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... Google makes money by selling targeted ads by looking private information, which pages you are Googling, what's on your gmail account etc., while Apple makes money by selling hardware and software.

It's the difference between night and day.

You have apparently never heard of Apple's lame attempt to become Google, with iAd.... Apple simply wanted to charge more. Much, much more.
 
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I don't care what he buys. The fact is whatever is powering Map's search is crap. Bonafide crap. Yes, naive search strings provide accurate results. Miss a word and "search" thinks Dr X means drive X on the opposite side of the country.

And let's not get started in predictive words in iMessage. Sometimes It can't find the correct word if just one letter is off.
 
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Apple is behind the game in AI and in-home assistance

Fortunately, they clearly know that privacy will be what defines them from everyone else, and that they did not get to be the world's largest and most highly valued tech company, by invading users' privacy so there's no need to start now.
 
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Do what you do best MR: cynicism.
Do what you do best Mac Fly -- call out the other MacRumors posters. :D
[doublepost=1477441659][/doublepost]Being someone that is actually looking at purchasing a competitors' phone, I can't deny that I have mad respect for Apple's commitment to user privacy. So awesome.
 
This is simultaneously their true belief but also their primary excuse for Siri's abysmal lack of ability. You're a multi-billion dollar company building a spaceship campus... move faster.
 
Apple doesn't need to store customer data in order to make use of it. They can still run new data through a neural network to train it and then immediately discard the data, without saving it to disk. I don't have any problems with that, I can't imagine anyone would.
 
Usage would be better on a mobile device if it was always just listening and didn't require to be plugged into power like my iPad does or to press a button first before it starts listening and if the desktop version of it could control HomeKit devices.
 
This is simultaneously their true belief but also their primary excuse for Siri's abysmal lack of ability. You're a multi-billion dollar company building a spaceship campus... move faster.
Don't forget the old London based powerstation area they've bought and are spending money to renovate and all the other businesses that will be taking up house.

https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/28/apple-to-move-into-a-new-london-campus-in-2021/

Who needs Siri when you can build, build, build!
 
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While most AI services are limited to the United States, Siri is available in many countries.

Sorry Tim, but you are wrong. The only one that is limited to the US is Alexa.

You main competitor works perfectly in most countries and it's lightyears ahead of Siri.
 
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I absolutely respect Apple's stance on privacy here. But at the same time, I think most people are underestimating the importance of machine learning moving forward. I hope that Apple can find a way to leverage customer data that respects privacy and also does not leave them behind. Data is the lifeblood of machine learning, and the breadth of data available to Google and Apple is unique. Google (with their likely much more lenient policies about privacy) stands to make massive advancements in useful and perhaps profound AI in the short and long term. Losing the Siri vs Google Now battle is the least of Apple's worries. World changing advancements lie ahead in machine learning.
 
Good. If that's the tradeoff, I'll take inherent privacy over a few more features when I choose to talk to my phone. Any day of the week.

Talking to your phone, or natural language recognition, is only a small part about what AI is about.

The other day I travelled a couple of days for work. In my Android phone I had real time information about the flights I was going to take (what terminal, airport maps, notifications about delays, times, gates, etc), about my hotel reservation (location, phone numbers, check in/out times, etc), about the places I was visiting, all this dynamically with zero effort from my part. I never talked to my phone, all that was based only on GPS position and 2 emails. When travelling by car I get notifications about accidents and road blocks without having to use an app only based on GPS data. I don't even have to open Waze or Google Maps.

Maybe in 100 years we will be able to carry an AI in our pocket, but until that day AI is going to live in the cloud since it needs a ton of horsepower and huge amounts of data storage. And if it works in the cloud it means you are going to share some data with that AI. There is no way around that. I couldn't care less about Google reading my emails or my GPS position if I get all that for free. And Google is only getting started.

All that privacy narrative by Apple is just a way of evading the truth. Apple is terrible at big data which is what Google has been doing for the past 20 years. Google was terrible at making good UIs and hardware integration but the Pixel and latest Android versions are proof it has become really good at it. Siri OTOH is still useless.
 
What I've learned about society from this thread:

The general population does not care about privacy or being used to sell ads. As long as a phone can "play them a song they might like". That is more important. If its on Twitter that privacy is violated, everyone cares....but not enough to actually stop using things like Amazons buttons. Just enough to throw a fit so they can feel like part of the crowd. Convenience is more important than privacy. Good luck with that!

If some of you woke up in 1993 and actually had to put a tape in to hear music....you might just end it all. If you couldn't ask Siri to turn the lights off in the room your sitting in....my God! Imagine....using a light switch...perish the thought! Going to Blockbuster to rent a video because you can't just rent something on iTunes that was suggested to you based on your habits. Run out of detergent...no Amazon button...got to go to the store. How could you live?!?!?

It's the beginning of WALL-E right here!
 
Siri on iPhone and Apple TV already covers a lot of the tasks of a smart home device like echo can do, so I don't really see the need for Apple to build a smart home device for now, or maybe TVos can evolve eventually into that.

As regards Siri itself, prioritising privacy is necessary, but at least it can follow the context within the same session, and continues to link with more services.
 
"People are constantly moving from home to work and to other things they may be doing." -- elegantly said and what an astute analysis of the lifestyle of average Joe, Tim!

That's the type of stuff that Tim says that makes me feel like Apple is really spying on me!!! Like how did they know that I move from home to work and do other things if Siri wasn't telling them..."Other things they may be doing" is a notion to instill fear in us as Apple users that he will spill the beans and tell on us and what we "may" be doing if we don't act right!
 
Google at this point have way too much power. Put a stumpy fingered idiot in power over your country or a less than benevolent board in Google and it's a scary place—both of which could happen some day. The idea is to design the whole thing to prevent it well before it's possible. Google and Facebook etc. have ran gleefully over that line.

Yeah kind of like the stumpy fingered dictator wanna-bes running half the world right now. Siri is a failure.
 
Privacy is one of the reasons i stick with apple.
I too chose Apple for privacy I like the fact that I have more control on what any app has the right to access to. The AI computing should be inside the iPhone and not on Apple servers maybe building a coprocessors dedicated for AI could be a good idea.
 
If Apple can do AI without undemanding privacy then good for them.....
 
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Siri is far from perfect, but I applaud Apple's hard line stance on privacy.

Keep it up Apple and I will keep spending my money with you. I believe privacy takes precedence over Siri and that in time, any trade offs being made between the two will be worked out.

They have kept this stance for a long time. It really is one of the things that separates them from their competition.
 
So if you use an ad blocker, then complaining about Google is pointless because you can use those same ad blockers on them.
You want to believe that marketing hype then that's great and your opinion, I use iOS too daily, but I don't believe the privacy talk half as much.
It's also not really a trend when I've said it in black and white, strange choice of words there?

How is it pointless? Google's method is based on a type of tracking that I'd be blocking, therefore reducing its ability to be useful to me. Why would I use Google over Apple? And if I was on Android then I'd have no choice at all, of course. I really don't get why you keep talking about marketing hype etc when the simple matter is that Google builds a profile based on all activity and Apple doesn't. That's not hype, that's facts.

I was just trying to clarify the fact that you were indeed trying to say that, because I think it's a silly and incorrect conclusion to come to. 'You said yes to a so you should say yes to b' is never a good argument.

Talking to your phone, or natural language recognition, is only a small part about what AI is about.

The other day I travelled a couple of days for work. In my Android phone I had real time information about the flights I was going to take (what terminal, airport maps, notifications about delays, times, gates, etc), about my hotel reservation (location, phone numbers, check in/out times, etc), about the places I was visiting, all this dynamically with zero effort from my part. I never talked to my phone, all that was based only on GPS position and 2 emails. When travelling by car I get notifications about accidents and road blocks without having to use an app only based on GPS data. I don't even have to open Waze or Google Maps.

I think something people like you - no insult intended - miss is that people like me find that really creepy. I don't want Google to have this whole profile of where I'm going, what I'm doing, who I'm going with, when I'm arriving, what transit I'm taking, what roads I'm traveling, where I'm staying, etc. That bothers me. I am willing to sacrifice all of that stuff to keep some semblance of anonymity.
 
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More mullarkey from Tim. Apple's privacy stance is precisely what's been holding Siri back from being useful in any meaningful way. I get far more accurate results with Google Now/Assistant & Amazon's Alexa than I ever have using Siri. At this point Siri is more of a hindrance than a useful tool.
I would agree with you if the competing services were that much better. They're not. Not in a meaningful way yet. All AI needs another few years in the oven and then we'll see. If you took any of these services away from their users, nothing about their lives would change. That's how we know they're not mature yet.
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LOL. Sure Tim! Siri is trash!

By the way, I would just like to point out how people get uptight about privacy, but then 5 minutes later post their entire life to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, etc.
Just because people don't realize they are serving up their own privacy rights to big data doesn't mean companies like Google and Facebook should take full advantage of them.
 
Tim is full of it. Apple has no problem selling their users privacy to Google for $1B/year so I don't see how they draw a line for their own AI development. Sounds more like an excuse for not having the technology developed yet.
 
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Sorry Tim, but you are wrong. The only one that is limited to the US is Alexa.

You main competitor works perfectly in most countries and it's lightyears ahead of Siri.
Last time I checked Siri supported more regions and languages for all services than Google Now or Cortana. Unless you care to share reliable stats.
 
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