Oh and I don't have cell coverage at home...

Siri, on the other end...

Interesting. Thanks for sharing your use case. I never really thought of FaceTime as a Skype alternative before.