I think it’s more that they didn’t want to make it easier for people to use Spotify
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Former Apple Employees Reflect on Siri's 'Squandered Lead' Over Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant
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I think it’s more that they didn’t want to make it easier for people to use Spotify
"Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me."
Says the person in charge of the two biggest debacles of iOS
Says the person in charge of the two biggest debacles of iOS
[doublepost=1521054861][/doublepost]Unfortunately., Apple is now geared towards making profits for its multi-millionaire shareholders than innovation. It's at every point in the company, from the cancelling of One to One in the Apple Stores which was a great help to me personally, to the 'bump' on the iPhone X (the joke of the smartphone world), to the lack of MacPro for years, to the lack go a lower priced Mac for those who cannot afford a Macbook Pro, and I could go on and on. Siri always gets it wrong. I saw reference to it in a recent X files episode, where Mulder asks for a particular track on in-car system attached to him phone. I have so-often asked Siri for a music selection in the car, or a film to be searched moron Apple TV. It's just a bit of a joke. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a huge fan, and wouldn't use anything else, but I think the powers that be need to think about the time when they were 'Innovators' rather than now when they are the 'Followers' of technology. They also need to take better care of people like me, who have old kit which they now call 'obsolete', and introduce opportunities to upgrade with a decent offer for tech which can still be made use of and recycled.
The Information has published an in-depth look at how Siri has transitioned from one of Apple's most promising technologies into a "major problem" for the company. The article includes interviews with a dozen former Apple employees who worked on the various teams responsible for the virtual assistant.
Unfortunately., Apple is now geared towards making profits for its multi-millionaire shareholders than innovation. It's at every point in the company, from the cancelling of One to One in the Apple Stores which was a great help to me personally, to the 'bump' on the iPhone X (the joke of the smartphone world), to the lack of MacPro for years, to the lack go a lower priced Mac for those who cannot afford a Macbook Pro, and I could go on and on. Siri always gets it wrong. I saw reference to it in a recent X files episode, where Mulder asks for a particular track on in-car system attached to him phone. I have so-often asked Siri for a music selection in the car, or a film to be searched moron Apple TV. It's just a bit of a joke. Don't get me wrong, I'm still a huge fan, and wouldn't use anything else, but I think the powers that be need to think about the time when they were 'Innovators' rather than now when they are the 'Followers' of technology. They also need to take better care of people like me, who have old kit which they now call 'obsolete', and introduce opportunities to upgrade with a decent offer for tech which can still be made use of and recycled.
The report claims that many of the employees acknowledged for the first time that Apple rushed Siri to be included in the iPhone 4s before the technology was fully ready, resulting in several internal debates over whether to continue patching up the half-baked product or start from scratch.The team working on Siri was overseen by Apple's then iOS chief Scott Forstall, but his attention was reportedly divided by other major projects, including the upcoming launch of Apple Maps. As a result, Forstall enlisted Richard Williamson, who was also managing the Apple Maps project, to head up the Siri team.
According to the report, several former employees said Williamson made a number of decisions that the rest of the Siri team disagreed with, including a plan to improve the assistant's capabilities only once a year.
Williamson, in an emailed response to the report, wrote that it's "completely untrue" that he decided Siri shouldn't be improved continuously.Forstall and Williamson were both fired by Apple in 2012 following the botched launch of Apple Maps on iOS 6. The former employees interviewed said they lamented losing Forstall, who "believed in what they were doing."
Another interesting tidbit is that the Siri team apparently didn't even learn about the HomePod until 2015. Last year, Bloomberg News reported that Apple had developed several speaker prototypes dating back to 2012, but the Siri team presumably didn't know due to Apple's culture of secrecy.The report says that Siri is the main reason the HomePod has "underperformed," and said Siri's capabilities "remain limited compared to the competition," including Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.Some former employees interviewed noted that "while Apple has tried to remake itself as a services company, its core is still product design."
Apple responded to today's report with a statement noting Siri is "the world's most popular voice assistant" and touted "significant advances" to the assistant's performance, scalability, and reliability.The full-length article is a worthwhile read for those interested in learning more about Siri's internal struggles and shortcomings.
The Information: The Seven-Year Itch: How Apple's Marriage to Siri Turned Sour
Article Link: Former Apple Employees Reflect on Siri's 'Squandered Lead' Over Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant
But then why does the Now Playing applet on the Apple Watch work with Spotify? Why is there a music API for CarPlay that works perfectly for Spotify and Pandora and others? It seems Spotify's choice, not Apple's, that there isn't an ATV app, because there is a good ATV app for Pandora.
It's really only Siri within the iOS ecosystem that doesn't support competing music services. Everything else supports it.
I hope they’ll learn soon... at the moment they’re slowest in class and I’m not talking about the neglected Siri alone.
The most aggravating thing to me is when they jump willy-nilly between the two (mostly, by trying to have a conversation when simply fetching information would be better). They want to rely on her ability to understand and be conversant but she's not up to the task. She can handle some requests just fine, giving the impression she's competent, yet on others she's less helpul than a two-year old. I was recently trying to get the easiest route to an intersection near a pizza place I know, which (more or less) has "pizza" as part of the name - Siri kept insisting on separating "Pizzicato" into "Pizza Catto" (no matter how I messed with the pronunciation), and then, not finding an exact match for that non-existant name, she decided that she was quite certain that I was shopping for a pizza place (despite my query starting with "give me directions to...") and started running through "helpful" suggestions, taking lots of time to add "it's about 3 miles north, it's open until 11, and it gets 4 stars - how does that one sound?" (for restaurants that have names that don't even remotely resemble what I said). NO SIRI YOU ***** IDIOT, if you don't fully understand what I'm saying, ask for clarification (I would cheerfully spell the name for you if you would let me).
I had a similar occurrence recently where I asked for directions to a gelato place here in town and she started going through the same "how about this one / does this one sound good?" death march, listing restaurants IN ITALY. And then there's that time that "give me directions to Whole Foods" (there are many in town) got me directions to one IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA (with no followup questions, just directions that started with getting on the freeway). Here's a hint Siri, for driving directions, give much higher weighting to results within, say, 50 miles, and if you really want to return a match that's hundreds of miles away, then stop and ask, "The only match I found is X, which is a 9 hour drive - is that really what you want?" (The one time I ask for directions to, say, the Grand Canyon, I'll be happy to say, "yes, really".)
Siri wants to have a conversation, but she can't hold up her end, yet she rushes on ahead fully confident that she knows what I'm talking about. They're taking the approach of, "if you don't understand, pretend that you do, and many times you'll be right", rather than being willing to have Siri admit she doesn't fully understand. It's just so infuriating to have her rush off enthusiastically doing the wrong thing. It's like a scene from a bad comedy, where someone doesn't understand the local language (maybe understands some words, maybe gets others wrong), pretends that they do understand, is asked to do something, hilarity ensues, and soon they're flossing the cat, or some such. Except here, it's not funny.
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Doesn't surprise me at all reading this. Clearly there's been a lack of leadership and neglect of a teams vision.
Williamson saying "[...]"It was slow, when it worked at all. The software was riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me."
So Williamson wasn't responsible for the team as a supervisor? This makes me sick to read
Williamson saying "[...]"It was slow, when it worked at all. The software was riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri team, certainly not me."
So Williamson wasn't responsible for the team as a supervisor? This makes me sick to read
I dunno, Siri works fine for me. Guess I sort of subconsciously know what it can and can't do and don't ask it weird things except, to demo to friends: "How tall is a giraffe?"
As a developer though, SiriKit is lame (so far). I want ParkTime, my car finding app, to respond to "Where's my car?" but there is no "intent" for that. I want NewsBrain, my neural net finder of interesting web articles, to respond to "read the news" but there's no intent. And so on. If WDCC doesn't introduce a Boaty McBoatface load of new Siri intents, I'm going to be... disappoint.
As a developer though, SiriKit is lame (so far). I want ParkTime, my car finding app, to respond to "Where's my car?" but there is no "intent" for that. I want NewsBrain, my neural net finder of interesting web articles, to respond to "read the news" but there's no intent. And so on. If WDCC doesn't introduce a Boaty McBoatface load of new Siri intents, I'm going to be... disappoint.
The problem with today's Apple is that they actually believe their own ********. They live in a bubble of ********. They completely missed the boat with smart speakers. Making a better speaker isn't enough, if it's going to be smart it should do stuff that I want.
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That is a different argument than what I responded to. I agree with your point if you are talking about a product like the Mac Mini (which has nothing to do with the discussion at hand).
I also think that issues with Siri also impact Apple Maps. Whatever Apple utilizes for a crawler simply is inferior .Why is Google Maps and Google Search able to identify listed businesses in my city that neither Siri nor Apple Maps are aware exist? I wish Apple would work with Google and give in and call their maps and their assistant failures and make Google Assistant and Google Maps the defaults on iOS. iOS is a superior system in most every way that does not rely on Siri or Apple Maps.
I get this problem all the time with Maps. Google maps prioritizes nearby matches, but Apple just gives you a top match that's could be a thousand miles away. By the way another thing Google maps has that Apple doesn't is offline maps. If in an area where cellular comes and goes, it's a lifesaver. With Apple Maps, it does seem to cache the designated route, but if you go off it even a little, it doesn't recover unless you figure out how to get back to its route. As a MacBigot, I hate complaining about this stuff - c'mon Apple!
For a company that prides itself on "integration", admitting that the Siri team only heard about the HomePod in 2015 screams internal lack thereof.
The first step to being cured is to finally admit you have a problem...too bad this article is NOT from Apple itself.
The first step to being cured is to finally admit you have a problem...too bad this article is NOT from Apple itself.
Agreed! I had 5 Amazon Echos around my house and I just replaced the one in the living room with a HomePod. I love the sound from the HomePod but Siri isn't nearly as helpful as Alexa. I used to ask Alexa for sport scores and "she" would simply tell me who won the last game. When I ask Siri via my HomePod I get a vibration on my Apple Watch and Siri's voice saying "here is what I found on the web" That would be OK for an open ended question (i.e. "Siri tell me about cold fusion") but some simple like a sports score, I would rather her just tell me. Plus - I rarely ever had to repeat myself with Alexa but I find myself having to do so a lot more often with Siri.
I've said this from the beginning. Siri was very powerful as a stand alone app - it just wasn't integrated. With Apple's resources and money - Siri should be so far ahead of what it is now. Even the people that created Siri have excelled beyond Siri since they sold the company.
Amazon is planning for the long term, not the next quarter so the front-loaded investment doesn't worry them. If you research how Amazon functions then you'll see that they have massive R&D and only recently were forced to turn in a profit because they earned too much $$$.
Well, that argument can be made for all smart speakers. I want my Amazon Dot to support Google Play Music, Apple Music, and Tidal on device. It doesn't. I want my Google Home to support Amazon Prime Music and Apple Music on device. It doesn't.
That brings the conversation down to whether the product does what it says it will do. Apple has sold this as being a fantastic sounding speaker in a very small package that can handle Apple Music, Podcasts, Airplay, Homekit, and some regular questions like weather, scores, news, or setting an alarm. It does those things. They have already said that it will add extra functionality with multi-room and Airplay 2 down the road.
I would also argue that people pay more for better sound quality than they would pay for a better assistant. There are speakers that cost tens of thousands of dollars that are "dumb" and there are assistants that are good that cost $30 (when they aren't practically giving them away). The Google Home Max proves this out. You pay $399 for a speaker that has the same basic assistant capabilities as a free app on your iPhone.
The hardware is the thing that can't be updated over the air, so Apple was smart to go all in on hardware. For my needs, the HomePod works fine with Siri. Though, I spent less than $40 for a Dot, so all those dumb trivia questions can still be answered at my leisure.
It doesn't work better unless you don't care about sound quality or better mics. It is better will skills and some trivia. It is priced appropriately...as is the HomePod.
I have multiple Dots, explain how using them for trivia and setting reminders is making them a fortune in the long term that can come anywhere close to what Apple is making on their line of products that support Siri?
I have ordered from the Dot a couple times. It wasn't even for convenience, it was because I was reading an email from Amazon on my phone and they had a deep discount on a product if I used the Dot to order it rather than their website. Other than that, I prefer just pulling something up online so I can be sure I am getting the right thing. Also, it is quicker than listening to her read back the items and ordering info.
Apple is making money up front and over time with Apple Music on the HomePod. They have you coming and going. Amazon is planning that I will order something that I wouldn't have down the road using the Dot. It isn't something I will ever do (outside of the example above). Don't get me wrong, I am glad Amazon is (practically) giving away the Dot, I just don't see it as a huge advantage when people are using their phones enough that it is easy to just visit Amazon's site between checking email and Facebook/Twitter.
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All they need to do is make a "skill store" (to partly steal the Alexa vocabulary). If Apple builds it, They Will Come.
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OMG, This.
I'll throw another one out there.
I have a UPS store in my contacts. A specific one. One that I have a mailbox at. I call that store a lot.
"Hey Siri... Call the UPS store."
"I found a UPS store on [the WRONG ****ING STREET]. Shall I call it?"
SMH.
I think when you answer one of Siri's yes-or-no questions with, "No, God damnit!" that ought to result in some developer in the back office getting an electric shock.
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Correct, and Samsung bought the new fruits of their labour (Viv) and are rolling into Bixby.
The problem is, they want conversation with Siri to be totally free-form, so little in the way of fixed vocabulary/syntax. Adding arbitrary bits from third parties will necessarily limit that flexibility, by tying up words/phrases that Apple may want to eventually use a different way. I'd love to see a Skill store or some such, but I think Apple is painting themselves into a corner.