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Some Apple Employees Have 'Concerns' About iOS 26.4's Revamped Siri
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Meanwhile Apple is profiting nicely from your extravagant spending, which likely far exceeds your needs.
Yeah, in the end the proposed workaround was an automation that checks my calendar every evening, retrieves the information if there’s a vacation in it, and then reminds me to do this. This just sucks.
So my point still stands: Siri is dumb as a brick, and automations are supposed to be helpful but they’re way too hard and confusing.
There is so much more that I want to be able to do. Why can’t I just tell my HomePod to heat up the bathroom for five minutes? I need four commands: “Hey Siri, set the heating in the bathroom to X degrees.” “Hey Siri, set a timer for five minutes.” The timer goes off, I have to say “Hey Siri, stop the timer,” and then again, “Hey Siri, turn down the heating.” WTF?
Why can’t I tell the HomePod to stop the music when the Apple TV starts? Why can’t I set the balance between two HomePods, or tell Siri to turn down the volume after 10 p.m.?
When Siri was first introduced, it was presented as being intuitive. It was supposed to be easy to use, helpful and powerful. So my hope is that ChatGPT will make Siri more powerful and more intelligent. It’s wild how good and how far ahead the other assistants are. I live in an Apple household so I had no idea. I asked a friend why he uses Alexa when everything else in his home is Apple. He showed me things I never thought were possible. Now I know Siri is still stuck in 2015.
AI is not a fad. We are not talking about 3DTVs or curved monitors. AI is a monumental change how people interact with computers. Like the change from typing in commands and moving a cursor to pointing to folders and icons with a mouse.
This right here. I am also an Apple Smart Home customer. And it is becoming intolerable how dumb Siri is. He rarely gets anything right and is so slow since I updated the Pods (mini and OG) to OS26. And I know it's the Pods with Siri because the same commands via my iPhone are instant.
It is embarrassing. I am embarrassed for Apple and I am embarrassed for myself, for buying into this. And I don't see it getting better given this report and Cook's directionless travel.
I still haven't given up hope that Apple will give Siri full ChatGPT integration, and will let the users decide what level of trust, privacy and interaction people will be fine with. Want it private, or want it to know everything about you, just set it up the way you feel comfortable.
Using ChatGPT has spoiled me. It's intuitive and natural, it's easy to use yet powerful, it has a memory and knows the context, it knows what I want, it's just a great helper in everyday situations. So this is what I want from Siri and I pray Apple can deliver.
It's not a fad, but the current iteration of AI definitely is a fad, and will die off within 10 years.
Then we'll hopefully AI that are function-focused, not gimmick-focused.
Siri is just a finite set of voice-activated commands. These commands trigger simple tasks in apps or the operating system. They could have multiplied the commands, their variations, and combinations, but they preferred to create an app for us to create or combine them—that is, for us to do the work Apple should be doing. Furthermore, it's inefficient to invent a spoken command that does something, and that we have to remember when we need to do that something. A disaster.
AI is an alternative way to improve that state of things, but it doesn't seem to be that easy.
AI is an alternative way to improve that state of things, but it doesn't seem to be that easy.
Then sticks an ad in the article. Sometimes I really wonder about this site.
Agreed. But for AI you need data, and lots of it.
And Apple isn’t a data company.
If Apple wants to succeed in this space it needs a fundamental shift in its ethos
They got caught up in the hype.
They made promises.
Turns out they can't keep those promises.
How they get out of this sticky situation will also be "very Apple".
Hence, my belief that Tim Cook or Craig Federighi may be the one to burst the AI bubble by saying that even they can't make AI work effectively, reliably and consistently.
LLM is about making those voice commands infinite, but the simple tasks still finite. The LLM understanding what you are trying to ask the phone to do and then going and triggering those simple tasks in the right order with the right parameters to execute your wishes. This is what Apple has struggled with for years. If Apple can build an LLM that can better translate human language to Siri-speak then the ability for Siri to execute those simple tasks becomes markedly better.
More Personal Siri is just going to be many more simple tasks and more APIs, but it needs a very strong LLM to control it all.
My phone needs to understand if I ask "How much do I owe State Farm this month?" that it should look at my email inbox for messages from State Farm and extract due dates and dollar amounts. And if I ask it to "Send that funny owl gif to Chris" that it will look at what gifs I have used recently, use image recognition to figure out which one is an owl, and send it to my contact named Chris." It's all stuff a computer can do today, but it needs to better understand how users actually talk.
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I am sure the new Siri will be published with all of the careful thought, precision engineering, customer focus, and dedication to not releasing a half-baked product that Apple brought to Liquid Glass.
It does. Goes to show there isn't a thriving market for a product like this
1st Apple should abandon the “Siri” name and come up with something new.
2nd Apple is paying the abandonment of many softwares and the lack of investment in them.
It seems Apple is pushing hard on a yearly cycle of OS releases (iOS, MacOS, iPadOS, tvOS, WatchOS, whatever HomePods are running).
6 OS are an absolute drag when you have a self imposed yearly cadence. Meanwhile: Aperture is discontinued, Numbers, Pages and Keyone don’t even have redesigned icons. iMovie the same.
Apple should really step up their software game. And I am not talking about the invites app or whatever it is called.
What does it have to do with AI? Well everything. Less OS resources means more “other software” resources which, in turn, mean more focus on what AI could bring as tangible benefits in software, which could apply to all other developers once identified and brought up in team meetings (or whatever they do down in Cupertino). Apple has given up a lot in software over the years to concentrate on flashy new gimmicks on OS. Have your teams focus on Apple Music, Apple TV, photos, GarageBand, iMovie, Final Cut. And the you will immediately see where the opportunities in AI are for your platform. Having a gazillion engineers designing Liquid Glass and not a soul revamping Numbers won’t get you anywhere in AI. Be good at software. And the rest will follow.
Apple once was great ant it and, to big extent, are still riding that wave when they should push the envelope further instead.
One, small, minute case in point: how can I bar a text in Pages on iOS?
I am old enough to to have BOUGHT OSX upgrades. And Aperture, and iWork, and iLife. But having to pay a price forced Apple to be good at it enough to ask money from me. Nowadays everything software is free… and the resources (I suspect) are allocated accordingly, included, from what I read, AI
2nd Apple is paying the abandonment of many softwares and the lack of investment in them.
It seems Apple is pushing hard on a yearly cycle of OS releases (iOS, MacOS, iPadOS, tvOS, WatchOS, whatever HomePods are running).
6 OS are an absolute drag when you have a self imposed yearly cadence. Meanwhile: Aperture is discontinued, Numbers, Pages and Keyone don’t even have redesigned icons. iMovie the same.
Apple should really step up their software game. And I am not talking about the invites app or whatever it is called.
What does it have to do with AI? Well everything. Less OS resources means more “other software” resources which, in turn, mean more focus on what AI could bring as tangible benefits in software, which could apply to all other developers once identified and brought up in team meetings (or whatever they do down in Cupertino). Apple has given up a lot in software over the years to concentrate on flashy new gimmicks on OS. Have your teams focus on Apple Music, Apple TV, photos, GarageBand, iMovie, Final Cut. And the you will immediately see where the opportunities in AI are for your platform. Having a gazillion engineers designing Liquid Glass and not a soul revamping Numbers won’t get you anywhere in AI. Be good at software. And the rest will follow.
Apple once was great ant it and, to big extent, are still riding that wave when they should push the envelope further instead.
One, small, minute case in point: how can I bar a text in Pages on iOS?
I am old enough to to have BOUGHT OSX upgrades. And Aperture, and iWork, and iLife. But having to pay a price forced Apple to be good at it enough to ask money from me. Nowadays everything software is free… and the resources (I suspect) are allocated accordingly, included, from what I read, AI