Apple to Expand Siri to Work With More Types of Third-Party Apps

[Kabeyun]

Apple, please, for the love of all that's holy, make Siri better before you make it ubiquitous.

Signed,

- People who want simple tasks reliably executed, and questions andwered without being referred to look it up on the internet

 

[freediverx]

siri hasn't earned my trust to do anything other than extremely simple tasks, and even then it fails. no way im calling an uber or anything more complex, last thing i need is the resulting headache

Siri's ride hailing integration actually works well.
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I'm still waiting for Spotify and Siri to play along. While they're at it, let me scrub in control center and stop playing Apple Music whenever I plug into or end a call in my car.

Scrubbing from Control Center works fine with Apple Music.
[doublepost=1496489888][/doublepost]

Siri needs some work, no doubt, but the suggestion that the competitors work so much better is just wrong.

https://www.stonetemple.com/digital-personal-assistants-test

 

[Glockworkorange]

Without Spotify or Google Music integration Siri will continue to be worthless.

Google has two music platforms (YouTube Red/Play Music) of their own to keep up revenue and subscribers. Yet they still allow for multiple music platforms to integrate into Google Assistant.

Is Apple really that scared of competition on their devices that they have to limit Siri to their own music service?

Is it still only limited to Apple Music? Ech.

 

[jhfenton]

Does anyone else NOT use Siri, or is it just me?

I only use it to send texts in the car, but my 14-year-old son uses Siri constantly, most often while he's gaming and has his hands busy (setting timers and alarms, sending messages, controlling Music).

I want bilingual (at least) Siri. I want to dictate messages in French and English (and Spanish). I want to be able to ask for Siri to play songs with French or English (or Spanish) titles. Right now, if I have Siri set to English, she is useless asking her to play any of my collection of French music. If I set Siri to French, she is useless on English music.

 

[freediverx]

I want bilingual (at least) Siri. I want to dictate messages in French and English (and Spanish). I want to be able to ask for Siri to play songs with French or English (or Spanish) titles. Right now, if I have Siri set to English, she is useless asking her to play any of my collection of French music. If I set Siri to French, she is useless on English music.

Can any of the competing voice assistants handle multilingual input? This is a very difficult problem to crack.

Having said that, Siri does need the ability to at least recognize a lot more non-English proper names. This is less about multilingual support and more about expanding Siri's voice recognition vocabulary to include non-English place names in the US.

 

[Bacillus]

Lmaoo really? It'll "work" with more apps? Give me a break.

This just has become completely lunatic.
If a Siri api would let me delegate every (non-sys) command to Alexa/Echo, I would be willing to pay all the licenses Apple must pay.
Just to save TC/Graig's faces (and Phil's lower backside) ...

 

[mox358]

I'm hoping this is the year for Siri. I use it a lot for simple tasks, but it would be great to see it make a leap forward for more useful tasks.

If you've never seen the Knowledge Navigator video check it out. I know we're not close to that yet but it would be nice to move in that general direction.

 

[chfilm]

To do list apps is the most urgent addition! Imagine how awesome it would be for shopping lists and apps like "things"
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Pretty sure the scrubbing thing is Spotify's fault. I use PocketCasts constantly and I can scrub in Control Center, so unless there's some strange limitation on just music apps Spotify needs to get it together.

Yea the same goes for Sonos.

 

[ZZ Bottom]

Without Spotify or Google Music integration Siri will continue to be worthless.

Google has two music platforms (YouTube Red/Play Music) of their own to keep up revenue and subscribers. Yet they still allow for multiple music platforms to integrate into Google Assistant.

Is Apple really that scared of competition on their devices that they have to limit Siri to their own music service?

If your service was inferior to competitors, wouldn't you sabotage their experiences as much as possible to make yours look less pathetic?

 

[lowercaseperson]

The minute Siri works with AmazonMusic I'll be ditching AppleMusic. I'm already paying for Prime so why not give it a try for a few months, the only thing holding me back is I find Siri very useful in the car to select music to listen to.
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To do list apps is the most urgent addition! Imagine how awesome it would be for shopping list.

Just curious, why don't you use the reminder app for that? I have a shared grocery list "reminder." So I say, "hey Siri add eggs to my grocery list," and it shows up on my and my wife's reminders app. I also have a lowes list and several other shared lists that Siri accesses very well.

 

[dominiongamma]

Wish I could replace siri with ok google so much better it would be!

 

[TheFluffyDuck]

Once again, Apple has lost the lead it once had. Siri today is what it should have been at launch in 2011. But certainly not where it should be in 2017.

 

[coolfactor]

Apple's automated phone agent (when you call Apple Support) is really smart, probably the best that I've ever used from any company. It would be awesome if Apple enabled companies to set up virtual help desks powered by Siri. No more trying to talk to someone that doesn't speak your language natively, which can be a very frustrating experience.
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Does anyone else NOT use Siri, or is it just me?

I use Siri all the time for basic tasks:

- asking for the time
- setting reminders
- setting calendar appointments
- getting driving directions
- getting the weather forecast (although I don't fully trust its data source)
- sending messages (occasionally).

The service works 99% of the time for me, even from across the room. It's not yet clear why it doesn't work with some people. Is it poor understanding of different accents? Background noise that people expect to be ignored? Not enough leeway with how different requests are worded?

It's fine for people to say "Siri doesn't work for me", but at least give a few specific examples of where she keeps failing for you over and over again.
[doublepost=1496509331][/doublepost]

To do list apps is the most urgent addition! Imagine how awesome it would be for shopping lists and apps like "things"
[doublepost=1496498535][/doublepost]
Yea the same goes for Sonos.

You're speaking of third-party to-do lists, eh? Because you can use Siri to add to-list items right now.

"Add bacon to my shopping list"
"Remind me to pick up milk at 6pm"

But that's using Apple's apps, so I can see the point of enabling third-party apps in this category, too. But how will Siri know which app to use? Would users choose a preferred app for each category, similar to how file types are mapped to a preferred application on a computer?

 

[Uofmtiger]

Apple's automated phone agent (when you call Apple Support) is really smart, probably the best that I've ever used from any company. It would be awesome if Apple enabled companies to set up virtual help desks powered by Siri. No more trying to talk to someone that doesn't speak your language natively, which can be a very frustrating experience.
[doublepost=1496509116][/doublepost]

I use Siri all the time for basic tasks:

- asking for the time
- setting reminders
- setting calendar appointments
- getting driving directions
- getting the weather forecast (although I don't fully trust its data source)
- sending messages (occasionally).

The service works 99% of the time for me, even from across the room. It's not yet clear why it doesn't work with some people. Is it poor understanding of different accents? Background noise that people expect to be ignored? Not enough leeway with how different requests are worded?

It's fine for people to say "Siri doesn't work for me", but at least give a few specific examples of where she keeps failing for you over and over again.
[doublepost=1496509331][/doublepost]

You're speaking of third-party to-do lists, eh? Because you can use Siri to add to-list items right now.

"Add bacon to my shopping list"
"Remind me to pick up milk at 6pm"

But that's using Apple's apps, so I can see the point of enabling third-party apps in this category, too. But how will Siri know which app to use? Would users choose a preferred app for each category, similar to how file types are mapped to a preferred application on a computer?

I know, I use it all the time and it works great. I have it sitting on my side table with my Roomba vacuuming about 10 feet from the iPhone and it still works without a problem.

Personally, I don't think Apple has a business interest in adding Spotify to Siri. All of these services can play music, playlists, search for albums, etc. The main differentiator for Apple Music, other than being able to match your library (which worked for me, but has caused issues for others) is the fact that it works with Siri. Giving that away to a company with a multiyear head start that has a freemium service that Apple is opposed to, wouldn't make a lot of sense from a business perspective given the current situation. That being said, if they bring out a competitor to the Amazon Echo and feel Spotify needs to be supported to sell a lot more units and be competitive with the Dot and the Home, it could make more sense than it does now.

 

[junkmail509]

Does anyone else NOT use Siri, or is it just me?

The only time over the past five years that I can remember becoming actually enraged was when I tried to use Siri to call a contact in my phone book and kept getting the reply that the contact could not be found. Now I have it turned "off" as much as the settings will allow.

 

[TheMountainLife]

siri hasn't earned my trust to do anything other than extremely simple tasks, and even then it fails. no way im calling an uber or anything more complex, last thing i need is the resulting headache

Agreed.

When rideshare driving, one of my biggest annoyances are passengers that get in without a destination set. Requires me to take my eyes off the road / pull over on a busy road to input the destination or wait for the passenger to pull out their phone and update it.

 

[whsbuss]

I hate that when you do Hey Siri, you have to wait for the conformation tones before talking. With Echo Dot I just ask Alexa as if she was in the room with me.

 

[tech3475]

I think Apple needs to become more 'alexa' like, for example, coming out with an 'echo dot' counterpart.

My echo dot is limited but still useful, Ive started saying "alexa" thinking I have a dot in the room when I dont because even limited tasks can be useful.

Having got an echo harmony and philips hue, I think third party support will be critical in the long run. Certainly the Harmony played a part in me deciding to get an Echo dot.

 

[dbri306]

Does anyone else NOT use Siri, or is it just me?

I try it from time to time, alas still complete garbage. About 1% functionality of Alexa. 10% of Alexa voice recognition capacity. Saying that, I'm quite happy with my iPhone 7 Plus even with complete garbage voice assist like SIRI.

 

[djdsas]

Am I the only one that EVERY SINGLE TIME I try to activate Siri, before I even get a chance to open up my mouth to utter any words, Siri responds "Sorry, I didn't get that....."

As said multiple times on this thread , Siri is UTTER Garbage!

 

[drumcat]

The only thing it gets right is "set a timer for x minutes" and "add x to the shopping list".

That's it. Is it nice for that? Sure. But you're going to have to work with the concept of multiple statements. Siri is not conversational in the smallest way. Say something, and instead of asking a question back, it's "I've searched this for you."

Even just...

Tell me a joke
"why did the chicken cross the road"
that was funny
"Here's what I've found for 'that was funny'
Siri, you suck
"Here's what I've found for 'you suck'
Siri, why are you awful
"I don't know."
Maybe Cortana can help
"Here's what I've found for 'core tan a'
Get stuffed
"I don't know what you mean"

 

[whsbuss]

Am I the only one that EVERY SINGLE TIME I try to activate Siri, before I even get a chance to open up my mouth to utter any words, Siri responds "Sorry, I didn't get that....."

As said multiple times on this thread , Siri is UTTER Garbage!

I do like when I'm cooking I ask her to add something I need to the grocery list.

 

[adnbek]

I hate that when you do Hey Siri, you have to wait for the conformation tones before talking. With Echo Dot I just ask Alexa as if she was in the room with me.

Actually you don't. You can say "hey Siri" and the rest of your query at the same time. You don't have to wait for the confirmation.

 

[DarkCole]

Actually you don't. You can say "hey Siri" and the rest of your query at the same time. You don't have to wait for the confirmation.

Correct! I also originally thought you had to wait for the tone. So much faster when you can say it all at once.

 

[whsbuss]

Correct! I also originally thought you had to wait for the tone. So much faster when you can say it all at once.

Thanks