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Siri Co-Founder Suggests Apple is 'Looking for a Level of Perfection They Can't Get' With Assistant
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I was really impressed with Siri during the 4s keynote. I think every Apple fan was. I remember the successful attempts to get it on older devices through jailbreak. However after playing with it for a couple of days, the novelty wore off pretty quick. I’d rather do things manually. That’s just what I’m used to. Google and Alexa are superior but then again both companies are not as concerned with privacy as Apple is. Even those superior assistants aren’t doing anything that you couldn’t do yourself before.
One of my major complaints with Siri is the inability to comprehend any query involving more than one language. If the language is set to English, it will not understand proper pronunciation of anything in a different language. For example let’s say I ask Siri, what is the distance from Frankfurt to München, pronouncing it in German it will interpret it as mention and show me web results for Frankfurt. It needs to hear Munich to show it on the map.
One of my major complaints with Siri is the inability to comprehend any query involving more than one language. If the language is set to English, it will not understand proper pronunciation of anything in a different language. For example let’s say I ask Siri, what is the distance from Frankfurt to München, pronouncing it in German it will interpret it as mention and show me web results for Frankfurt. It needs to hear Munich to show it on the map.
I have the google assistant shortcut on my widgets. I use that more than Siri because Siri is just mostly useless for information. All I get is “he are some web results”. Siri would be fine if it would just read out the relevant information like google does.
I just asked Siri to define a word on a locked phone. Siri read the definition without requesting me to unlock the phone. I also asked to play a song from my library. It played it without unlocking the phone. When I asked it for the name of the Saturn space probe, it responded with a link for Cassini-Huygens. When I clicked the link, it asked me to unlock the phone, and then proceeded to Wikipedia.
They are striving for perfect and haven’t even made it to mediocre.
I'm in the Apple-ecosystem, but one of my google-minded friends thought it a fun idea to get me a google home mini when they visited us 2 months ago... and I have to say, I'm surprised at how good it is. I tried pushing it with something like "Hey google, play video 'I'm only happy when it rains' from youtube on holodeck" - expecting an interpretation disaster... but to my surprise it actually started playing that video on my chromecast!
The google asisstent is definitely better than Siri, no doubt at all. And again, I'm in the Apple ecosystem and was thinking whether or not to get a Homepod... but I'm more of a casual listener (i.e. more expensive that I'd like it to be - I don't need the audiophile 'feeling') and the one reason why I would get it (a good assistent) is simply going to be disappointing me; Siri will just not be able to compete with the GH-mini.
The google asisstent is definitely better than Siri, no doubt at all. And again, I'm in the Apple ecosystem and was thinking whether or not to get a Homepod... but I'm more of a casual listener (i.e. more expensive that I'd like it to be - I don't need the audiophile 'feeling') and the one reason why I would get it (a good assistent) is simply going to be disappointing me; Siri will just not be able to compete with the GH-mini.
I wish Siri was more accurate. At the same time, I appreciate Apple's attempt to make Siri the best it can be, even though they appear slow (on my timetable) in getting there.
I can see that. At the same time, if the rigor mortis is partly due to Apple having to balance functionality with privacy and security, I am ok with that.
If Siri was more integral in my usage of Apple products, my opinion on Siri's current state would be a little more vociferous.
Winter has NOT ended this year......we are still in winter, and will be until SPRING.....
Siri is worse than Bixby. At least Bixby you "get **** done". Quite ironic when he said that because it cant get **** done.
Viv's technology hasnt even been incorporated into Bixby yet. That is coming on version 2.0. Bixby is running on a updated S-Voice from Samsung. Bixby 2.0 will start seeing a dramatic reinvention of the assistant. It will be more powerful than Google's Assistant. Google's head of Assistant, Larry Heck, is now part of Samsung.
... or Amazon's Alexa.
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Perhaps, but at lease a specific syntax can get you an answer... Siri has NO syntax that can get you information that Apple considers "trivial pursuit"
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All of these are true, but I think it points to an even deeper issue. Given that Apple is nearing ONE TRILLION in market cap with literally $$Billions in reserve and has a staff in excess of 125,000... you would think they could make more progress. I get that a lot of those employees are working on behind-the-scenes stuff either in support of existing product lines (think chip design) or forward-looking technologies (e.g. vehicles), but surely... SOME of those people could be inconvenienced to work on updating products that customers actually buy. Apple has always moved slowly, but they really need to kick it into high gear to maintain leadership.
It sounds like the argument here is that Apple is trying to support two many areas of knowledge and this is an inherently hard problem. It is a hard problem, but I'd have more sympathy for this argument if there weren't so many examples of other assistance trying to solve the same problem and doing it better...
In contrast to, say, Larry and Sergey? Alphabet is nothing but a huge hobby incubator for its management, funded by a single source of revenue...
I don’t think it’s a crutch. I think it’s a reality that artificial intelligence requires information. Apple values privacy as do many of us and to do that while feeding Siri rich information isn’t an easy thing to do. It takes time and innovation to deliver on that and in some ways that has begun. The false narrative that Joswiak refers to is the view that some have, that Siri won’t be as good as other assistants until apple disabled the privacy switch. In the full interview it’s pretty clear that was the context of his statement.
That being said, I agree that some of the things Siri could be better at have little (as far as we know) with privacy. I don’t think apple should rest on their laurels but I also don’t think that they’re blissfully unaware of user feedback.
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The false narrative that Joswiak references is this idea that the only way to be a good assistant, is to turn off the privacy switch. What he is saying is that you can do a great assistant and maintain user privacy, but it isn’t as easy to build and takes a lot more time.
Now I do think areas of Siri which have little to do with privacy need a lot of work. I agree with you on that. Contextually award responses are almost none existent as you pointed out.
I don’t think Siri is perfect but I’d be willing to bet that the average joe would be satisfied with the day to day features. Power users, the tech savvy don’t fit in to that category. I’m talking my mom, the guy buying his first smart phone, grandparents, people who aren’t that into technology, people who struggle to use technology that just want Siri to do the basics really well.
If I asked many of my friends who are long time iPhone users if they worry about chained commands and contextual awareness, they would look at me as if I was speaking a foreign language let alone care enough to know that Siri can’t do those things very well.
This is truly the issue and I agree with you 200%. For example, Siri is implemented in both iOS and macOS but it's odd to me that I can only set a timer on iOS (i.e. Hey Siri, set a timer for 10 minutes). Even though Siri development falls under Craig Federighi, I wish that they can fix these obvious inconsistencies within all of their services including Siri and Messages across all of the their platforms. Once these inconsistencies are resolve across platforms by having a single code base, then iterate to make them better.
Concerning Siri, Apple is 'Looking for a Level of Perfection They Can't Get'
So are most of the commenters on MacRumors...
So are most of the commenters on MacRumors...
I find Siri useful on AppleTV and MacOS (dictation). There is still a long way to go for voice recognition and understanding context, follow up questions, and performing tasks on various of it's devices. But I think overall, across the devices, Siri is ok compared to the others, but lagging behind the things that most people are complaining about.
Agreed. Apple is too smart to be unaware. IMO the issue is that “Apple knows best” and they think customers don’t need a high functioning AI Assistant. So... screw the feedback.
