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iOS 15 to Limit Siri Functionality With Third-Party Apps
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When someone asks me how much I like my Apple products, Siri is the one thing I avoid. I can argue about right-to-repair, expensive prices, dongles, and etc, but I can’t ever explain why Siri never works.
I’ve had “her” disabled on all my devices after the first week, and I’ve gone through several devices by now.
I’ve had “her” disabled on all my devices after the first week, and I’ve gone through several devices by now.
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I couldn't say for certain. I use Siri on my iPhone and Alexa on my FireTV. So, there isn't really any crossover between commands.
I would say though. Based on my usage of Alexa. It seems to handle natural language better. I can pretty well casually say what I'm looking for and vary how I say it. While Alexa picks out the poignant keywords. I can also pause during a command then continue and it'll take everything in.
Siri seems more stunted. I have to follow a more logical and formal command structure to get the response I want. I also need to plan out what I say. As Siri will jump the gun and try to fill an incomplete command when you pause.
This could be just differences in usage. On the FireTV I'm just looking for music, TV shows and movies. On the iPhone I'm trying to accomplish a wide range of tasks.
I've tried Google (Voice, Now, whatever the current assistant name is) on Android. I wasn't very impressed. Something like dictation works better than Siri. But the Google Assistant (which keeps getting renamed) never felt as integrated. Too many commands would go off into the ether as web searches. It also felt much stricter than Siri as to what keywords initiate commands.
My theory is they are going to be expanding default app’s. Allowing you to set more default apps for categories like tasks. If so then specific third party support is redundant. Just set the todo app as default in future versions and it already understands/supports all default add/delete commands used for the normal reminders app.
Until Shortcuts get dynamic Siri trigger phrases where you can provide context or parameters, Shortcuts will never replace SiriKit intents. I don‘t see a future where Shortcuts can improve in that department.
It‘s like cutting the Music intent and telling Spotify and co. to go with Shortcuts, rendering stuff like „play songs from <say artist here>“ dead and requiring the user to set up the same trigger phrase per artist.
With the current intents being deprecated, you can now no longer easily send money to a friend or book a ride to a location within a single query. This is a heavy step backwards (no matter how little these intents were used) and hopefully means some bigger redesign (Siri v2, just kidding) is somewhat on the horizon.
You could argue that the more “intelligent” assistants are smarter because they’re always watching or listening. Where do you draw the line when there’s no adequate privacy regulations? Of course this is an extremely hyperbolic take, but I’ve read this perspective so many times that I’m beginning to wonder.
My only theory about this move is Apple’s desire to improve Siri on their own, so no other company could say “You got that from us!” Apple loves to take things they have and improve them, or simply discontinue them when they don’t change the market the way they want them to.
My only theory about this move is Apple’s desire to improve Siri on their own, so no other company could say “You got that from us!” Apple loves to take things they have and improve them, or simply discontinue them when they don’t change the market the way they want them to.
Yea. Wife got an Alexa for Christmas and we basically have to holler at her to get anything and usually it’s the wrong song, artist or whatever. I can invoke Siri on the living room HomePod Mini from the kitchen in nearly normal voice volume and get the right answer every time. Siri always has been good to add reminders and calendar events flawlessly. That said I use no third party apps for any of these things because the native apps and Siri work just fine.
I've been thinking on this a bit and it's probably just my use case scenario, but I think I'll be both unaffected by the listed depreciations and I've never used them to begin with.
Generally speaking, we just ask Siri to change the lights, general stuff like the weather, and to set reminders. And she does that fine.
When I gave my parents a set of HomePods Mini for their birthanniversarmotherfathers days this year, the first thing my mom did was yell at Siri, "HEY ALEXA PLAY TINA TURNER SIMPLY THE BEST."
My dad and I just stared at her.
Generally speaking, we just ask Siri to change the lights, general stuff like the weather, and to set reminders. And she does that fine.
When I gave my parents a set of HomePods Mini for their birthanniversarmotherfathers days this year, the first thing my mom did was yell at Siri, "HEY ALEXA PLAY TINA TURNER SIMPLY THE BEST."
My dad and I just stared at her.
Could be things that weren't widely used, or things that they found some sort of problem with that was difficult to simply fix. Or, as a paragraph at the end of the article suggested, they're intending for some of these capabilities to be done as shortcuts, invoked by Siri, rather than having it all baked in. That could actually be closer to the way that Alexa can be given arbitrary "skills" by third parties (speculating, don't have thorough knowledge of either Alexa or Shortcuts).
No. The problem is using the privacy excuse as a scapegoat for subpar products.
Lyft pulled the ability to book a ride through Siri years ago too. Uber is the only one where this works and also where you can see the prices in Apple Maps.
If the electronics are already in the Home app than you should have native Siri access to them. Siri is very reliable, in my experience, controlling all of my lights, locks, A/C, and garage door. If you are looking to operate many lights with one command, you need to set up some zones in the Home app, such as upstairs, downstairs, outside, etc. or you can create scenes. Then just use the zone or scene name with Siri. No need for Siri Shortcuts.
I don't mind this at all. I don't want or need third party apps having full access to Siri.
Well, honestly, I think this will have very little impact on end users—as I understand it, all the shortcuts stuff is being exposed in an API, so devs will probably be able to replicate all of the functionality. In that sense, I agree with those who've suggested that this may be to do with moving functionality from Siri to shortcuts. That does make sense, in a way, since Apple can focus on optimizing certain behaviours that are exposed to shortcuts; i.e., behaviours that align with things they want to use themselves.
I just wish Apple would give some really clear indications of where AI/ML is going on their platforms... There was nothing significant announced at WWDC, which seems extremely strange, given that this represents by far the most significant area for tech development of our time.
EDIT: It's also possible that Apple is simply going to pull back on Siri, in general. Perhaps they're recognizing that these "personal assistants" are just kind of creepy... I certainly have no interest in having creepy-A-F Google's creepy-A-F Alexa listening to everything I say, 24/7... yikes...
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I’ve noticed the same thing. I’ve figured if I press the voice button once in my car I activate the cars voice command and I press and hold the phone button I get Siri.
The car one is a lot more accurate when it comes to making calls and playing a playlist, I’ve pretty much stopped using Siri in the car.
I guess with this my homepods will also become more dumb.
Just thinking about this in a more serious light.. Does anyone think that special groups may rely on "assistance" Siri specifically due to accessibility issue? I mean.. maybe not this specific change being made right now.. but I would think that Apple has an acquired burden just by making the product available.
Looks like a lot of folks didn't read the article -- it appears they may want to deprecate this functionality in Siri itself, and instead have developers write integrations with Shortcuts, which themselves can be triggered by Siri.
I think this could be a nothing burger, if this is the case. Apple is potentially just streamlining APIs, and found that Shortcuts is a better long-term solution, than direct access to Siri APIs. It will allow for the same things it seems, and make developers do less work to get the functionality in both Shortcuts generally, and via Siri using its connection with Shortcuts.
I think this could be a nothing burger, if this is the case. Apple is potentially just streamlining APIs, and found that Shortcuts is a better long-term solution, than direct access to Siri APIs. It will allow for the same things it seems, and make developers do less work to get the functionality in both Shortcuts generally, and via Siri using its connection with Shortcuts.
at this point, Siri only excels at recognizing what artist I want to play if I told google assistant play "BENEE" it would hear "benny" somehow Siri can recognise any artist name other then that Siri sucks
In my one use case that I most would like Siri to work, it stopped doing it a while back. When I ride my motorcycle I used to be able to use Siri to send a text, read and reply to texts. Now she says "you will need to unlock your phone" If I need to unlock my phone then I don't need you. I have changed no settings, but at some point Siri stopped doing it. Really irritating because my motorcycle is my main transportation.
I see a lot of non-AI/non-Machine Learning armchair QBs not fully grasping what Apple has been working on internally with Siri. Think Smart Home/Autos and more full integration but piecemeal release to the public over time. All done the exact opposite way that Google has been doing through massive server sourcing of private data. Apple won't release its full plans until it has all its ducks in a row.
There is automation that adds to the human condition and those that enslave the human condition. You don't like Apple's approach go elsewhere.
There is automation that adds to the human condition and those that enslave the human condition. You don't like Apple's approach go elsewhere.
Siri was a research project which was productized - but that didn't mean that team had a foolproof plan to make Siri perfect over a decade period. The Siri approach itself was somewhat limited at launch - it was more a novel combination of two decades-old speech recognition technology than brand new green-field research.
Apple tends to buy small companies with a delivery-focused mindset, e.g. "your voice assistant stuff is neat, how would you feel about coming to work with us and have something ship in the OS to hundreds of millions of people?"
The delivery-focused mindset and emphasis on secrecy has reduced their field of AI experts, which typically involve a lot of people doing open research.