Apple's Greg Joswiak: Siri Wasn't Engineered to Be Trivial Pursuit

[Pilgrim1099]

Not liking Joswiak and such an analogy, not to mention his excuse that "someone was holding Apple back!

Apple was handed not just gold nor the ability to smelt it but an entire rich gold mine 2yrs ahead of any competition and while Apple wasted time on various voice narrators for recording Siri began to lag behind the competition in what it Should and Can do!

Apple's history in forethought of a digital AI assistant dates back over 20yrs with The Navigator concept! I still expect siri to be on par with this concept and originally thought Siri would become this in 3yrs. I was so wrong. This is the reason I don't use Siri as much as I'd like on my iPhone vs using it more on ATV4 in the last 2 days Han I have on iPhones in 4yrs since iPhone 4S!

One major gripe I have with Siri is what it lacks for on-board access when not having internet connectivity. A small localization would be nice for:
Announcing date/time, ability to create a local appointment / meetings (since recents contacts and internally cached/saved contacts are on device), launching core apps. The TTC subway here in Toronto gets packed pretty bad during rush hours, and free Wi-Fi (3rd party provided with ad sponsorship affecting how connectivity works) is horrible, and only 1 provider has 3G connectivity throughout 80% of stops.

But I doubt we'd get such a feature as it may significantly bulk up iOS footprint.

I agree that the analogy is a bad attempt in explaining away Siri's faults, but on the other hand, IF he is subtly laying the blame, he could be pointing the finger at Tim Cook for slowing it down. The other thing relating to Apple wasting time is that I suspect the reason Siri was slacking is due to the Apple Watch development. This took about 4-5 years and that sucked up a lot of resources, which I think was a big mistake. Had they not done the Watch, they could've spent more time and resources on Siri's development and growth, but also to have the 'courage' to open up the walled garden for that to happen.

But no. . .they began with the Watch, Apple Music and such.

Here's another thing they're going to waste on and that's AR. I think Apple is screwed because of what RED Camera just pulled off. No seriously. It may be expensive at first in a niche market BUT when it gets cheaper, RED is going to figure out how to leverage that to the mass market or partner up with another manufacturer.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/8/16272838/red-hydrogen-one-holographic-display-leia

Leia in the 3D holographic tech that's being shown around. If RED can do this, Apple's AR or VR attempts pale in comparison to this.

Just watch. Tim Cook is gonna go in one interview: "ooooh, holograms you say? I see ENORMOUS potential in this! We can't talk much about this technology...bla bla blah ".

 

[psac]

I would be glad if a dog barked at me in place of Siri's "natural voice" if it were 10% more intelligent than what Siri is today. The most pathetic piece of crap ever maintained by Apple.

The music dumbness really bothers me. "Play ---- on Shuffle." "Sorry, I can't find "On Shuffle" by ----."

F off Siri.

 

[dippnerd]

A way to bridge that gap would be to enable Siri to do things like this: 'Ask IMDB what is the latest movie with XYZ'.

I think we're close to this with Spotlight (iOS 11 calls it Siri Search), which for a while now has allowed third-party apps to integrate and get indexed. I can type "Patrick Stewart" and among the results, at the top is the IMDB entry for him. Not perfect, but hook that into the voice side of Siri, maybe IMDB could tweak the results a bit to show recent movies or something.

On the flip side, just asking Siri for recent movies with Patrick Stewart does bring a list of movies up in iOS 11, which you can tap and get more info, rotten tomatoes reviews, buy/rent/up next options, wiki article.

FWIW, iOS 11 Siri brings some pretty substantial changes over previous versions. Third party integration has been slow, but I would argue it's a much cleaner implementation than most other assistants.

 

[mmm1345]

Just found another area Siri comes short. Yesterday's Yankees game was postponed and played today, but when I ask Siri for the score it hasn't updated-

View attachment 716334

well... technically the score is 0 - 0....

 

[AsherN]

It's caveman Siri.

"According to Wired, Siri's raw voice recognition capabilities are now able to correctly identify 95 percent of users' speech, on par with rivals like Alexa and Cortana." I remember why I stopped subscribing to Wired now.

I have no doubt it can recognize 95% of user's speech. That's not the issue. the issue is it doe not know what to do with it.

To be fair, Siri is flawless for me. It always recognize my command of "Hey siri Start Google" followed by "OK Google"...
[doublepost=1504881941][/doublepost]

Actually no, his time is set to 24 hour time. It would say pm if it was 1:22 I’m the afternoon.

Apple needs to fix that.

It shouldn't matter. If I ask to set an alarm at a certain time, it should set the alarm for the next occurrence of that time.

 

[djlythium]

Simply rubbish if you are Scottish
[doublepost=1504863505][/doublepost]
It has to fix siri first.
[doublepost=1504863686][/doublepost]
Yes it has improved but, Nah, still sucks
[doublepost=1504863853][/doublepost]

Because Apple wants to protect its walled garden at all costs and because SIRI is crap and everyone would use an alternative.

Its sad that Apple won't allow us to use a competitor.

Exactly.

 

[Verita]

I would be glad if a dog barked at me in place of Siri's "natural voice" if it were 10% more intelligent than what Siri is today. The most pathetic piece of crap ever maintained by Apple.

Sometimes, she DUM!

 

[peteo]

creating an attachment to the AI that will "make Siri great" even when Siri fails to answer a query properly.

Haha How can Siri be great when it FAILS at the Job its supposed to do? When it fails you dont think wow this voice is so great and realistic how did they do that, you think this thing sucks my 5 year old can do better than that and then you do not want to use it any more.
needs to be right 95% of the time or its pretty much worth less

 

[FrenchRoasted]

But it also goes to show how out of touch the execs in Apple are. They're living in their own bubble, living a lie. They simply can't accelerate Siri's growth and improve on it without opening up their walled garden. Can't be done.

Their private 'walled garden' is biting them in the ass. And they know it.

How is the walled garden hurting Siri development?

 

[smaffei]

We didn't engineer this thing to be Trivial Pursuit!

Pompous much? Dude, software evolves based upon user need and not the other way around. What you envisioned is not everything the users needed. That fact you can't recognize that and recalibrate Siri's mission means you're a piss poor VP of Marketing.

 

[peteo]

Here's another thing they're going to waste on and that's AR. I think Apple is screwed because of what RED Camera just pulled off. No seriously. It may be expensive at first in a niche market BUT when it gets cheaper, RED is going to figure out how to leverage that to the mass market or partner up with another manufacturer.

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/8/16272838/red-hydrogen-one-holographic-display-leia

Leia in the 3D holographic tech that's being shown around. If RED can do this, Apple's AR or VR attempts pale in comparison to this.

Why even go with this screen tech if eventually (5yrs?) all screens will be obsolete because you have glasses that beam light fields right into your eyes?

https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/1/16070188/avegant-light-field-display-ar-headset-next-level-video

 

[Dan Holmstock]

MAKE SIRI GREAT AGAIN!

LOL here let me fix this "MAKE SIRI GREAT" the again can not occur if at first it lacked any greatness. lol

 

[RogerWilco]

The way this comes across to me... it's like a cleverly written PR piece, obtained directly from Apple, defending Siri and trying to spin the reader's mind into believing that Siri is on par, in general, with Alexa and Cortana. The quote from Joswiak just sounds arrogant. It also makes him sound like a bit of a smartass that's making an excuse for a poorly managed product he was "in charge of" for longer than he should have been. All of us here know that Siri is far from being on par with either Alexa or Cortana at this point in time. If you've tried either of the other two, you know firsthand what I'm talking about.

Who writes this stuff, anyway? I suspect it's either someone at Apple... or someone that's being paid by Apple. The "Reality Distortion Field" lives, maybe? Cleverly written... but not quite clever enough to hide the true agenda and who is behind it. With "HomePod" just around the corner... why not bolster some confidence in Siri amongst your biggest mouthpieces and true believers? Right, Apple?

What? Are you suggesting the crack journalist team at Wired might be just as lazy as their counterparts in the other tech media outlets? Apple PR plays these yokels like a piano, and my guess is a select few are rewarded handsomely for their efforts.

 

[AppleInLVX]

I would be glad if a dog barked at me in place of Siri's "natural voice" if it were 10% more intelligent than what Siri is today. The most pathetic piece of crap ever maintained by Apple.

Here's my favourite one from last year:

 

[Yojimbo007]

BS justification for falling so far behind.

Instead of justifying get your act together.

 

[Michael Goff]

Is this a more verbose way of saying "you're using it wrong"?

 

[liberte1776]

When I ask Siri a question when I am driving using NAV, it should get the answer for me and read it to me, not show me a list of selections that would just disappear once the map resumes. Siri is very nascent still and largely clueless when I ask it most things!

 

[JGIGS]

MAKE SIRI GREAT AGAIN!

Again?

 

[Dekema2]

It's like the people designing it don't get what it's supposed to be about. Not mentally ergonomic at all. It should be like I'm talking to my parents, or a friend, or professor, asking practical, everyday questions, or even more obscure ones that can still have an answer or lead to a task being accomplished or initiated. Natural, cognitive responses, not phrases and responses parsed and put together like refrigerator word magnets.

 

[AsherN]

It's like the people designing it don't get what it's supposed to be about. Not mentally ergonomic at all. It should be like I'm talking to my parents, or a friend, or professor, asking practical, everyday questions, or even more obscure ones that can still have an answer or lead to a task being accomplished or initiated. Natural, cognitive responses, not phrases and responses parsed and put together like refrigerator word magnets.

the difference, it looks like Apple engineered it to just be a voice command interface to the phone. Then Google came out with theirs that was a all encompassing command/query interface and Apple could not keep up.

 

[Michael Goff]

Now that I've been glib about it, I'm going to post the thing that's less likely to get me thumbs up.

It doesn't matter what the intent is. People have expectations, and Siri is failing for a large number of people. That's because of them, not because other people are wrong.

This is the software version of authorial intent and just as irrelevant.

 

[juanm]

Mission accomplished. I can't count how many times I've been chillin' with my friends and having a personal discussion, which tends to go a bit like:

"I get the strangest feeling Steve is just using Sharon as a sort of ego boost. You know what I mean?"

"I don't know what 'I get the strangest feeling Steve is just using Sharon as a sort of ego boost. You know what I mean?' means, but I can search the web for it."

Ahaha, we're such nutters!

Fun fact: next time it happens, it'll bring you back to this very thread.

 

[raghu8912]

They should just give up on Siri. It's completely useless...

Siri will not be as useful as others until Apple starts scanning the web just like building a search engine and creating profiles of the users. If they create user profiles Siri can accurately predict what they are asking for when they Siri can't understand what we are asking for. Google will have better AI because they are better at search and creating user profiles.

 

[Muzzakus]

Ever since springing for a google home, my eyes have been opened to how useful having smart AI is. Nope Apple, just Nope.

 

[chelsel]

The developers of Siri struck it rich when apple acquired them. Unfortunately Siri is not much more than a speech recognition system that sends your speech to a search engine or wolfram alpha, a service that exists independently of Siri. Even though I'm not a big google fan their tech is superior.
[doublepost=1504924263][/doublepost]Try asking it how many children do I have and it gets easily hung up. Having canned info on celebrities is a piece of cake. Siri is just a speech recognition system tied to a database or search engine.

I really don't understand why so many people have problems with Siri. I use it every single day and it works probably 99% of the time.



I just tested out an example. I asked "how tall is Donald Trump" to which Siri gave me the answer. Then I asked "does he have any children" to which Siri told me the names of his children. I then asked " what is his wife's name" to which it brought up Melania. I asked how tall she was, but it then told me the height of Donald Trump. Of the first three questions, I only use his name once, Siri knew who I was talking about for the next two questions.