I've never like that when I say, "Tell my wife I love her" it texts my wife, "I love her". I use Siri for certain tasks but it's way too limited for anything complicated.
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Walt Mossberg Calls Siri 'Too Limited and Unreliable' to Compete in 'Coming AI Wars'
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Apple has waited too long to invest any significant resources into AI and this report clearly is evidence of that lack of effort. This is why I am not as optimistic or as enthusiastic about Apple as I used to be. This is more evidence of lack innovation than the shortcomings of the latest iPhone. Just as important, it seems that Apple is not as focused, going off in too many directions without a clear vision.
All this and they can refresh their MacBooks or iMacs with any regularity.
I usually defend Apple but I have to say, I'm tired of Tim talking about all the "exciting new products in the pipeline". How about improving the ones, including software, that you already have.
All this and they can refresh their MacBooks or iMacs with any regularity.
I usually defend Apple but I have to say, I'm tired of Tim talking about all the "exciting new products in the pipeline". How about improving the ones, including software, that you already have.
Siri is useful when I'm driving and need to call someone, send a txt, and set reminders. Sometimes telling Siri to show me how to get somewhere works but most times doesn't. Half the time I'm frustrated with Siri unable to understand what I'm saying.
Siri can't even find a movie on my Apple TV from my OWN personal library on my computer. Siri only searches for movies that I've purchased from iTunes. Then there's Siri for the Mac. Really? Who cares? I might have cared if Siri actually did something useful for me. I stopped using it just like Mossberg did. It doesn't do the things I want it to do, so I gave up.
Most of the things people want Siri to do (but can't) aren't personal in nature, or if they are are limited to information contained on the device or within iCloud (such as contacts list. Safari favourites etc).
The sort of tracking and profiling that Google et al does is on a whole other level.
I think part of this isn't that Siri (as a technology) is particularly awful. It's just that Apple has never really been an information centric company like Google and Amazon.
I think they could make Siri competitive, but they'd have to make basucalky a subsidiary that is allowed to operate almost autonomously and set its own culture and goals.
I think they could make Siri competitive, but they'd have to make basucalky a subsidiary that is allowed to operate almost autonomously and set its own culture and goals.
Siri is certainly bad at many of the things Walt describes, however to suggest that Siri should be good at those things is also short sighted to how the services are used.
Siri and Google Assistant are approaching the same goals from different directions and that is obvious when you use either service.
Siri is starting from phone & services shortcuts and moving up into the information services space. Google is leveraging search to start from information and moving down into phone and services.
The result of this is obvious: Siri is not as good at online information look up requests, and Google Assistant isn't as well integrated into the OS's services and app ecosystem.
Google continually tout this difference as their advantage "why are flamingos pink?" however Apple is also right in knowing that most people aren't going to be asking that of their phone. Second to this - Google Assistant comes undone the moment there is a level of ambiguity to the question - which again takes away the point of even directing those questions to a voice search app.
Siri and Google Assistant are approaching the same goals from different directions and that is obvious when you use either service.
Siri is starting from phone & services shortcuts and moving up into the information services space. Google is leveraging search to start from information and moving down into phone and services.
The result of this is obvious: Siri is not as good at online information look up requests, and Google Assistant isn't as well integrated into the OS's services and app ecosystem.
Google continually tout this difference as their advantage "why are flamingos pink?" however Apple is also right in knowing that most people aren't going to be asking that of their phone. Second to this - Google Assistant comes undone the moment there is a level of ambiguity to the question - which again takes away the point of even directing those questions to a voice search app.
Siri sets my alarms every night, and adds items to my Grocery list in Reminder. That's it. Apart from that, things like "Call my dad" completely confuzzles her where she tries to call ME... yet "Call my father" works fine. No logical sense whatsoever.
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.
I had this exact problem for months and solved it today by unlinking his contact, changing the label on his contact to mobile, and then using Siri to add him back as my dad. So far its worked perfectly
I use Siri all the time and on the Mac it is AMAZING, compared to the old Speech Recognition, and with a fast processors it's great, I fail like 1 out of 5, I was going to say 1 out of 10 but it's about 1 out of 5.
It's just like anything else on a computer, you have to KNOW HOW TO INTERFACE properly. If you don't know what you are doing, it'll suck and people will complain etc, like Moss.
It's just like anything else on a computer, you have to KNOW HOW TO INTERFACE properly. If you don't know what you are doing, it'll suck and people will complain etc, like Moss.
I use Siri on my Mac for one thing: easy calculations. It makes it super easy to add 15 numbers together if I just say the equation.
Mr. Mossberg is correct. I own an Amazon Echo and an iPhone 6s Plus and I can get way more information from my Echo than I can Siri. First of all I hate the either too fast or too slow response time from Siri. I'll hold down the home button to turn on Siri and before I can say anything it's telling me that it didn't understand the question. Maybe if Siri gave me more than a tenth of a second to speak my question she could answer it. Then at other times I'll ask a very simple question or give a simple command and she acts like she has no idea of what I am talking about even though on other occasions she answers the same exact question or follows through properly with the exact same command without a problem. There is no consistently. If Steve Jobs was alive heads would be rolling because of the fact that Apple is behind both Amazon and Google in many ways. Having a closed system and having shortcomings like no ability to change your battery or add memory has to be offset by having superior features in other areas. And I'm sorry but coming out with the ability to have blurred backgrounds is not enough to get me to upgrade. Fortunately with the account I have with Verizon I can upgrade to the new iPhone 7 Plus with 256 gigs with the additional cost only a few dollars more per month so it's worth it to have the nicer camera, stronger battery, stronger flash and the additional memory. But I long for several of the features that the iPhone hasn't had for sometime yet Android phones have had them for a while. Apple needs to spend more of billions in cash reserves and give us some really WOW features in the next version of the iPhone or they stand a big risk of loosing a lot of their status as the company that innovates and changes entire industry segments. Dramatically improve my battery life. Dramatically improve the camera. Dramatically improve Maps and Siri and come out with an iPhone is has everything the best Android phone has to offer and then some. That will really not only get my attention but it will bring many from the Android camp over to Apple due to innovation than due to the fact that some Samsung phones are catching on fire or blowing up.
And as a stockholder since the late 80s that will cause my Apple stock to increase in value a lot more than adding a new color or giving me a few new features for Photos. And by the way, why doesn't Apple give you a simple and fast way to label photos. In iPhotos on the Mac you used to be able to click in the title field under one photo and by hitting the tab key to the next title box and the next and the next. There is no way to quickly and easily label photos once you import them into Photos. When Apple comes out with a new version of either hardware or software why oh why do they always take perfectly good features out when they release the newest version? How hard can it be to make it possible to tab between title boxes? And when you are important a tone of photos why can't you create the albums as step Number One so that when you import they go right into your new album. You could do that with Events. So they get rid of a perfectly good way of dividing photos into different groups and then when they get rid of Events and just force you to use Albums they give you no way to create albums up front. You have to import the photos then create the album and then select the photos and bring them into the album. That's more steps than it needs to be. What happened to Apple "keeping it simple"?
Sorry for the rant and going off topic but to me Siri is just a symptom of a larger problem and I wanted to give some additional examples of what I mean.
And as a stockholder since the late 80s that will cause my Apple stock to increase in value a lot more than adding a new color or giving me a few new features for Photos. And by the way, why doesn't Apple give you a simple and fast way to label photos. In iPhotos on the Mac you used to be able to click in the title field under one photo and by hitting the tab key to the next title box and the next and the next. There is no way to quickly and easily label photos once you import them into Photos. When Apple comes out with a new version of either hardware or software why oh why do they always take perfectly good features out when they release the newest version? How hard can it be to make it possible to tab between title boxes? And when you are important a tone of photos why can't you create the albums as step Number One so that when you import they go right into your new album. You could do that with Events. So they get rid of a perfectly good way of dividing photos into different groups and then when they get rid of Events and just force you to use Albums they give you no way to create albums up front. You have to import the photos then create the album and then select the photos and bring them into the album. That's more steps than it needs to be. What happened to Apple "keeping it simple"?
Sorry for the rant and going off topic but to me Siri is just a symptom of a larger problem and I wanted to give some additional examples of what I mean.
When I installed 10.12 i tried to ask Siri the exact same questions that were shown on the Apple Website as examples of what to ask it...it couldn't even answer those questions!
Well what a surprise given that Google, Microsoft, but also IBM, NEC, etc. invest huge amounts of money into actual basic research in AI, quantum computing algorithms / implementations, and many other areas.
Meanwhile, Apple bravely removes the headphone jack.
Agree Walt, Spot on! Also for us Aussies, Google voice is so much better. I can use Google voice in Google Maps and it always gets the address right. Siri, or Apple Maps voice just cannot figure anything out.
I no longer use Siri after multiple failed attempts.
I no longer use Siri after multiple failed attempts.
I hear that Apple is working on Siri to make make it better and better - but I don't see it. It seems like it should have made more progress than it has. Siri's inability to maintain context across questions inherently limits it to provide simple functionality. Until it can understand that a question/statement is related to the previous question/statement, it will be limited in terms of actual "intelligence" and usability.
Yeah, this is no secret. I use Siri for specific things that she's good at (reminders, alarms, occasional short text) when no one is around, but have given up on anything more advanced. They've made big improvements in transcription but, other than the some contextual changes it does, it's not to heavy on the ai side of things.
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While this is (painfully) accurate, I unfortunately don't think his words will have much impact on Apple. Walt had Steve's respect and his opinion carried a lot of weight, but I'm not sure that is the case anymore with Tim Cook and co. They are too busy patting themselves on the back to care, or more likely positioning another technology to replace Siri and not spending much time improving it. Siri could go the way of MobileMe
Walt is spot on. Siri is horrible. I kick myself every time I try to use Siri thinking that "this time will be different," only to have it fail miserably to either understand what I have asked or give me the correct information...even worse when I go to the google app, ask the same question, and obtain the correct response instantly. Even Cortana is better than Siri.
As someone who just came from a Windows Phone to an iPhone, I expected the iPhone to be 100x better in every which way. Cortana kicks Siri's behind in every which way.
I agree with all this. Huge missed opportunity with AppleTV. Should have included a controller and not limited initial app downloads to 200MB.
Don't forget the iMac; instead of putting a desktop class GPU they decided to make it thinner like anybody cares how thin your 27" computer is...are you planning on putting it in your purse or something Mr. Ive?
As far as the iPhone I really hope they step it up next year with a crazy awesome redesign.
Final problem is the fact that the only new products they released (iPhone and Watch) you still can't buy anywhere. I thought Tim Cook was supposed to be a "logistics man"...work it out bro!