Siri Shows Increasing Promise, But Accuracy Falls Short of Google Text Searches

[Krazy Bill]

Who cares about all this Siri nonsense. Just give turn-by-turn voice directions already. It should have been there on Siri's release.

Was driving with a colleague yesterday. His $79 android put my 4S to shame.

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

i'm using siri to post this message and, as you can see, it's 100% a cure writ and pancakes urethra.

lmao!!!!!

 

[MACdaddy859]

Well said!

Thanks man. And yes I like Apple stuff. I LOVE Macs. (Best product IMO). If I were to buy my daughter a phone or my mother I would buy them an iPhone because they are good phones and easy to navigate but to me the OS is getting stale. Almost the same since June 29th, 2007. The gap of competition is very small and in some cases Google and other products are better at what they do point blank period. Give props when they are due. Stop being so arrogant and narrow minded. Apple's ***** smells like the rest of ours bro. They didn't create mankind man lol geez.

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Who cares about all this Siri nonsense. Just give turn-by-turn voice directions already. It should have been there on Siri's release.

Was driving with a colleague yesterday. His $79 android put my 4S to shame.

Man!!! That Google Navigation is nice isn't it?!

 

[lzyprson]

It is a B-E-T-A... It's artifical intelligence, capable of doing much much more, but it's not entirely there yet. It's 100% better than anything out there on the market - What the heck is wrong with people that they can't understand this??

 

[MACdaddy859]

It is a B-E-T-A... It's artifical intelligence, capable of doing much much more, but it's not entirely there yet. It's 100% better than anything out there on the market - What the heck is wrong with people that they can't understand this??

Why advertise a B-E-T-A sooo strongly in commercials with celebrities and make it the main selling point of the 4S?

 

[the8thark]

No links to sources? That's helpful.

I second this. It's bad form to quote something and not give the quote source as a link somewhere in the article.

 

[Swift]

I want a job as Gene Munster

You don't ever have to be right about anything, in fact you seldom are, yet no-one puts a "Beta" label on Munster.

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Who cares about all this Siri nonsense. Just give turn-by-turn voice directions already. It should have been there on Siri's release.

Was driving with a colleague yesterday. His $79 android put my 4S to shame.

Try Motion X. $10 a year for great nav.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Why advertise a B-E-T-A sooo strongly in commercials with celebrities and make it the main selling point of the 4S?

Gmail was beta for years yet that didn't make it any less functional. You're basically getting caught up over a word.

 

[thelink]

I'm using Siri to post this message and, as you can see, it's 100% a cure writ and pancakes urethra.

^lol^

 

[samcraig]

Gmail was beta for years yet that didn't make it any less functional. You're basically getting caught up over a word.

Actually - many people here are. People want to excuse Siri for its shortcomings because it's still labeled beta. Yet as a "beta" - Apple is certainly promoting it like a jesus feature.

As you said - gmail was beta for years and "didn't make it any less functional" only proves this silliness of the beta claim.

People need to stop referring to Siri as beta. It's not. It's a v1 and will get upgraded over time.

 

[nuckinfutz]

Actually - many people here are. People want to excuse Siri for its shortcomings because it's still labeled beta. Yet as a "beta" - Apple is certainly promoting it like a jesus feature.

As you said - gmail was beta for years and "didn't make it any less functional" only proves this silliness of the beta claim.

People need to stop referring to Siri as beta. It's not. It's a v1 and will get upgraded over time.

Yes indeed Beta means different things to different people. With voice technology I think it's important to have a lot of voice samples so that your system can tailor how someone in Taiwan speaks Mandarin versus someone in China.

It's fascinating but I don't think anyone can hit the ground running without collecting a lot of data.

 

[Iamthinking]

XBOX Kinect vs SIRI

Whilst there may be some truth in what you say here.

Let's be honest, can you imagine is Siri was not on Apple but on Windows devices, it would be slagged of here as totally useless.

It's only being given the slack it is being given as it's by Apple.

Interesting comparison. I have both kinect and iphone4s, and I think SIRI wins hands down. The XBOX barely works for voice for me (works a bit better for my son), while SIRI is about 95%-99% accurate for me.

Maybe all the frustrated SIRI folks need to stop mumbling so much with the stereo blasting!

 

[Westside guy]

I thought Siri was cool tech at first - and, as tech goes, it certainly is. But man, having to listen to all this annoying blathering drives me nuts! Thanks to stuff like Siri, Google Voice - people are walking around spewing even more inane chatter even more of the time! If you're a transit rider, you can't get away from it!

"Siri, remind me to get coffee when I get to work"

"What should I get tonight? I'm in the mood for, oh, hmmm... Chinese? Mexican? A sandwich?"

"Siri, remind me to ask the doctor about that boil"

I now hate Siri.

 

[mjtomlin]

Many people have bashed siri for not being accurate/ helpful. Honestly when siri came out I never saw myself using it a whole lot. But now, I use it regularly on a daily basis. It has come a long way even though it was just released a couple months ago.

Completely agree... I'm actually amazed sometimes that it picks up what I'm saying. I demo'ed it for a friend the other who was skeptical - he was talking about Apple being sued - and I just asked him what he thought it couldn't do ...

He told me to ask it a few things one of which was where he could get Venezuelan food. All I said was, "I'm hungry for Venezuelan." Siri came back and said "I couldn't find any Venezuelan restaurants." Then I said, "How about Mexican" and Siri came back with a list of Mexican restaurants.

Yeah, needless to say he was amazed that I didn't need to say restaurant or food or repeat it when I changed my mind to Mexican food.

That's a big difference from asking it a direct question and I think a lot of people don't realize that about Siri. It doesn't just understand commands it understands language.

When I type that same phrase into Google search, guess what I get? A bunch of hits with the exact same phrase. It doesn't give me a list of restaurants, it gives me a links to posts of people saying the same thing.

 

[nuckinfutz]

I now hate Siri.

You misogynistic bastard! Next you're going to be smacking "her" around a bit.

 

[Defactomonkey]

Interesting though completely invalid as a means of judging Siri's comparative usefulness. How about time to type a search versus speak a search or testing with 100% apple hardware? Why use skullcandy headphones unless this is to test Siri's accuracy with skullcandy products? Seems highly suspect and biased similar to the "man on the street" advertising Samsung did to show how superior its note was. How are sales on the note anyways? Lol

This article was a waste for front page

 

[robjulo]

It is a B-E-T-A... It's artifical intelligence, capable of doing much much more, but it's not entirely there yet. It's 100% better than anything out there on the market - What the heck is wrong with people that they can't understand this??

Find me the word "beta" in any of the tv commercials.

 

[mjtomlin]

Yes indeed Beta means different things to different people.

Beta means one thing and one thing only... still not ready for final release and in testing phase.

It doesn't matter what other people think it means. That's like saying "water" means different things to different people, which doesn't make any sense. Ignorance is not an excuse.

Siri is a social/learning technology. It needs mass testing to learn about language; accents, inflection, enunciation, dialects, slang, etc.

 

[petsounds]

It usually understands me pretty well, though if music is on it sits there for a few extra seconds trying to figure out if I've stopped talking or not. That's really annoying.

I've been a fan of Siri since the pre-Apple app, but they really need to improve on the services it provides. Google seems to have surpassed what Siri can do with its voice features in Jelly Bean. I'm not sure why Apple is being coy about rolling out new Siri APIs; I expected much more from Siri in iOS6 than some sports scores and movie listings. Perhaps they underestimated their competition. I sure hope Jelly Bean gives them a needed kick in the ass.

 

[Geckotek]

Who cares about all this Siri nonsense. Just give turn-by-turn voice directions already. It should have been there on Siri's release.

Was driving with a colleague yesterday. His $79 android put my 4S to shame.

Not sure why, you could have easily loaded Waze and had a great turn by turn GPS for free. The fact that it isn't installed on the device upon purchase is irrelevant if a good free solution exists and is easily installed.

Edit: let me add that I do think it's a shame that we haven't had one included for all this time, I blame it on the tumultuous Google and Apple relationship. However, my bitterness ended once I found Waze.

 

[SBlue1]

If Google Glass (or Glasses or whatever they call it) is any indication, I'd like to think we will have iHud - a 'heads up display' on a set of glasses, which will replace your touch-screen tablets and phones with 100% voice and visual based control.

For the first time ever these odd sci-fi technologies are actually very close to becoming a reality. Google are looking at launching Glasses in a year or so. I'd hope that Apple at very least have a research team looking into their own options for this...maybe iOS would become eyeOS

As someone who is wearin glases and contacts i have to say there is no way people will wear google glases on a regulrr basis all day long. Glases are heavy and unconveniant, no mater how light. Can you wear them together with sunglases? What about biking glases? Any other protective glases? What about your own glases togethet with the google glases? I dont think so.

Believe me. Glases are unconvenient. Why would people wear contacts othervise? The future will be start trek kind of wearable communicators that can be attached to your shirt or be inside your pocket and that can connect you to your iPhone or your Mac at home or your cloud data.

 

[uknowimright]

the whole point of this is to show that Siri is advertized and hyped as something that would make you receive the information you want fast and it's not as fast as just going to a web site and typing it in, the accuracy of the speech even if 100% wouldn't matter because essentially you are still wasting more time talking to the phone

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also Google didn't make you buy a new computer to use Gmail beta

 

[Geckotek]

<snip> I'd hope that Apple at very least have a research team looking into their own options for this...maybe iOS would become eyeOS

Or eyePhone?

 

[samcraig]

As someone who is wearin glases and contacts i have to say there is no way people will wear google glases on a regulrr basis all day long. Glases are heavy and unconveniant, no mater how light. Can you wear them together with sunglases? What about biking glases? Any other protective glases? What about your own glases togethet with the google glases? I dont think so.

Believe me. Glases are unconvenient. Why would people wear contacts othervise? The future will be start trek kind of wearable communicators that can be attached to your shirt or be inside your pocket and that can connect you to your iPhone or your Mac at home or your cloud data.

You've missed so much of what this technology can offer it's astounding. From pilots who can have their instruments, etc displayed in front of them, to assisting some visually impaired people to so many other applications.

You're getting bogged down on one aspect - those who need a prescription for eyewear. If that's your biggest issue... you are being very "short sighted" - pun intended.

 

[CplBadboy]

Just been watching the Jelly Bean demo on Jon4Lakers Youtube channel. he pits Siri against the Android and boy does Android wipe the floor with Siri. the voice is more natural. the speed is 2 maybe 3x as fast as Siri. In fact that little nexus 7 tablet and the JellyBean software looks incredibly polished. More polished than iOS, as much as it kills me to say it. Google are certainly on the up and I only hope Apple are taking note of the competition.