Does any sane person actually believe Apple wants to creat an Echo competitor? Siri is mentally handicapped. Why on earth would anyone use such a stupid device as the main method of input?
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Walt Mossberg Calls Siri 'Too Limited and Unreliable' to Compete in 'Coming AI Wars'
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Does any sane person actually believe Apple wants to creat an Echo competitor? Siri is mentally handicapped. Why on earth would anyone use such a stupid device as the main method of input?
I don't think that applies to Map's search functionality. Map's is great at naive test cases but once misspelling or incomplete search strings are used Maps returns the most ridiculous results.
I've pretty much given up on Siri because 99% of the time, anything out of the ordinary (timers, reminder items) seem to just get me a snarky, useless response which triggers my nerd rage.
dude, switch to british siri.. she's sweet.
"could i bother you for a right turn ahead mr.smith"
instead of american siri: "hey smith! turn right. now"
(not really but sort of
)make sure it's british and not aussie siri.. pretty much the american version with an annoying voice
They offered it to everyone and partnered with some App companies already.
Viv was announced in May. Samsung bought it last week.
the rumors are pretty strong on this one..
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbrea...le-siri-speaker-amazon-echo-competitor-report
idk, i'm sane and i think apple wants to make something along these lines.
I just asked Siri what the weather was like in Portland. The next town from me here in Australia is Portland, NSW, there is a large city called Portland in Victoria, but nope, Siri gives me the weather forecast for Portland, Oregon, USA.
Fail
Fail
You should also tweet Cook a link to this thread.
That used to be true for sure, but for the past year or two, Google has been fine about following up on things it needs clarity on. I just tried your "set a reminder" example and it asked what I'd like to reminded about, for example. It'll also keep some context, so if I say "How far away is Santa Rosa?", I can then say something like "Take me there".
None of them are anywhere near perfect yet, but the progress has been pretty rapid.
Yeah, I agree, they're all improving but they all need a lot more work before people come to depend on them for more than simple commands. I think the difference is, Siri is used by so many more people that its shortcomings are more readily exposed.
Siri is dumb. I didn't need to read Walt's article to know that. But so is Google and Alexa, but like I said, writing about that wouldn't get as many clicks.
That's why I generally avoid click bait. Renee Ritchie wrote an article in response which I think adds some balance and perspective.
As for the reminder, I'll have to check it out. Also, the difference of one word is sometimes enough to change the outcome so it's possible the way we phrased it could have made a difference; or as you said, Google fixed that issue at some point.
Theres multiple issues for me that stops me from using siri. Firstly I've never been able to get "hey Siri" to work (should it on an 6???), it never gets what I'm saying, it takes an age to load on said iPhone 6, to reliable on internet connection, even for "in built" operations, such as setting a reminder, and the worst thing is with the new unlocking of ios10. Touch ID is bloody slow now, so now i keep setting off siri when trying to unlock the phone!
6 needs to be plugged in for hey Siri to work. 6s/6s+, 7/7+, and the SE have an M9 coprocessor that listens to this command also when on battery power.
I think some progress has been horribly slow
I was keeping context like that back in the mid 1980s on my Tandy Color Computer, using a voice input app I wrote to control my home's X-10 controllers. That was thirty years ago!
Current microphone technology doesn't seem to stop anyone else. I often ask Google Now a question with my car window open and my phone in my shirt pocket, and it gets it right.
Siri will never be as good over the long term as Google at recognizing a person's voice, because Siri does it per device, not per user, and devices eventually change.
Apple's crippling privacy policy (which IMHO goes way overboard in this case) prevents associating Siri voice training with our user id. So Siri can only learn voices per a temporary device-specific id.
Thus if we buy a new device, Siri has to start learning our voice all over again. For many people, that's every two years. If we get a warranty replacement device, same thing. Heck, if we use multiple iOS devices, Siri has to learn separately on each one. What a waste.
Also by design, if the associated id is deleted or reset, that per-device learning is lost. This can happen if someone goes into settings and turns off Siri and Voice Dictation and then back on again. I suspect it might happen on a full reset as well.
I mention all these things because people often wonder why Siri suddenly stops understanding them. A new device or reset can be the cause.
(This is one of the reasons I much prefer per-user voice recognition templates like Google has. I can buy a brand new device and Google's voice recognition network already has learned years of my voice training, and thus works perfectly from the start. You can always go to your Google dashboard and turn off or reset this, but I did that once as an experiment in privacy control, and suffered problems for a while until it fully relearned my voice patterns. Never again!)
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persona non gradita is correct, non grata means something like "not thankful".
In the context of my post, I believe I used the Latin expression Persona Non Grata correctly:
Definition of "Persona Non Grata" from Merriam Webster online dictionary: Personally unacceptable or unwelcome.
Definition of "Persona Non Grata" from Oxford English online dictionary: An unacceptable or unwelcome person.
i proclaim myself guilty for being superficial and hasty. This is the kind of posts you should always think twice about, especially after a long day at work. Italian and not Latin was passing through my mind at the moment. Thanks for your polite remark
Here's the thing, it isn't like Apple doesn't know Siri sucks. And they aren't likely to actually do anything about it. They haven't yet and I predict this massive response means nothing to them.
persona non gradita is correct, non grata means something like "not thankful".
No, the correct phrase is "persona non grata" - Person Not Appreciated. It is a term used in diplomacy to indicate that an individual (or personae non gratae, a group) is not welcome and prohibited from entry.
I have come to hate Siri. Stupid sassy comments like a ninth grader commenting on adults, unable to comply or deal with other languages (Hey, Apple, ever heard of the fact that some foreign speaking people do listen to bloody English music that they want to listen to?), unable to perform the most simplest task, odd and unnecessary prominent.
I thought the idea was cool, but how they use it is bad. Siri needs to understand contexts, it needs to understand connection, prepositions and for the love of God, how about a better interface to UNDERSTAND what we say, it's not that I mumble, I don't even have a bloody accent ("but, but Pentido"), I just want to get things done!
Steve would have done it like that: "What is Siri supposed to do?"
"To help the users to interact on a human level with a computer."
"Why doesn't it do it?"
I thought the idea was cool, but how they use it is bad. Siri needs to understand contexts, it needs to understand connection, prepositions and for the love of God, how about a better interface to UNDERSTAND what we say, it's not that I mumble, I don't even have a bloody accent ("but, but Pentido"), I just want to get things done!
Steve would have done it like that: "What is Siri supposed to do?"
"To help the users to interact on a human level with a computer."
"Why doesn't it do it?"
I've been an Apple fan for the longest time and really love my iPhone a lot. But those Android phones are looking more and more compelleing to me as the years go by.
There are so many features that Apple seems to not care about or deliberately hold back for future generations, and it's really becoming quite annoying always having to wait and wait for the next iteration which most likely is not going to be much different from the last one.
Siri seemed so cool and innovative when they first implemented it. But now it seems like it wasn't even ready or at least have given a serious effort into improving its speech recognition capabilities with every iOS update.
I also cannot get over how bad Apples Maps app is compared to Google Maps, especially in non-U.S. countries like the one I live in: Google Maps can give info on all types of public transportation(all regional and national busses and trains), navigate via bicycle roads, walking, driving, etc. Furthermore, Google Maps lets me download all transit and map info for a certain area so that I can save battery by not using GPS when travelling.
Apple Maps can still only give info for cars and walking, and has no features for public transit or downloading GPS info to save juice even though my country has one of the best public transit systems in the World, with tons of online and pubicly available info to pull into apps. Dissapointing!
We also still have don't have the typing suggestions in my language in iMessage, a feature that's been available for Americans and many other major nations for 2-3 years. Apple clearly has more than enough dough to set aside local language teams devs for smaller nations, like mine, and implement those features, but it choses not to.
Can someone please point out what standout features iPhones have compared to Android phones at this point(please don't talk about the Note 7 exploding), and why I should not turn to the dark side(Android)?
Mossberg's article really cements some of the negative thoughts I've had about Apple lately, and I really want someone to explain to me why I should be loyal to the big a?
There are so many features that Apple seems to not care about or deliberately hold back for future generations, and it's really becoming quite annoying always having to wait and wait for the next iteration which most likely is not going to be much different from the last one.
Siri seemed so cool and innovative when they first implemented it. But now it seems like it wasn't even ready or at least have given a serious effort into improving its speech recognition capabilities with every iOS update.
I also cannot get over how bad Apples Maps app is compared to Google Maps, especially in non-U.S. countries like the one I live in: Google Maps can give info on all types of public transportation(all regional and national busses and trains), navigate via bicycle roads, walking, driving, etc. Furthermore, Google Maps lets me download all transit and map info for a certain area so that I can save battery by not using GPS when travelling.
Apple Maps can still only give info for cars and walking, and has no features for public transit or downloading GPS info to save juice even though my country has one of the best public transit systems in the World, with tons of online and pubicly available info to pull into apps. Dissapointing!
We also still have don't have the typing suggestions in my language in iMessage, a feature that's been available for Americans and many other major nations for 2-3 years. Apple clearly has more than enough dough to set aside local language teams devs for smaller nations, like mine, and implement those features, but it choses not to.
Can someone please point out what standout features iPhones have compared to Android phones at this point(please don't talk about the Note 7 exploding), and why I should not turn to the dark side(Android)?
Mossberg's article really cements some of the negative thoughts I've had about Apple lately, and I really want someone to explain to me why I should be loyal to the big a?
Well it seems that as of late, Apple is putting it's money in the wrong locations.
No apology necessary sofila, certainly take some time to relax after a long day's work.
Your response was most thoughtful.
But it would be terrible. It would have to be much smarter to be used full time in the home. I haven't used the Echo but I know how bad Siri sucks.
[doublepost=1476462932][/doublepost]Check out this screen grab. Seems Siri isn’t too hot on American Literature.
The Verge's Walt Mossberg today wrote a critical article on Apple's Siri personal assistant, exploring the service's shortcomings, mistakes, and inability to answer some simple questions that competing products have no problem with.
Entitled, "Why does Siri seem so dumb?", Mossberg's article, covers several questions Siri couldn't answer, ranging from queries about political candidates to the date of the World Series to the weather in Crete. In each instance, Siri failed to provide the desired information, while Google Now, Google's Siri competitor, was able to answer every single question correctly.According to Mossberg, Apple has fixed many of the above Siri shortcomings thanks to his feedback, and has "stressed" to him that the company is "constantly improving Siri." Apple says it focuses more on tasks like placing phone calls, sending texts, and finding places rather than "long tail" questions, which aren't as popular with iPhone and iPad users. Mossberg speculates that such questions aren't popular anymore because people "just give up" on asking Siri these types of things due to failed responses.
Mossberg also outlines several failures with Siri's cloud-based services, from searching through iMessages to locating photos to finding calendar appointments, drawing the conclusion that Apple has "wasted its lead" with Siri, which is now forced to compete with services from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Mossberg believes that Siri "seems stagnant" and is "too limited and unreliable" compared to other services.
Though it may not seem like it, Apple has been putting a lot of effort into improving Siri. Back in August, Apple executives Eddy Cue, Craig Federighi, and Phil Schiller explained that machine learning techniques have cut Siri's error rate by a factor of two, improving understanding. Since 2014, Siri and other on-device features, like the QuickType keyboard, Spotlight, autocorrect, Maps, and more, have been powered by a neural net-based system that is able to provide users with more personalized responses and actions.
Recent rumors suggest Apple aiming to improve Siri's functionality even further in an effort to build the personal assistant into an Echo-like Smart home device that would do things like control smart home accessories. Apple is also said to be working on an "Invisible Hand" initiative that would allow users to fully control their devices through a Siri command, something that could debut within three years.
Mossberg's full article on Siri, which is well worth reading, can be accessed over at The Verge.
Article Link: Walt Mossberg Calls Siri 'Too Limited and Unreliable' to Compete in 'Coming AI Wars'
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Yeah, Siri didn't work for me with that request, either.
OTOH, it worked fine using Android/Google voice request. But then, Google is a search expert, so no big surprise.
Maybe Siri assumed there were two L's in Philip and ignored the results?
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Works for me if I say "find Phillip Roth on Wikipedia." This is an issue with Siri only understanding if you frame it exactly right.
Not everybody has the time or patience to keep rephrasing to Siri compared to Google AI that works on the first try.