There must be something special about the HomePod version - it’s only in English, for one thing. If it was just iPhone Siri in a speaker, wouldn’t it support all the languages it does on iPhone?
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Siri is Now Actively Used on More Than Half a Billion Devices
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There must be something special about the HomePod version - it’s only in English, for one thing. If it was just iPhone Siri in a speaker, wouldn’t it support all the languages it does on iPhone?
That’s great! How did you get it to recognize Legolas’ name? I got everyone who is home tonight ...hubby, teenager, to try and we all got stuck with legless and Lego lists!
My husband also asked Siri “Who was the homerun king?” and she couldn’t answer, but Alexa and Google home rattled off the answer and some extra information. I suppose there’s a way of eliciting the information by asking the question a bit more precisely. But if you’re going to speak more colloquially, Alexa and Google seem to be more adept at accommodating that.
Haven’t added any emphasis to any of the letters or syllables, simply said “Legolas”; pretty much phonetically (Leg-oh-luss). [using the Australian female voiced Siri, not that this really helps].
I haven’t had anything to do with Alexa, but Siri has been mostly very good in my experience. Certainly a lot better than 6 or so years ago when it debuted. Definitely times when it’s (she’s?) frustrating in not understanding something simple or common.
I use Siri multiple times a day, from setting timers, reminders, adding items to a shopping list, spelling, calling people, to asking about trivia or something more specific. Not perfect but Siri is mostly very reliable for me...
I'd love to see a feedback button after every Siri reply that we could use to report if it had adequately responded. My personal experience is that for all but the simplest requests, comically clearly pronounced, it's practically useless. Inaccurate to the point it where it goes beyond annoying and actually starts to be funny! No way I'm ever getting in a car being driven by the AI powering my iPhone.
"Hey Siri" nothing happens. "Hey Siri" screen turns on for half second then turns back off. Button triggers Siri with no issues.
If that type of glitch was a relatively isolated incident I'd be more forgiving. But using apple products anymore feels like death by a thousand cuts. Maybe the competition is no better but at this point I don't feel like I have much to lose in finding out.
If that type of glitch was a relatively isolated incident I'd be more forgiving. But using apple products anymore feels like death by a thousand cuts. Maybe the competition is no better but at this point I don't feel like I have much to lose in finding out.
but Apple left out the bolded text below. Wonder why.
On HomePod, Siri will be able to make music recommendations...for Apple Music subscribers based on personal taste, aiding in music discovery, and Siri will be able to respond to a range of Apple [M]usic related commands and queries like "Play more songs like this," "Play something new," "Who's singing?" and "Play more like that."
I was about to call this out as BS till I realized it didn't say "ACCURATELY used" And what exactly does "actively" mean? I think it means, the person uses it once and but after the response, switches to Google Assistant. It was activated once on 500,000 devices...
I use Siri for selecting music while driving, which works reasonably well and is safer than the manual alternative. Even this has some oddities - if I ask it to play some music from the 70s (or any other decade), Siri will respond that it cannot find any music from that decade. It clearly understands the question, it just cannot handle the task.
For anything else I have given up on Siri. Doing things on the screen is faster and more reliable. Apart from its inability to understand what I want, I was also annoyed by expert timing that "Hey Siri" seems to require: I say "Hey Siri, do this and that" and when I am done speaking I realize Siri has barely woken up and did not get my command, so I repeat the command itself but it is too late now, so I repeat "Hey Siri" and wait a little and try again... until after a while of this I realize that what annoys me the most is how it demonstrates how easily I succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy - "I tried so many times already, it has to work eventually!" Yeah, right.
At the current rate of progress I think it will take decades until Siri is generally useful.
For anything else I have given up on Siri. Doing things on the screen is faster and more reliable. Apart from its inability to understand what I want, I was also annoyed by expert timing that "Hey Siri" seems to require: I say "Hey Siri, do this and that" and when I am done speaking I realize Siri has barely woken up and did not get my command, so I repeat the command itself but it is too late now, so I repeat "Hey Siri" and wait a little and try again... until after a while of this I realize that what annoys me the most is how it demonstrates how easily I succumb to the sunk-cost fallacy - "I tried so many times already, it has to work eventually!" Yeah, right.
At the current rate of progress I think it will take decades until Siri is generally useful.
IMO the big problem with Siri is that you have
The reason Alexa is better is that Alexa isn't really an AI. It uses AI for some things, but it uses straight keyword matching for most things. The keyword lists are exhaustive.
Sometimes, big lists of stuff are just better. Plus they can use all that data to make a better AI when AI gets better.
In real life AI still has a training problem. Apple's Siri team went all-out on a "pure" AI and got stuck because AI in general isn't really that good or flexible. The technology isn't really ready for prime time.
The reason Alexa is better is that Alexa isn't really an AI. It uses AI for some things, but it uses straight keyword matching for most things. The keyword lists are exhaustive.
Sometimes, big lists of stuff are just better. Plus they can use all that data to make a better AI when AI gets better.
In real life AI still has a training problem. Apple's Siri team went all-out on a "pure" AI and got stuck because AI in general isn't really that good or flexible. The technology isn't really ready for prime time.
I have the feeling that Apple counts me as one of those users because I will sometimes hit my Home button a little too long and Siri pops up and says something like “I’m sorry I didn’t catch that”. I’ve tried opening apps using Siri and setting alarms but not in a while. Alarms works well, opening apps not so well.
Siri appears to not understand (legless) but does display web results for Legolas and Lord of the Rings for me. I've noticed that Siri's transcription of my diction does not always match what is truly understood. Also, remember that Siri responses are contextual. So if you're looking at Siri while asking, it's more likely to display the results because you're already looking a the device's screen. If you're not looking at the screen, Siri is more likely to offer audio responses. Apple still has a lot of work to do but I believe Siri is perceived to be much worse than it actually is.I asked Hey Google and Alexa “Who is Legolas’s father?” They both quickly answered “Thranduil”.
I asked Siri the same question.
First she told me she doesn’t know who my father is (but apparently thinks I’m talking about someone who is “legless”.
I tried again and she said that I don’t have a Lego List but she can make one for me.
Oh Siri.
Let’s hope she can hear much better on the Home Pod.
I could not get Siri to understand what I was asking. I had to spell out the name. Keep in mind this doesn’t confuse the other search assistants. They seem to know there is a Legolas out there and that I’m asking about him.
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Like Alexa, Siri is great for limited use cases so millions are using Siri everyday for playing music and setting timers and sending texts. Google is probably ahead of all others in terms of general understanding and responses but these voice assistants are all still so crude.
I hope that Apple can broaden Siri's usefulness much further but until they update the Siri API for app developers to take advantage of, there will be no big improvements.
Is actively used including every time one activates Siri by mistake? I know I do that a lot with the home button
I've tried to use Siri to remind me to do something when I get home, but she tells me "the calendar that tracks your reminders doesn't support location-based reminders". Since she almost always gives me the wrong directions to someplace, this is about the only other use I have for it, but it doesn't work. What calendar DOES support location-based reminders?
Siri will start to be really useful to me when I can give it multiple commands at once such as, "Hey, Siri...turn on the Family Room lights, turn off the outside lights, and add eggs to my shopping list." As it stands now, if I want to do multiple things that Siri could do, it's usually faster for me to do all those things myself because Siri can only handle one task at a time. I don't understand why Apple hasn't made this kind of thing a priority. They say Siri is great because you can talk to it naturally. Uh, no you can't. 'Naturally' is not talking about only one thing at a time. To me, 'naturally' means being able to throw multiple things at it, have it parse each of those things, and then perform the requested tasks.
Actually, I was using an Android voice assistant at the time. I think its name was "Jenkins". You could ask or command it quite a few useful things.
Android had made it easy to create voice commands and searches. That's why when Siri came out, there was almost immediately a ton of "Iris" lookalikes on the Play Store.
Amazon doesn't "know everything" about us. It only knows what things we've commanded through the home assistant. Which is usually a song choice, turning on lights, or asking wacky search questions. If it's a sales order, they'd have know it anyway via doing it online.
Now where assistants are really useful, is when they DO know a lot more about us from our other activities, like Google does. I have no problem with e.g. an online assistant knowing where I was on a certain day. Heck, it's not like there's not a ton of witnesses to that already
I never understand this desire for "privacy" when the same people often use Apple Pay which explicitly gives the banks the same info they always had gotten. And their computerized watch over what we buy and where, has far more effect on our lives than Google's computers knowing that say, I hit a bar in the middle of the day. With Google I'd just get bar ads. But using Apple Pay means the bank is gonna wonder if I lost my job.
Expected the usual Siri bashing. Funny that when they survey Alexa and google users, after the newness wears off it is used for basic functions like the forecast, reminders and timers. All of which Siri can do as well.
Works great for me especially with my homekit automation.
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What exactly does Apple Pay send to the bank?
Works great for me especially with my homekit automation.
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Actually, I was using an Android voice assistant at the time. I think its name was "Jenkins". You could ask or command it quite a few useful things.
Android had made it easy to create voice commands and searches. That's why when Siri came out, there was almost immediately a ton of "Iris" lookalikes on the Play Store.
Amazon doesn't "know everything" about us. It only knows what things we've commanded through the home assistant. Which is usually a song choice, turning on lights, or asking wacky search questions. If it's a sales order, they'd have know it anyway via doing it online.
Now where assistants are really useful, is when they DO know a lot more about us from our other activities, like Google does. I have no problem with e.g. an online assistant knowing where I was on a certain day. Heck, it's not like there's not a ton of witnesses to that already
I never understand this desire for "privacy" when the same people often use Apple Pay which explicitly gives the banks the same info they always had gotten. And their computerized watch over what we buy and where, has far more effect on our lives than Google's computers knowing that say, I hit a bar in the middle of the day. With Google I'd just get bar ads. But using Apple Pay means the bank is gonna wonder if I lost my job.
What exactly does Apple Pay send to the bank?
The same info the banks always got. Which is one reason why Apple was able to extort a percentage of the transactions. This continued flow of info is critical to banks for both realtime fraud detection and for watching our personal lives.
If Apple were really about privacy, they'd have done something like the original Google Wallet, where they act as a store proxy, thus hiding both location and type of purchase. Banks were scared that Apple would do just that.
People worry about the totally wrong things when it comes to privacy. Google's computers knowing that you paid a divorce lawyer is harmless. Your bank's computers knowing you paid a divorce lawyer is going to raise red flags about your future creditworthiness.
