A voice quality increase is always welcome, but that’s the limit in cheeriness I can possibly endure.
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Yep this is a priority. I'm sure Siri is still just as dumb.
Still as stupid as ever. And they couldn't even make the UK English properly condescending.
Yeah... just yesterday, I tried to make a phone call, and was met with "Sorry, you need to be connected to the Internet to do that." This happened 4 times in a row.
Is it me only that find Siri stupid compare to Google and Alexa (though not too much experience with Alexa)?
There are two things Apple failed at. Maps and Siri. Both are horrible.
Did you lose an internet connection four times in a row?
They need the Scottish accent.I don't have a HomePod. However on my iPhone I use the Irish female voice. Love it!
I'd love for them to fix whatever bug it is causing Siri to say "just a sec" and pause for 10-20 seconds every time I ask to play music. All other voice commands work instantly.
I'd love for them to fix whatever bug it is causing Siri to say "just a sec" and pause for 10-20 seconds every time I ask to play music. All other voice commands work instantly.
I have 150Mbit internet, its not my connection. It's also instantaneous on iPad and iPhone. Its clearly a homepod issue.That's probably your connection. The HomePod caches 30 seconds or so of the song before it will play, which takes a while on a slow connection. Mine often says "just a sec" it when I'm an 8mbps connection but the same HomePod is fine when it's on 70mbps.
That's all well and good... but it boggles my mind that seemingly simple directions yield the proverbial, "I can't do that, Dave." response from Siri, on my iPhone.
* Hey Siri, lock my iPhone. (When you notice that someone has your iPhone and is rifling through your personal stuff without permission, for instance.)
* Hey Siri, turn off my iPhone. ("No Siri... I don't need directions on how to turn off my iPhone; I wanted you to do it.")
* Hey Siri, read this webpage to me. (When your eyes are otherwise occupied by something more important, such as driving.)
* Hey Siri, open google.com in Chrome. ("No Siri... that's Safari. I said Chrome." Same issue with Firefox, obviously.)
* Hey Siri, open Notes and take dictation for me. (All of the necessary sub-components are right there waiting to be invoked... it's basically just the front door itself that's closed! Am I the only person who wants to do this -- and not pay Dragon's hefty price for the privilege?)
* Hey Siri, do any damned thing period when I'm off the grid. (Yeah... apparently that's just never going to happen, because Siri lives entirely in the cloud.)
"All-encompassing life assistant"? Yeah... not so much.
There a lot of things that Siri could do better. I would hope with the hiring of John Giannandrea, given his previous work with regard to AI at Google, things will only continue to improve. I use the Google app regularly on my iPhone and it works a whole hell of a lot better with speak-to-text recognition. Also, I prefer to use the UK and Australian male voices with Siri instead of the U.S. voices. As a public beta tester for the last several years, the only weird thing I've noticed that Siri is not doing well with the foreign voices is recognizing period (.) as a word, so when I press the Sleep/Wake button to text someone and then say "period", instead of . appearing on the screen, the word does. This same issue doesn't exist when using Dictation in the actual Messages app. I sent feedback to Apple's engineers about this. Also, for the love of all that's holy, I don't understand why they can't extend the amount of time Siri waits if I pause in speaking. Unless I know EXACTLY what to say when trying to send a text on the fly, it times out RIDICULOUSLY quickly and immediately wants to send that text even when I haven't finished saying what I intended.
Just substitute “full stop” for “period”.
Over the past 24 hours, we've seen a handful of reports talking about a new update to the speaking voice of Siri on HomePod in a few regions. These reports are mostly located in the United Kingdom and Australia, and mention the British (Male and Female) and Australian (Male and Female) speaking voices for the assistant, specifically on Apple's HomePod smart speaker.
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The change appears to be very subtle. MacRumors readers described the Australian Female and British Male voices as "more natural" and "much clearer," and similar reports have emerged about other voices. Although there are many different descriptions for each voice, the consensus appears to be that the tweaks make Siri sound more human-like.
HomePod users can choose any Siri voice no matter the region they are located in, but as of now the vast majority of these reports appear to be located in the same regions as the voice they represent. This may be the beginning of a wider rollout, but that's still unclear at this point.
Twitter user @callumjcoe recorded the difference between the current iteration of the Australian Female voice (on an iPad) and the updated voice (on HomePod). Of course, distortion and muddled sound quality from a recording don't provide a perfect example, but there is a slight change between the two heard in the video, which is likely much more pronounced in person.
As of writing, MacRumors hasn't noticed any similar updates to Siri on HomePod (for any voices) in the United States. Apple has updated Siri over the past year with improvements to the assistant's ability to recognize local businesses and destinations, as well as new jokes, but many Apple users remain frustrated with the technology. One of the last major updates to Siri came in iOS 11 in 2017, when Apple gave Siri a more natural voice that had better pronunciation and different inflection depending on what's being said.
In early 2018, Siri creator, co-founder, and former board member Norman Winarsky talked about the origins of Siri and the company's intentions for the assistant before Apple acquired it. According to the co-founder, Siri was originally meant to be incredibly intelligent in just a few key areas -- travel and entertainment -- and then "gradually extend to related areas" once it mastered each. Apple's acquisition pivoted Siri to an all-encompassing life assistant, and Winarsky said that this decision has likely led Apple to search "for a level of perfection they can't get."
Although unconfirmed, the new voice changes to Siri may be Apple's latest attempt to make the voice assistant more personable and easy to talk to, in the wake of ongoing user complaints. If the changes roll out to other regions, we'll update this article.
(Thanks Sebastian, Robert, and Jared!)
Article Link: Apple Tweaks British and Australian Speaking Voices for Siri on HomePod
Well it can only get better right? But I don't think more natural sounding voices were on the top of anyone's wish list.