Siri Still Struggles to Answer Very Basic Questions

[F23]

Tim at WWDC: We have loved using Siri for years, but today we are announcing a new era in personal assistant for Apple. Introducing Ivy, with her stunning British accent, everything she says will sound smart regardless of accuracy. Inspired by the brilliant Jony Ive, we think you're going to love Ivy. Here's a video to tell you more.

 

[Tagbert]

Okay Siri could be way better - but the suggestion of the article??

"Maybe before Apple re-writes Siri to fix it, they should fix Siri"

Isn't really the best suggestion.

I’ve seen that statement made in all seriousness in the comments in articles on Siri.

 

[n-evo]

When asking what month it is in Dutch I get “Het was zaterdag, 1 maart 2025” (“It was Saturday March 1st, 2025”). While not completely useless it’s a weird way to respond.

 

[nfl46]

I just got sorry I don’t understand when I asked what month is it.

 

[Avenged110]

I mean, I’d rather them fix the rather buggy state of the base systems themselves before wasting resources on something like this that I wouldn’t use even if it worked flawlessly, but at least Apple’s seemingly-poor QC is getting some attention.

 

[shinkansenwarrior]

It just stuns me why they used the name "Siri" ....setting themselves up for potential disaster ... I guess they delivered.

 

[StoneJack]

I think they should move away from Siri branding, it’s already too stained and even if it’s fixed eventually most people won’t even give it a try.

If they fix they should rebrand it to Apple Assistant or something like that.

I think that they should just release Siri 2.0 just wholesome replacement of the older voice assistant

 

[Plutonius]

I wonder if Siri will ever be able to answer the question "what is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything" ?

 

[johnsawyercjs]

It has gotten worse - try asking Siri "What hour is it?" It won't give the answer, but the current date instead. How hard is it to make this thing "just work?"

I tried this. Siri answered: "It's the week of March 16."

Technically, I guess, what it said is true. Maybe that's all it cares about, not whether the answer is relevant to the user's question.

 

[johnsawyercjs]

A couple days ago, while I was watching TV while also using my M1 Macbook Pro 16 Inch about three feet from my TV, someone on the TV show said the name “Sarah”, which woke up Siri on my Macbook. But a minute later, when I said “Siri” about a foot away from my Macbook’s microphone, under the left side speaker grille, there was no response. I tried again and got the same non-response. A few minutes ago, I tried again, and this time Siri woke up and displayed a prompt, but that disappeared after about a half-second, giving me no time to ask a question. I tried again, with the same result.

At least it's consistent.

 

[Krazykev]

Yep. It's that bad.

 

[oink_oink]

Go easy on Apple. They've been too busy these past couple of years flopping the Vision Pro, perfecting dynamic islands and notches, and extorting on RAM/SSD upgrades to focus on Siri.

 

[carrrrrlos]

I was actually looking at Android phones today - mostly because of Gemini, The ui and overall experience was rather refreshing and 'it just worked'.

 

[darthaddie]

Bixby from 2018 identifies as Siri now. Enough said.

 

[Robertus]

I asked Siri what year is it?

It answers, "2520."

Wow, I was Buck Roger'ed into the future.

 

[con2apple]

Fake News!

Yesterday, dozens of forum members told me that Apple offers great products and software. There is no reason for users to choose an alternative. It doesn't need competition, and certainly not forced competition.

So everyone loves Siri and it's the best assistant in the world. Nothing needs to be fixed.
Otherwise all the "Apple knows best, alternatives are not needed or could better" writers would have been wrong.

/s

 

[Blue Nova]

I have been complaining about Siri for years, and all I hear from Apple tech is to post it on Apple Feedback, what a waste of time. My HomePod mini is not worth it at all, it wants me to go to my iPhone and same from there. So I dropped my subscription to Apple Music, the only time I listen to it is in my HomePod and it’s doesn’t understand. It’s so dumb.

 

[dunkin06]

Apple's online services are absolutely atrocious. Today for example I have this annoying Safari bookmarks cloud sync bug again, it's stuck in an infinite loop and it's making my phones warm from the CPU processing and the battery is massive. How come this never happens with other web browsers?

 

[dampfnudel]

I never understood how people manage to use Siri for anything. It just never worked for me in any language.

Since my 4S I’ve disabled it. Every time I got a new iPhone (5s, 6s, X, 12 Pro and my current 14 Pro), I disabled it. After 13+ years, it should be much, much better.

 

[sw1tcher]

Oh yeah this would also happen a little while ago:

now it says “Friday, April 18, 2025”, so it STILL hasn’t been fixed

Looks like MacRumors is using Siri to help with writing news stories 😂

 

[kurtfoster]

I have a HomePod, and AppleTV, MacBook, iPhone and an Apple Watch. If I have music playing on my iPhone as an example and call out to ask Siri to stop playing music, my HomePod tells me that no music is playing, while it continues to play on my phone. When I ask Siri to start a timer, it goes off on multiple devices. If I ask Siri to log my weight, my HomePod tells me it can't perform that task. Siri is a joke and only gets worse when you have multiple devices. It needs to understand what kind of command is being asked and be smarter to perform said task.

This is why I keep my HomePod minis unplugged most of the time.

 

[trip1ex]

Fine for me but I have low expectations and only use what works.

 

[tominco]

Most of the time, Siri will call or text the correct person, as to whether Siri gets the text accurate is a whole other matter. The stuff that drives me nuts is when Siri says I can't tell you that while you are driving. When I'm on the way to pick someone up at the airport, I want to ask "What is the status of Southwest Flight 2897?" That should be simple response of "arriving at 8:07PM" but it's always, that Siri can't tell me while I'm driving... Argh.

 

[uniquestevejobs]

You guys clearly have too much Expectations from a 11 Years old Kid named Siri. He/she is only 11 years old, what do you expect?

 

[555gallardo]

I remember when Siri used to be much smarter than it is now. It’s fine for basic home related tasks, but overall I’m still convinced Apple should just discontinue Siri as it is today and build it from the ground up, while giving up on the “privacy-first” mantra. That just doesn’t work anymore if you actually want to use an AI for anything more than turning on your humidifier.