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General Will Siri ever be good?

Elwots

Elwots

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 8, 2016
239
328
I have pretty much every Apple device made within the last few years and absolutely love them and could never switch to anything else - but I can’t stand Siri. For example, today I tried telling Siri (from my iPhone X) to play a song on my Apple TV 4K. You would think this would be no problem whatsoever, but it is for Siri. I tried 3 or 4 times and always got responses like “sorry, I can’t do that yet.” I just can’t believe that in the current state of technology and “smart homes” my Apple devices still can’t handle simple tasks like the above. I really hope iOS 12 brings a major overhaul to Siri, it’s desperately needed if they want to compete with the growing trend of smart home technology.
 
Apple has a different view of privacy than Google and this limits what Siri has access to. The lack of information on Siri’s part means that it will never be as good.
 
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Elwots said:
I have pretty much every Apple device made within the last few years and absolutely love them and could never switch to anything else - but I can’t stand Siri. For example, today I tried telling Siri (from my iPhone X) to play a song on my Apple TV 4K. You would think this would be no problem whatsoever, but it is for Siri. I tried 3 or 4 times and always got responses like “sorry, I can’t do that yet.” I just can’t believe that in the current state of technology and “smart homes” my Apple devices still can’t handle simple tasks like the above. I really hope iOS 12 brings a major overhaul to Siri, it’s desperately needed if they want to compete with the growing trend of smart home technology.
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Apple hasn't had the greatest track record for their 1st party software and services.

To name a few with varying signs of improvement: iTunes Match, MacOS upgrade debacle, and Apple Maps when they decided to do it themselves.
 
Playing a song on a ApplTV should work with iOS 12 but a really smarter Siri will take some time.
Apple know that Siri is lacking features.
 
For in house tasking with the iPhone, Siri works well with commands for timers, messages, E-mails, simple dictation, hands free tasking, ect.

Where Siri struggles is lack of producing relevant search results, deciphering words inaccurately, cutting the user off at times in the middle of dictation.

I think the changes are coming for Siri, as they acquired Googles VP of Artificial Intelligence:

https://www.macrumors.com/2018/04/03/apple-hires-google-ai-chief/amp/
 
I think it can get better but wont be good due to the way apple does privacy

theres no reason i shouldnt be able to tell my appletv's siri to make my phone do the lost phone ping or for phone siri to turn on flashlight etc.

I think it will pick those kind of low hanging fruit and also bring feature parity to the Siri's but thats about it
 
It all depends on what you use Siri for. I think Siri is great but all I use it for is for controlling my Apple Music, setting reminders and alarms.
 
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I get the whole “privacy” argument, I do, but that’s a cop out truly. Is Siri held back on some things by apple’s stance on privacy? Probably. But privacy has absolutely nothing to do with me asking to have Siri turn on the flashlight or ask Siri on my Apple Watch what my iPhone’s battery is, etc. there are many basic features that Siri is lacking in comparison to the competition and they have nothing to do with Apple’s stance on privacy...
 
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On the plus side, iOS 11.4 is bringing Siri support for sending audio to AirPlay2 compatible devices including HomePod and AppleTV
 
Apple does already store the Siri queries (anonymously) on their servers. They can‘t be tied to you anymore but the queries themself are at their disposal. Afaik that was implemented with iOS10.

I don‘t see how privacy has anything to do with Siri being lackluster. It doesn‘t need to know anything about me really to get the simple job of turning on the flashlight.

I think most of Siris problems stem from the way it was designed and not privacy. I remember an article from an ex-Siri employee stating as much: Siri backend being a dumpster fire and Apple treating Siri as a second class citizen (e.g. Siri team being one of the last teams to even hear about the HomePod, apparently it wasn‘t even planned to have Siri to begin with).

That article was even reported on here:
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/03/14/siri-has-turned-sour-report/
 
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When I ask Siri to “show pictures from location x”, it misses the first one or two words almost every single time and then have no idea where x is. I can find photos taken on location x if I manually write it in the photos app, so I don’t think protecting privacy is an excuse. Siri just doesn’t work, it is as simple as that.
 
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I use Siri to start Google Assistant, and then ask it to do stuff.

Siri can't even figure out where I am. My place of worship is about 5 miles away. If I ask Siri to navigate there, it invariably sends me 600 miles away.
 
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