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Siri Experiencing Significant Outage

I think the Siri concept is quite flawed. I have yet to use the damn thing to get anything done. I envisioned being able to use it to have it read me text messages via my bluetooth headset while I drive, being able to dictate and send someone a text message via my bluetooth headset while I drive and other simple things like dialing a particular number or a contact. The few things I tried it kinda sucked so I have yet to use it again. Basically i'm walking around with a phone that has a better antenna and that's about it. What a disappointment this iphone4S has been with its poor battery life and tiny screen. Now, my phone has 64GB of storage and i'm using not even 1% of it. Why not use a chunk of that for this stupid Siri thing so that we can actually make this thing work and more useful instead of having to rely on an unreliable data connection which is both expensive and not available everywhere you might want to use it. Sure I can understand it needing to connect to a server for certain things but everyday simple tasks should not require this damn thing to be sucking on your already limited and expensive data plan. I like to waste my metered data on Pandora so I can enjoy some music not on stupid Siri crap.


-Mike
 
justinfreid said:
I'm not kidding: the key part is requiring. I understand that in the long run Apple plans to leverage the tons of audio snippets in their cloud to make Siri better, and that for certain tasks the processing is the bottleneck, but on a day to day basis do you even realize the usability hit to the customer when setting an alarm, for instance, via Siri is dependent on AT&T 3G?
Are you alluding to that great Flaming Lips song? Do...you...realize........?
Click to expand...

It's not as simple as it sounds.

You're probably gonna need gigabytes of space and high processing to analyse the query.

Even for a query like- set an alarm, there are people who would say- siri why don't you alarm at 9 tomorrow OR Siri, would you mind setting an alarm for 12 AM tonight.

Point being the whole vocabulary and algorithms need to be saved on the phone which is absolutely impossible. That's why the feature set is on the cloud which is as I said, the best place for language processing and machine learning.
 
So Apple is supposed to be perfect? Really. Stuff happens. Every company has made mistakes and Apple will make more mistakes. It is part of this pathetic life on this planet. My iPhone 4 is slow too me. Turning on and booting up is slow. I would like an iPhone 4S but my upgrade options are still a year out. So I will wait for the iPhone 5. I expect imperfection along the way but Apple usually fixes them. I suspect Apple will release a fix for this. Engineers are hard at work at Apple to remedy the problem. Have a little faith. :D
 
guch20 said:
Apple just isn't on the ball anymore without Steve Jobs at the helm.
Click to expand...

You mean like back when they were on the ball with Antennagate? The botched MobileMe launch? The iPhone price drop debacle? The lost iPhone 4 prototype? The case-cracking iPhone 3G/S? Ping? The G4 Cube?

I find it a bit comforting that Apple is just as spastic as ever without Steve.
 
mikefla said:
I think the Siri concept is quite flawed. I have yet to use the damn thing to get anything done. I envisioned being able to use it to have it read me text messages via my bluetooth headset while I drive, being able to dictate and send someone a text message via my bluetooth headset while I drive and other simple things like dialing a particular number or a contact. The few things I tried it kinda sucked so I have yet to use it again. Basically i'm walking around with a phone that has a better antenna and that's about it. What a disappointment this iphone4S has been with its poor battery life and tiny screen. Now, my phone has 64GB of storage and i'm using not even 1% of it. Why not use a chunk of that for this stupid Siri thing so that we can actually make this thing work and more useful instead of having to rely on an unreliable data connection which is both expensive and not available everywhere you might want to use it. Sure I can understand it needing to connect to a server for certain things but everyday simple tasks should not require this damn thing to be sucking on your already limited and expensive data plan. I like to waste my metered data on Pandora so I can enjoy some music not on stupid Siri crap.


-Mike
Click to expand...
I have used Siri to do everything you stated in the first five lines while driving...
 
TexasTexan said:
iPhone 4s user: "Siri, what's a beta?"

Siri: "Have you ever wanted to be a Guinea pig?"

iPhone 4s user: "No, seriously"

Siri: "It's where software is released to a select group and that will report the bugs, where the company gives the software to the end user for the effort of testing out incomplete software."

iPhone 4s user: "But I paid"

Siri: "Thank you..."

One thing... I wonder are the Apple geniuses telling people it is a Beta at the store?
Click to expand...


Its actually pretty funny how many problems there are with this phone
 
Jesus H Christ people !!

So a feature or two quit working for a few hours.

Did it cause the Space Shuttle to crash?

The stock market to melt down?

Respirators in a hospital to quit functioning?

What has happened to the world where people will obsess over pointless BS like this?

I noticed Siri not working a few hours ago. Now it works.

So what.

If this is really ruining your day or causing you to rethink Apple and it's products, get to an analyst.

Or just Get a Life.
 
As of 3:00AM EDT is working fine.

Siri has already been a great help for me finding locations very quickly when I didn't have time to stop and type in queries.

Setting reminders is also nice.

Wolfram queries have been very helpful.

i'm not there yet with texts and email. However, before just launching into that I plan to do a little practicing so I can understand how to use it.
 
dethmaShine said:
More evidence that you don't understand what 'beta' means.
Click to expand...

It may be beta, but it's also the main feature Apple is marketing. Just look at the iPhone 4S ads - they feature Siri exclusively. Someone who buys the phone based on those ads would be rather disappointed (and rightfully so I might add)
 
bushido said:
what does a server outtage have to do with being in "beta". it worked just fine in europe. i guess they have a different "beta" over there? :p
Click to expand...

Seriously? lol

terraphantm said:
It may be beta, but it's also the main feature Apple is marketing. Just look at the iPhone 4S ads - they feature Siri exclusively. Someone who buys the phone based on those ads would be rather disappointed (and rightfully so I might add)
Click to expand...

Well, I think I was wrong. Apple does tout Siri as the groundbreaking feature for iPhone 4S. It is groundbreaking but now it's broken.

Bad Apple. Bad Apple. Bad.
 
bushido said:
what does a server outtage have to do with being in "beta". it worked just fine in europe. i guess they have a different "beta" over there? :p
Click to expand...
Uh, yes. Exactly. :rolleyes:

Siri must be tuned for the dialects of local speakers to be most accurate, after all. That's why it only launches on a language by language basis. And I bet you a sizable sum there is a separate Siri setup for U.S. English, the Queen's English, and maybe also Australian (although in that case it might have more to do with distance than dialect difference. So obviously an issue with the EN-us servers is not going to effect EN-gb.
 
BulletToothTony said:
I didn't know that not connecting to Siri's servers converted your A5 processor into an A4 and made your Camera worse..
Click to expand...

You mean... now I'm unable to connect, but faster in doing so? And make a better photo of my angry face? :mad:

That's ridiculous! Siri is the only meaningful differentiator between the iPhone 4 and 4S - there's a reason Apple doesn't offer it to iPhone 4 users!

Cheers

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dethmaShine said:
Seriously? lol
Click to expand...

That's spelt siriously - as in ridiculous :p

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bushido said:
what does a server outtage have to do with being in "beta".
Click to expand...

Because the servers only have "beta" quality? *sigh* :rolleyes: Just a thought...
 
SeaFox said:
Uh, yes. Exactly. :rolleyes:

Siri must be tuned for the dialects of local speakers to be most accurate, after all. That's why it only launches on a language by language basis. And I bet you a sizable sum there is a separate Siri setup for U.S. English, the Queen's English, and maybe also Australian (although in that case it might have more to do with distance than dialect difference. So obviously an issue with the EN-us servers is not going to effect EN-gb.
Click to expand...

uuhm a "beta" is the state of a software and has nothing to do with a outage of hardware

thats why siri is in "beta" and not the damn server its running at (which needless to say has never been one of apples strongest part)
 
It's the service that's in beta. It's unlikely that a hardware outage caused this service outage. Having said which, I do think it very misleading that the service is advertised in a way that will lead most people to believe it's a fully functional service. It isn't, most of us on here realise it isn't, but most of the public don't realise this.
 
It's funny how everyone is mad that Siri went down, but no one is quite realising that Apple is receiving and collecting everything you tell Siri (all your nice reminders, text messages, e-mails) in their cloud infrastructure...

If I were paranoid, I'd quite start thinking about what I tell Siri in the future... ;)
 
I didn't find out that Apple released Siri as beta software until this thread.
Maybe everyone else already knew, but I seriously doubt it.

iPhone 4S instead of an iPhone 5. Siri beta. Microphone problems. Battery problems. This looks more and more like a rushed product.


And for those objecting to other people complaining about that Siri went down.

When one of your slogans is "It just works", then you deserve to get complaints for things like this.
 
It is a BETA damn it! A BETA! Don't complain about a beta, notify it to Apple developers so they can reach ALPHA sooner. Stupid android people!
 
Siri was a disappointment when I tried it in the Apple store, it kept getting everything wrong which I asked. The only thing which worked was When is the next eclipse.

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I WAS the one said:
It is a BETA damn it! A BETA! Don't complain about a beta, notify it to Apple developers so they can reach ALPHA sooner. Stupid android people!
Click to expand...

Alpha software is before Beta stupid head.
 
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