Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Survey Finds Early Adopters of iPhone X Very Satisfied With All Features Except Siri

Siri is not good, but Alexa and Google Assistant are not much better. I've watched people struggle with Alexa and Google Asst. None of these technologies is there yet.
 
surprised that Apple hasn’t paid more attention to Siri. It’s no where near the intelligence it should have
With so many things depending on Siri such as Apple TV, HomePod etc etc Apple really has to address the issue!
 
  • Like
Reactions: KeanosMagicHat
As BAD as Siri has been over the years, i would expect it to be a Windblows feature, Not something from Apple!
 
Being that this phone was my first ever iPhone I have to agree with this. After being (and still am) an Android guy for 10 years I made the change and this phone is amazing but I have to agree Siri needs huge help. Also the Notch is so (atleast for me) not a big deal I don't even notice it anymore just like I stopped noticing the flat tire with the Moto 360 watch as well.

Outside of that Apple can keep me as a phone customer for the time. Nothing beats the X for me and the huge difference in performance and battery life gains from 11.3 were just insane and get talked about while I'm at work lol. Great phone will always love the openess of my Android but Apple really won me with this X.
 
C8630DE5-ED55-4D6C-A4E0-B304F5F270DC.png
CarlJ said:
I use Siri. But not as much as I would if she were more accurate, consistent, and perceptive.

She's pretty good for "set an alarm for 7am titled XYZ" or "add XYZ to shopping list" (and as a bonus, my then 4yo niece figured out at one point that she could pick up a parent's phone and say "add cookies to shopping list" and each parent would assume the other had done it).

She's frequently maddening with directions in a way that Google isn't - specifically in applying something resembling logic and common sense to understanding where you want to go - aside from cheerfully giving directions to her closest match for a name, even if it's literally on the other side of the country, rather than at least saying "I found XYZ, but it's a 27 hour drive from here, is that really what you want?", there's just no sanity checking at all on most of her responses...

The other day, I asked Siri for directions to Ikea. There is one in town, about 5 miles away, and the next closest Ikea is 85 miles away (I know where the local one is just fine, simply wanted quickest route given traffic, while I was driving - wanted to say "give me directions to Ikea" and get an answer that started with "in two blocks turn left"). No matter, Siri still managed to come up with two matches, one for the local Ikea and one for the Ikea restaurant inside that same Ikea. So she went into her trying-too-hard-to-sound-like-a-helpful-human spiel of "there's one at XYZ, it's about 5 miles away, it's open until 9 and gets 4 stars, would you like to try that one?" - dammit Siri, everything you just said is unhelpful: there's only one Ikea within an hour's driving time, it's less than a 10 minute drive from here and given that it's the middle of the day the fact that it closes in seven hours isn't relevant or helpful, and it isn't a kind of store, it's the only local instance of a specific store that I clearly want to go to because I just asked for directions, so giving me the star rating is pointless, and the two places you want me to choose between - ahhhhhh! one is literally inside the other. Even if the addresses on file were 100 meters apart, seriously, she could have given me directions to either, and I would have figured it out. Again, she has no problems getting what she thinks is a great match that's 27 hours away and confidently starting down that path, so why not do that for the only two matches in a 75 mile radius, when the two matches are at the same location? She would have been giving me the same directions either way. I answered her "would you like to try that one" with some choice expletives (surprisingly, she recognizes that and stops quizzing me), and drove to Ikea by following my nose - so much for intelligent assistants.

This isn't a sign that Siri needs to handle Ikea better, it's a sign of substantial shortcomings in the logic on the back-end - there were all sorts of things that Siri could have logically inferred from the data available, in order to have provided a quicker and more useful answer, but they don't appear to have bothered to put in any of those sanity checks. They've focused on making her sound conversant and "natural", but having someone tell you a completely whacked out wrong answer in a pleasant and reassuring tone of voice is neither pleasant nor reassuring, it's maddening.

(One other maddening thing about Siri is, if she mishears a name, there is no way to correct it conversationally - I want to be able to say, "no Siri, you're mishearing the restaurant name, it's spelled r-u-d-f-o-r-d-s" - she kept taking it as "Redford's" no matter how I pronounced it, and there's no facility for correcting her - I've occasionally taken to giving up and asking by name for a place a block or two away that I know she'll spell correctly. Which is ridiculous.)
Click to expand...



Here is a screenshot of Siri messing things up.

Unhelpful but amusing
falainber said:
At this high price, mostly only the radical Apple fans bought the phone. This should explain the highest satisfaction rate. If the same people were surveyed about any previous iPhone model (contemporarily) the results would be the same. So, it probably has little to do with iPhone X merits.
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1524533892][/doublepost]
DblHelix said:
Really. Battery life is ****. Cross country flight non stop and had to charge as soon as I got to the hotel. Didn't use it much just some background music listening on the flight. This is pitiful.
Click to expand...

Under normal use, email, FB, quick browsing, radio....I can easily get 10-12 hours before it gets below 15%. I am pleased with the battery that I have in my X.
 
  • Like
Reactions: springsup
ArtOfWarfare said:
Apple's lack of humility in their response is really unappealing.

Both as a user and an investor, I'm concerned that Apple isn't working on fixing this, or doesn't see it as a problem.

It's a fine start to a statement, but they should include something like, "We recognize some ways it could improve." or "We're working on making it even better." - just acknowledge that Siri is less than perfect.
Click to expand...

It’s common for large businesses to be over confident and dismiss complaints until it’s too late. Look no further than the cable tv industry. Apple is becoming the Microsoft that it once criticized as being unworthy of its popularity.
 
KeanosMagicHat said:
What’s asinine to you is an attraction to me.
Click to expand...
What's asinine about it is how completely hypocritical Apple's "stance" is. If Apple truly cared about user privacy, Google wouldn't be the default search on Safari - Duck Duck Go would. If Apple truly cared about its users privacy like Timmy likes to call attention to he'd remove Facebook integration immediately. And the list goes ever on but so long as Apple's getting paid billions to have them on iOS money talks and bull**** walks.
 
Had a friend who was paralysed with Motor Neurone Disease, so voice activated tech was his only way of having any control. Cortana was utterly useless, most of the time it didn't respond at all. Alexa spent most of the time saying "I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you just said" and when it did work, didn't understand the names of non-European artists/authors. The eye-movement detection software he was reliant on was only developed for Windows (and spent half the time losing calibration) so we never got the chance to try him with a Mac. All of this technology has a long way to go before it becomes as genuinely powerful and useful as the adverts would have us believe it already is.
 
  • Like
Reactions: bernstein
PaulRustad007 said:
View attachment 759452



Here is a screenshot of Siri messing things up.

Unhelpful but amusing

[doublepost=1524533892][/doublepost]

Under normal use, email, FB, quick browsing, radio....I can easily get 10-12 hours before it gets below 15%. I am pleased with the battery that I have in my X.
Click to expand...
Very strange, but I had a the same problem and it's the weirdest solution. If I say "take me to Target" instead of "take me to the closest Target," it gives me the correct answer.
 
kironin said:
Siri is not good, but Alexa and Google Assistant are not much better. I've watched people struggle with Alexa and Google Asst. None of these technologies is there yet.
Click to expand...

Technically all these technologies do the same thing, just in different ways. But in relevance with dictation and deciphering, Google is vastly superior over Siri in that respect. Where Siri is at its strongest is with in-house commands internally with iOS. Where Siri struggles is producing relevant searches or understanding external searches or commands that are not iOS related.
 
redheeler said:
It doesn't surprise me given that Apple's early adopters tend to be the most loyal
Click to expand...

The opposite is true: early adopters are the most crtical. From the OG article:

Interestingly, when it comes to customer satisfaction with a product, we have not seen much variance between how early adopters and mainstream consumers rank products they like. In fact, if anything, early adopters tend to be more critical and less satisfied overall than mainstream consumers. Which is why when we see customer satisfaction from the early adopter profile come in as quite high, we know the product in question is quality.
 
  • Like
Reactions: inkswamp
Totally said:
Does anyone actually use siri? lol
Click to expand...
Every day. Checking the weather, checking closing time for local shops, setting timers, adding items to grocery list, turning HomeKit scenes, sending messages, reading messages. That’s just out of my head, but I’m always want to use it more and find new things.
 
  • Like
Reactions: CPTmom2wp
KeanosMagicHat said:
I am absolutely dumbfounded that only one in five people in the survey were satisfied with Siri.

I will concede, however, that the voice recognition does seem to have become a little more inaccurate in the last couple of iOS versions.

I use Siri every single day and very often to dictate text rather than type it (when I am not in public obviously).

Things that annoy me about Siri are small things that could be easily rectified such as the addition of an extra space when you start a new sentence or paragraph (which I then have to manually delete), the random capitalisation midsentence should you pause sometimes and the non capitalisation of titles such as Father, Mother, Aunt etc.

There are many such small frustrations, but overall I find that Siri recognises me very well and I prefer to dictate text via Siri rather than type in many situations.

I’m very surprised that so many people have trouble with it over and above the small issues that I have given examples of.
Click to expand...

my experience worse with last two IOS updates—using on Apple Watch S3 LTE.

Prior: took dictated text flawlessly and auto sent. so smooth.

Now: requires I read/confirm msg on tiny screen outdoors while walking, etc. b4 sending and then say “send”.

so annoying, I guess because it worked so well b4.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KeanosMagicHat
faded_glory said:
Had a friend who was paralysed with Motor Neurone Disease, so voice activated tech was his only way of having any control. Cortana was utterly useless, most of the time it didn't respond at all. Alexa spent most of the time saying "I'm sorry, I didn't understand what you just said" and when it did work, didn't understand the names of non-European artists/authors. The eye-movement detection software he was reliant on was only developed for Windows (and spent half the time losing calibration) so we never got the chance to try him with a Mac. All of this technology has a long way to go before it becomes as genuinely powerful and useful as the adverts would have us believe it already is.
Click to expand...

This truly baffles me—why, with all Apple’s publicized commitment to “accessibility”, why isn’t Siri fully developed as “the answer” or at least a viable and reliable option?

Siri’s serious development could have made a world of difference in the home of my 90 yo mom as her eyesight and physical capacities failed.

I cross my fingers that in 20-30 years Siri could be there for me in a fully responsive Homekit/Homepod derivative.
 
I upgrades to an iPhone 8 a few months ago. I never even activated Siri. I swear, she's gotten more stupid as the years have gone by.
 
Actually, it largely has been a failure. The iPhone 7 outsold the X in the first quarter of 2018. Suppliers have had to cut production unexpectedly. Anyone who isn't seeing this with Apple blinders, realizes it wasn't the super cycle it was supposed to be.

OldSchoolMacGuy said:
But... but.... MacRumors members insisted it'd be a failure at such a price and no one would buy it.
Click to expand...
 
Since so many people complain about Siri... the others are dumb as well.
Siri, Alexa,... they are no AI. Yet. They are simply analyzing phrases. Alexa can't even recognize "joined" commands like "Alexa, set a time for x minutes and turn on lights".
I.e. don't mistake voice commands for an AI. There have been voice commands on the iPod Touch since the beginning... Siri is better than that, but far from what one could call an A.I. It's still phrases. More flexible than in the past, but that doesn't make it an A.I.
 
I don't use Siri on my iPhone that much, the iPhone X is a brilliant device tho and i'm one of those people who are VERY happy with it, Face ID works really well (even in direct sunlight, sunglasses on, on my desk and so on) the gestures that have replaced the home button are really intuitive even to the point that i've forgotten about a home button (except for when i use someone's older device or my iPad Pro).

The camera on the iPhone X is also great, Portrait mode i use a lot however i never use Animoji but then it's not really aimed at people like myself so i don't mind it being there. Overall very impressed.

My only wish is that they now remove the home button on the iPad Pro and add Face ID instead!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back