In Lawsuit Over Siri, Apple Says the Technology is "Cutting Edge"

[iGrouch]

Siri: Gis us a larf

I don't know, Sometimes I think we might be expecting too much from technology. It might be our own reality distortion field. This can be true when you live in the far flung corners of the Green Isle and have a very strange accent and the nearest localisation of Siri is a news reader from the BBC. What Siri does for the Irish is give us a good laugh.

Lat night I was fooling around with the misses iPhone (don't have one myself). She thinks I am one of those pathetic cavemen who spends too much time on the computer (I sometimes have that strange feeling that this could be true). I was seeing if Siri would tell me when the next Mac Pro would arrive aka a discussion on the Mac Pro forum currently.

First thing it did was reply with my name to repeat the question. That made her laugh in a freaked out way. I think Siri used my name because it knows I am the only one who loves Apple. Eventually Siri told me that everything to know about Apple products is on the Applestore. Siri then started calling me asinine. I asked Siri to stop but it insisted on calling me asinine in its superior BBC newsreaders tone of voice (As if those 800 years weren't bad enough). It even went into the address book on the iPhone and changed the company name to asinine in my address card.

By the end of it we were in stitches. Never had such a good laugh in a long time.


By the way I don't really love Apple. I think all our apple stuff thinks I own them (I am the only one who cleans and maintains them) because I have set them all up with one iCloud account for work. We keep finding my mug on her laptop login screen.

 

[stationstops]

Its a beta, which is fine and deserves consideration, but neither Apple nor any other company should be actively running an aggressive national ad campaign highlighting flawless and broad operation of a beta product which has such sketchy performance.

Wait, wait until its out of beta and working more consistently as advertised in the commercials, then fine. But running them now with Siris performance as it is, I agree with the plaintiff, is gratuitous and irresponsible. I'm glad he's representing consumers and I do hope he gets a settlement for his time and effort. It takes a lot of time and effort to go up against a Goliath.

Alternatively, they could make the beta disclaimer much more clear in the ads, but still, I think it would be more responsible to just wait until its more reliable.

I personally don't have much luck with Siri, just yesterday I asked if it was raining in midtown NYC (It was), and Siri just apologized and said there was no weather info available for NYC. That's not unusual.

if Apple was discarding 25% of user's emails on the iPhone, I think we'd all agree that a similar campaign for email on the iPhone would be misleading. Siri is not as critical a service, but the burden of accuracy in advertising across all products and services is the same.

 

[Bubba Satori]

Cutting edge, a euphemisim for sometimes it just doesn't work.

----------

I don't know, Sometimes I think we might be expecting too much from technology.

Agreed.
And who is it that creates these Great Expectations?
Anybody we know?
Here's a hint. It's not just Apple.

 

[DougFNJ]

Class action lawsuits are a big fat waste of time, and as others mentioned, clog up the judicial system.

If you have ever been the recipient of the big $2 to $5 settlement of some seemingly justified lawsuits, you wouldn't waste your time putting your personal information to receive it on garbage like this.

Apple uses Siri as it's largest selling point in their ads. They protect themselves by slapping the word Beta on it so when this anticipated silliness ultimately arrived, they could rebut by saying, "we said from the beginning it was in Beta"

Bottom line is if the product is not finished, don't exclusively advertise that feature on why you should purchase the phone.

I use it periodically and would sy I probably get a 65% success rate. There are times I try to send a text and repeatedly try to fix the mistake Siri made and ultimately delete the message and type it out. And there are MANY time Siri is simply not available. I wouldn't return my iPhone over this, and certainly wouldn't sue the company, but as an individual in marketing, I certainly wouldn't advertise that feature exclusively with the amount of issues many experience.

 

[126351]

I think in terms of actual Siri, my only gripe is how despite utilizing both Apple's servers as well as the device, if you have no internet, it won't even attempt to use the device's voice recognition.

This is why I've fallen out of love with it. Does it really need to connect to a server if all I ask is to play songs on shuffle?

I'd love to use it in the car for this and to read my messages aloud but there is a 300 yard gap in 3G coverage on my commute which is not rectified until going to Airplane mode and then back out again.

I've no love of the class action but Apple is overhyping Siri.

 

[deaglecat]

Siri is still in beta.

For how freaking long ? For ever ?

I am beginning to wonder whether Siri will ever be improved.

I don't find it particularly useful after the initial novelty and so many attempts to get it to work reliably.

If Apple improved it then I would give it another try... till then it is a gimmick.

 

[Camoman12]

Technologically Illiterate People :/

"Siri either did not understand what Plaintiff was asking, or, after a very long wait time, responded with the wrong answer."

The plaintiff was probably in a loud area and didn't press the Siri icon after they were done stuttering, so Siri kept picking up background noise, thus creating a long wait time.

So many people complain about the iPhone features or how they don't know how to use it but they never read the user guide Apple created and book marked in Safari on their iPhone.

Also, I noticed Siri usually depicts what people say wrong when they hold the phone right up to their mouth thinking it won't pick up their voice a foot or two back, and when people use slang that's so common it sounds like normal language to them. Such as slight mispronunciations of words, or slurring words together.

 

[onepremiere]

Everyone is entitled to a piece of the pie right? What a joke. Our Society is so far gone, I doubt we can ever get back.

 

[iScott428]

The only place I see that mentions the Beta status of Siri is the iPhone Features sub-page on Apple.com. In product advertising and the apple.com/iphone product page, it is advertised as a full-featured complete product, and that's where the "Beta" argument fails to hold water. We know it's technically incomplete, but when it's being used as a major selling point of a product without any mention of this fact it does become a problem.

However, i'm not here to trash Siri, or Apple.

I have an Australian accent which - although not the hardest to decipher - certainly isn't the voice Siri would have been tested or developed against, and it works perfectly. Every single time. It currently lacks some functionality, notably business listings which is a shame (although i'd imagine this will be corrected soon), but the fact it understands what i'm asking and how i'm asking it is remarkable. Needless to say, I won't be parting with my 4S or launching into a lawsuit any time soon.

I do not exactly remember but I think in the keynote to introduce the 4s they specifically mentioned Siri was a BETA release.

But the argument that companies disclose every detail about their product in commercials or any advertising is ridiculous. There are so many examples of this and well that is the exact point of Adverts and Marketing...show the company/product/idea in the best and only the best light possible. Hell AT&T sold me an unlimited plan in 2007 when I first got my iPhone (Heavily Advertised the unlimited plans over here in the wastelands of 'emrica) and now they cap data at 3gb and throttle...Siri might not work every time as advertised but I surely don't have unlimited data either. Untill the 4s I had terrible call quality/signal strength/customer support, all were and are still advertised as being very good or the best.

 

[ThunderSkunk]

Siri. iPad. WTF

 

[hexonxonx]

I've turned it off and am using voice control which doesn't require the net to use. I tell it to call someone, it does. I can't tell you how many times when I was driving on my job and asked SIRI to call someone and nothing happened. One time I asked SIRI to make a call and it failed like all the others. Twenty minutes later after I made the call from my favorites, the request for SIRI to make that call earlier went through while it was in my pocket.

 

[yusukeaoki]

These people making useless lawsuits must have a lot of time to waste and money.

 

[Mad-B-One]

Ditto. I have friends with thick Boston, New Jersey and Southy Chicago accents and I can't understand half the crap that comes out of their potholes - how do you expect SIRI to understand these nut bags?

Actually, sorry to correct you, but these are no accents, they are dialects. That might seem unimportant but gives that lawsuit at least some validity. See, I have an accent. I come from a non-English speaking country and live in America. That means, I do not even hear that I sound different because I grew up with a different set of phonemes. Apple would never claim that Siri would understand me well - even though I think I speak a clearer English than some folks around me - but the point is that the people in the Boston or New Jersey are not just a small group and it could be expected that Siri could understand that. I don't know how it really works because I have the iPhome 4 and not 4S but since it is server based, I could imagine it cannot really "learn" your personal dialect and accent? Just comparing it the handwriting software I have on my work HP tablet which does learn individual handwriting by correction, that could help immensely.

 

[mrxak]

Siri works great, I use it all the time. Dudes need to learn how to speak.

 

[theelysium]

Siri is a pile of dictation $$i$! Apple needs to start over with her.

See here is proof. I said, "Create an appointment at 8:45AM." I'm in a silent room. I speak clear english.

 

[Bubba Satori]

Siri works great, I use it all the time. Dudes need to learn how to speak.

Insert Pulp Fiction reference here.

 

[glimp7]

Meh

Apple bought Siri because they couldn't re-engineer it.

 

[Bowbieloll]

A Public Kick up the Ass for Apple

Well I'm for the plaintiff on this one, but purely as Apple need a serious, and public kick up the ass about Siri. I use Siri every day, so let me explain why:

1. There is no public listing of current bugs with Siri. If Siri isn't behaving as expected I cannot check and confirm it's because of a bug. It's a beta product, in public beta, and I can't have this information because that's not how Apple works.
2. Apple won't acknowledge a bug (unless I log in as a developer) or tell me when it has been resolved. So assuming I have a bug, and know it's a bug, I will stop using that feature because it doesn't work. So now, if Apple fix it, I don't know it's now fixed (I suspect they won't detail all the bug fixes) then I will never use that feature again. How many features will I never use as a consequence.
3. AppleCare are also unable to tell you what behaviour is a bug with Siri, nor will the record a possible bug. They will point you at a standard troubleshooting document and hope you go away. Having spoken to someone at Apple Exec. Relations this is exactly what they've been told to do - they have no other information. This means, that as a user I have no idea if my handset is in fact faulty, or simply has a bug with Siri. That strikes me as a fundamental problem - how long do I assume something is a bug before it turns out that it's a handset fault? 1 month? 6 months? Until the warranty runs out?
4. If AppleCare can't tell you if it's a bug I waste considerable time satisfying myself that a problem I'm seeing is a bug by logically diagnosing when and how it occurs. That doesn't make me a happy customer.
5. Having got so pissed off with this I ended up on the phone with Apple Executive Relations who were able to, over a three week period, and acting as an intermediary to Apple's Engineering team, determine that one of my current faults is indeed a bug (cause as yet unknown), and that the other fault was "behaviour by design". That behaviour by design means that I should "expect to have to invoke Siri twice on occasions when at home on my wifi". Why? Because the power-saving in iOS5 switches off wifi periodically. If I invoke Siri when it's in this state Siri will attempt to use the mobile network which has limited GSM data connectivity (very low signal) and after a long delay, will fail (I'm really sorry about this...). If there's no mobile network at all I get told to connect to the internet. This is because Siri initiates the network before wifi re-connects (1-2s), so trying again immediately afterwards will work. The generic nature of Siri's failure message may be masking just how many people this problem may be affecting so I thought I'd share it.
6. I too have experienced the bizarre non-sequential of Siri at times. I get halfway through doing one thing, and say OK or something similar and it decides to call someone or do something entirely unrelated despite actually correctly interpreting the command I gave it.

So that's my view - Apple have dropped both balls with this one and I think they need a good public kick to encourage them to sort themselves out and be a bit more receptive to user feedback, and perhaps a bit more open about current Siri bugs. For reference, I'm in the UK on the O2 network. This all stems from an email I sent to Tim Cook asking whether the "S" in 4S stood for the number of times Siri says "Sorry" to me through the course of a day.

 

[chinesedemo]

Siri has been a big disappointment to me since it's onset. I felt the initial set of commercials that were highlighting Siri was false and misleading in every way. Look how long the iPhone 4s has been out, nothing has improved in the Siri department. Quite the contrary, actually now when I ask Siri "where can I get a blow-job?" Siri replies that it doesn't understand then repeats what I asked.......

 

[FlatlinerG]

Siri is a pile of dictation $$i$! Apple needs to start over with her.

See here is proof. I said, "Create an appointment at 8:45AM." I'm in a silent room. I speak clear english.

Not quite sure what "clear english" you're speaking, but I just tried this out quoting you word for word. With a TV on in the background and me speaking quite fast, Siri understood me perfectly..

 

[class77]

Class action lawsuits are a big fat waste of time, and as others mentioned, clog up the judicial system.

If you have ever been the recipient of the big $2 to $5 settlement of some seemingly justified lawsuits, you wouldn't waste your time putting your personal information to receive it on garbage like this.

Apple uses Siri as it's largest selling point in their ads. They protect themselves by slapping the word Beta on it so when this anticipated silliness ultimately arrived, they could rebut by saying, "we said from the beginning it was in Beta"

Bottom line is if the product is not finished, don't exclusively advertise that feature on why you should purchase the phone.

I use it periodically and would sy I probably get a 65% success rate. There are times I try to send a text and repeatedly try to fix the mistake Siri made and ultimately delete the message and type it out. And there are MANY time Siri is simply not available. I wouldn't return my iPhone over this, and certainly wouldn't sue the company, but as an individual in marketing, I certainly wouldn't advertise that feature exclusively with the amount of issues many experience.

Class action law suits are big winners for the lawyers who file them!! The people who are damaged wind up with peanuts

 

[moonman239]

I don't really blame the plaintiff. Some people have bad experiences with Siri.

I have a question. Where was his phone when he used it? Did he put his phone in his pocket, plug in his headset and invoke Siri while walking? Was it breezy? The microphone can pick up some noise from the wind and from you walking, letting your phone and headset move around. I know this because it has happened to me. Occasionally I'll be walking and with my phone in my pocket, Siri won't understand me.

 

[gatortpk]

Apple made the current beta Siri workable for large scale deployment

Apple bought Siri because they couldn't re-engineer it.

Apple bought the rights to the Siri name. Siri itself (under different names and applications over the decades) has been in development for over 40 years! I assume Apple released it while still in beta so it can learn millions of voices to improve. Since it uses AI (Artificial Intelligence), I can't think of any better way for it to learn and get better, especially since it needs no individual training. Unlike most other voice recognition programs, applications, systems, etc., it works right out of the box. That's big.

Even DARPA was involved. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been involved with many projects, including the Internet (starting with ARPANET in 1969). DARPA has been called ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) twice, when the DoD's "Defense" name wasn't included.

 

[gatortpk]

Siri recognizes wecommend a westauwant over and over again.

Plantiff: Siwi weally sucks! Watch. "Siwi, can you wecommend a westawant?"

See?? What a piece of cwap!

Barry said exactly that in "The Big Bang Theory" in The Beta Test Initiation episode. (Season 5, Episode 14):

Barry: "You got Siwi, huh? Voice Wecognition on that thing is tewible. Wook."
(now speaking to his own phone) "Siwi, can you wecommend a westauwant?"

Barry's iPhone: "I'm sorry, Bawwy. I don't understand wecommend a westauwant."

I tried that with my iPhone TWICE, and it actually responded TWICE:
"I found 17 restaurants... 13 of them are fairly close to you. I've sorted them by rating: ..."

It still understood me! I guess I have trouble getting my R's out of my W's. Again, I tried it twice, second time I really said my W's even harder.

Anyhow, that scene out of the show was funny. I actually liked the fictitious scene at the end with Siri being a live attractive woman sounding just like the American Siri.

 

[fozzy.bear]

what is the term for "technology ambulance chaser"

Shakespeare was right about wanting to get rid of the layers.