
How Apple let Siri fall behind the Google Assistant and Alexa - cpeterso
https://mashable.com/2018/03/14/why-siri-is-so-dumb/#tTGSzkqaSZqB
======
xiaq
> "It was slow, when it worked at all," Williamson said. "The software was
> riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original
> Siri team, certainly not me."

Wow. It those were his original words, I don't doubt a bit that this guy
should be responsible for Siri being left behind.

~~~
IBM
So Forstall and his direct report were responsible for two botched product
launches, Siri and Maps. This is a big blow to the camp suggesting firing
Forstall was a mistake.

~~~
tinus_hn
Siri may have stalled now but it definitely wasn’t a botched launch. And Apple
maps may not work great in all cases but it did succeed in forcing Google to
provide decent maps on iOS. Before Apple Maps the vector maps were an Android
exclusive.

~~~
sjwright
Apple Maps is like Bing: almost as good as the #1 service, but almost is not
enough to make anyone care.

Apple Maps is remarkably good today, doing nearly all of the important things
well. Here in Australia, it's on par with Google Maps for driving (slightly
worse for novel route planning, slightly better for guidance) and when
travelling to major world cities I've found Apple Maps is frequently _better_
than Google Maps for navigating on foot and public transport.

~~~
ak217
In reality Google Maps is farther ahead of its competitors than most people
realize.

Google Maps now provides wholly personalized points of interest and attention
affordances in its UI. It's also well on its way to 3D scanning and annotating
POIs in every structure in the world, including very large pedestrian-only
interiors. It also has realtime transit and traffic feeds, and more pedestrian
trails and venue detail than anyone else. All of these are areas where its
competition is not just behind, but falling further behind. But the
personalization combined with superior POI search really illustrates how
Google's competitors don't even have the platform to properly conceptualize
the type of product Google is building, much less build it.

~~~
AlphaSite
I don’t know if I’d say most of these things matter enough at the end of the
day, just to cherry pick, Apple has 3D, interiors, traffic, transit and
pedestrians. Not everywhere, but it’s a problem which time and money can fix.
Both of which apple has in abundance.

Also anecdotally I’m not sure if I can agree that Google’s POIs are vastly
better, mostly just different but of a similar low quality (which is to say
neither pleases me).

~~~
tschwimmer
I can't speak to your usecase and preferences, but a cartographer points out
how much richer Google Maps are here: [https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-
maps-moat](https://www.justinobeirne.com/google-maps-moat)

------
Twisell
Something always make me scratch my head. Is there any proof that actual
people use and value Google and Amazon assistant more than Siri? Or is the
leadership only designed by autoproclaimed experts and funky ad-hoc metrics?

I totally confess that I use Siri for only 3 things:

-Desactivating all wake up alarm during my morning poo

-Setting timers while baking

-Sending a « I’m coming » text to my loved one before riding my bike home

Yes, this is a very dumb and limited usage. But I don’t see Android users
around me doing incredible things that I could be jealous of with their voice
assistant. I am missing something? Or maybe it’s because I’m not in the US and
we still have to catch up with the trend of using voice assistant more?

~~~
veesahni
Google's voice recognition is excellent. I trust Assistant to help me
throughout my day with a number of things now:

\- Cooking & laundry timers

\- Reminders (remind me to do X when I get home)

\- Directions (Take me to the nearest X, take me home, etc)

\- Checking hours of business (what time does X close today)

\- Initiating phone calls (Call X)

\- Checking weather (is it going to snow today? How cold is it right now?)

\- Conversions (what's X ounces to ml)

\- Quick stock checks (what's X stock price)

\- Playing music around the house (play X on the kitchen speakers)

Additionally, I've found myself using Android's voice recording capabilities
to dictate text all the time. It's just so much faster than typing or swiping.

I haven't an iPhone for a few years, so I can't compare with what Siri is
capable of today.

~~~
spullara
All of those Siri can do. Anything else?

~~~
hellofunk
This is strictly anecdotal but a friend of mine is an exec at Facebook and we
were recently discussing phones. He had an iPhone for a few years and has now
had an Android for a couple years. He said that by far the most drastic
difference between the two platforms is Siri vs. Assistant (or whatever
Google's assistant is called in the phone). He said it is no contest how much
more useful and functional Assistant is, compared to Siri. We did not dwell on
this discussion and I otherwise find him an objective, un-biased user of the
two platforms, so there you have it.

~~~
1337biz
Obligatory question is why? What usefullness or functionality made that much
of a difference to him?

~~~
oarsinsync
Cant speak for the other person, but as someone who's used iPhones exclusively
since the original, Siri makes mistakes with sufficient frequency that it's
subjectively just bad. I can't quantify what percentage of requests fail to be
understood correctly, but it's sufficiently high that the frequency is
annoying. It's even worse when using the Apple Watch (Series 3).

Unexpectedly, this can sometimes be a positive too. "Hey siri, turn my lights
<pink/orange/purple/blue/red/white>" has on multiple occasions been
interpreted as "Hey siri, turn my lights", which then results in the lights
being turned off. This is hugely entertaining when you're demonstrating your
new Philips Hue bulbs over FaceTime, and the person on the other end now just
sees your camera go black instead.

~~~
Reason077
I often want to set a timer for exactly 50 minutes so I know when my laundry
is done.

But siri always interprets "Fifty" as "Fifteen". Pretty much every single
time, it always makes the same mistake, no matter how clearly or slowly I try
to pronounce it. I have to say "Hey Siri, set a timer for five zero minutes"
to get it to pick it up accurately.

~~~
nagVenkat
Do you have any accent? By that I mean are you a second language English
speaker? I just presumed that it couldn’t understand my accent heavy speeech.

~~~
Reason077
I'm a native English speaker, though whether I have an accent depends on your
perspective! I can do either American or British somewhat convincingly, and I
usually don't have any trouble being understood by Siri.

I suspect the problem with "50" is that whatever ML underpins it is heavily
tuned/biased towards "15" because a lot of people probably set 15 minute
timers all the time. 50 minute timers are much less common, I suspect?

------
jameskilton
You can probably point to a lot of quality failings at Apple as starting with
Steve Job's death. Apparently he failed to teach and instill a culture of high
quality and instead just focused on micro-managing everything himself. Steve
Jobs may go down as both the best and worst CEO Apple ever had.

~~~
omerta
Not true at all. Look up the story of Apple University. Jobs can't run Apple
from his grave. He tried his best to leave Apple with the right culture and
leadership in his view. And for the most part, Apple has done really well
since he passed. No one is going to get 100% of things right 100% of the time,
and Jobs is no different; things would have inevitably gone wrong under his
leadership, too.

~~~
FreakyT
Exactly this—a particular anecdote from the biography describes his
motivation. Apparently when the HP Touchpad failed, Steve Jobs viewed it as a
tragedy more than a triumph:

 _> "Hewlett and Packard built a great company, and they thought they had left
it in good hands, but now it's being dismembered and destroyed. It's tragic. I
hope I've left a stronger legacy so that will never happen at Apple."_

In creating Apple University he was really trying to instill a legacy that
would outlast him. That said, when pulling out the "Steve Jobs never would
have let this happen" card, it's also important to remember that MobileMe
happened on Steve's watch, as did the iPod HiFi.

~~~
throwaway84742
I still have a working HiFi in my home gym. It’s a solid piece of engineering,
especially for its time. I don’t know why people love to hate it so much.

~~~
FreakyT
I feel like sentiment toward the iPod HiFi is less _" hate"_ and more _" why
does this exist"_. It was a perfectly solid piece of hardware, but Apple tried
to enter a market that was already saturated (iPod docks) with a far more
expensive product that didn't offer any significant advantages.

~~~
throwaway84742
It was one of the very few that didn’t suck, IMO. That’s why I bought it. And
IIRC it wasn’t the most expensive option.

------
eltoozero
Wow so much Siri bashing in here. I’m a daily driver and I suppose an outlier
working on a now aging 6S+ but Siri has been way reliable and generally fast
outside of what I’d call “harsh” environments like outside on a busy street or
with poor reception.

I’m able to consistently perform:

\- Reminders with or without location tags “add eggs to grocery list” “remind
me to check oil when I get home”

\- Calendar events “create event about mr Smith tomorrow 2pm” “create meeting
with bob March 12 noon” (“with” spawns an invite, I use “about”) “move my 2pm
meeting to 4pm” “what’s going on tomorrow”

\- weather “what’s the weather like this week” “what’s it going to be like in
Manhattan beach on Saturday”

\- Calls, by name, number or direct to speaker “call my brother” “call
213-555-1212” “call my dad on speakerphone”

\- FaceTime “FaceTime my mom”

\- Email “Email my brother” Subject? “take out” Message? “Grab me a burger”
ready to send? “Yes”

\- Messages, one liner or conversationally “tell my brother I’m running late”
ready? “Go” or “message my sister” message? “Call me.” Ready to send it?
“Affirmative”

\- Math “what’s 128 times 10 million?” “What’s 10 days from next Tuesday?”

\- Time “what time is it?” “What time is it in Florida?”

\- Location “where is my sister?”

\- Automation “living room lights blue” “goodnight”

\- Dictation “blah period new line I swear exclamation mark new paragraph
furthermore comma open parentheses really close parentheses all caps cats are
all caps really all caps really cool question mark” I frequently do
complicated technical dictation using Siri, it’s not a problem in fact this
particular sentence was composed entirely with Siri with zero post correction.

All of these work consistently and reliably, for me, using either PTT style
hold and speak, long-press and wait for the beep, or “Hey Siri” invocation.

Seriously, I use all of this all day every day on an old iPhone, I’m not blind
but if I was I’d consider it reliable enough for those purposes.

I don’t do a lot of location, navigation, or searches with Siri because
generally, performance is not optimal and you’re not able to focus the intent
domain clearly enough with consistent verbiage.

~~~
Jdam
I use it to set the alarm, a pretty basic task. Works in 6/10 cases. This is
totally unacceptable in the age of “smart”.

~~~
iDemonix
Are you doing it wrong? I set my alarm every night with Siri in my 4-year old
iPhone 6 and I can't recall ever having an issue...

~~~
kerbalspacepro
In 2018, the only two ways you can do something that simple wrong, is by 1)
not speaking English at all or 2) say something else completely.

~~~
Jdam
Neither, nor. The loading bar or what that is called that appears after the
text is recognized but it’s waiting for a response just never finishes. And
yes, I’m online.

------
minimaxir
The cofounder/CEO of Siri contests the depiction of the scalibility issues in
the original Information article:

> This statement, wholly false, was made by the architect and head of the
> biggest launch disaster in Apple history, Apple Maps. In reality Siri worked
> great at launch but, like any new platform under unexpectedly massive load,
> required scaling adjustments and 24 hour workdays.

[https://twitter.com/Dagk/status/974047743596404737](https://twitter.com/Dagk/status/974047743596404737)

------
FrancoisBosun
Siri is very dumb. I use for for reminders and alarms.

I speak fr-ca as opposed to fr-fr, and some conversations go like this:

    
    
      Siri, call X on cell
      Sorry, can’t call X
      Siri, call X on mobile
      Calling X on cell
    

In fr-ca, we talk about cell phones. In the contact app, the mobile phone is
registered as cell phone, but in fr-fr, they use mobile.

I also sometimes have this conversation:

    
    
      Siri, rappelle-moi de mettre des mouchoirs sur la liste de matériel du camp
        (Siri, remind-me to put tissues on the unit’s list of material)
      Do you want me to create a list?
    

I only have one list, on purpose. I have no way to tell Siri that I never want
to create new lists.

It appears to me as if some words have more importance than others, such as
the word « list ».

Those are my biggest annoyances with Siri. I will continue to speak and use my
iPhone in fr-ca, to promote my language and improve the software by providing
data points about which languages are used.

~~~
scarface74
Seeing that Alexa only works in English and German
([https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=202207000))

Siri is still better than Alexa for most of the world....

~~~
icebraining
Eh, I'm not sure. The percentage of iPhone users worldwide who can speak some
English is probably pretty high. As a non-native speaker myself, I'd certainly
prefer a reliable assistant in English over an unreliable one in my native
language.

~~~
jvzr
FWIW the assistants probably would not recognize most of these people's
accents. Not to speak of whether people would be inclined or not to make the
effort to speak a foreign language to their assistant.

I'm French, have a good level in English, all my OSes are set in English. I
used to use Siri in English but stopped cause it was weird. The ability to
select a different language for Siri than the system language is a blessing.

------
ams6110
The title seems poorly worded to me. I read it as "Why Siri underlies Google
Assistant and Alexa," as if Siri were the backing technology. Should say
something more like "Why Siri is lagging behind Google Assistant and Alexa."

~~~
AlphaWeaver
Or the actual article title, which is "How Apple let Siri fall behind the
Google Assistant and Alexa"

------
pgt
Siri's amnesia is the biggest painpoint for me. Lack of context and
compounding errors when I can't extend an initial sentence makes it entirely
unusable.

Anything useful requires speaking a longer sentence. Siri will interpret most
of it but get one (key) word wrong, but Siri won't let me clarify my statement
or add a statement without starting all over again. So I can't use Siri on top
of it not understanding my accent (I've tried Australian, America and English
accents and using "G'day Siri").

I know there is an NLP engine in the background deriving entity relations -
just let me add some more to the same context and remember it for 30 seconds
and I'll use Siri a lot more.

E.g. "Hey Siri, search the web for minumum cut graph algorithms." Siri: "Now
searching for minumum cut Graaff I'll go rhythms." Me: "Graph, not graaff."
Siri: "Hello, I'm a web server!" Me: _throws phone out of window_

------
sekou
After switching from Android to iOS one of the things I missed most was Google
Now in comparison to Siri. Before I was far more likely to say "Okay Google"
and get surprisingly contextual results.

------
breatheoften
I will believe that someone is trying to improve Siri when the implementation
is updated so that the time between when I push the button and when I can
start speaking is reduced to the minimum possible with a only a short reliably
deterministic delay length.

The inability of Siri to provide me a way to know when I can start talking
absolutely (waiting for that horrible beep is just insanely terrible)
completely breaks the experience. The fact that no one seems to have noticed
this flaw enough to figure out a fix suggests to me that the people developing
the project do not have sufficient understanding of the interaction model to
ever improve it ...

There should be zero network requests that need to be complete before I can
start talking. If Siri is unavailable for network reasons tell me after (or
during) my query — but don’t slow down every single interaction and add
ridiculous amounts of uncertainty to the responsiveness of the interface for
the sake of the uncommon cases ...

~~~
IBM
You don't have to wait for Siri to respond and you haven't had to for a while.
Just say "Hey Siri" followed by the command with no pauses and it will handle
it just fine.

~~~
andrewmcwatters
This isn't true. On iPhone 6, running the latest iOS version, with a brand new
battery, there is a significant delay before you can speak. Instead, you have
to hold the home button down.

[https://david-smith.org/iosversionstats/](https://david-
smith.org/iosversionstats/)

~~~
IBM
Hey Siri doesn't work on the iPhone 6 if it's not plugged in. Only the 6s and
later do, and it's enabled by a specific low power chip.

------
ktta
Team dysfunction seems to be a part of it. The 'head' guy for Siri, Dag
Kittlaus left Apple to start Viv Labs in about a year since Siri was released.
Their assistant Viv, looked pretty okay[1], and was since acquired by
Samsung[2].

I feel if he had stayed on, Siri would have been better.

Samsung seems to be trying pretty hard to get people to use it[3]. It's
relatively new so I'm interested to see where it goes, especially since it has
the lowest market share.

[1]:[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI07aeZqeco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI07aeZqeco)

[2]: [https://venturebeat.com/2017/02/28/samsung-paid-
around-215-m...](https://venturebeat.com/2017/02/28/samsung-paid-
around-215-million-for-virtual-assistant-startup-viv/)

[3]: [https://youtu.be/zlesUiYkp_4?t=55s](https://youtu.be/zlesUiYkp_4?t=55s)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Not to mention Williamson shit-talking the Siri team to this reporter:

"Williamson denies the accusations that he slowed Siri development down and
instead cast blame on Siri's creators.

'It was slow, when it worked at all,' Williamson said. 'The software was
riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri
team, certainly not me.'"

~~~
ktta
There's a rebuttal too

[https://twitter.com/Dagk/status/974047743596404737](https://twitter.com/Dagk/status/974047743596404737)

------
Sharlin
Siri has the best language support. Siri is infinite times better than any
competitor in Finnish because nothing else knows Finnish at all!

~~~
jvzr
I concur. It's amazing how tech is blind of the world beyond the US.

------
dagaci
Siri: I've notice a massive slowdown in the speed of Siri and an actual
deterioration in voice recognition (but I've just assumed that this is just
part of the general deterioration of iOS)

I would say that Siri has not only fallen behind but gone backwards.

I'm still running an iPhone 5s ;) because i dont like the direction of Apple
have taken certain things (and Android terrifies me with the sheer volume of
personal data collection)

~~~
72deluxe
Yes the data collection volume is pretty massive. I run a raspberry pi at home
running pihole to block DNS requests and the amount of metrics and dialling
home devices do is pretty staggering.

That being said, my Windows 10 and Apple devices all do a similar insane
amount of dialling home all the time so I don't think it is unique to Android.

In fact, you should probably run O&O ShutUp10 on Windows to disable all the
telemetry (does it really need to know how you're using your keyboard?????),
GlassWire or NetLimiter (not tried them) and install Little Snitch for Mac (I
use this and observe much dialling out).

A sad world we live in.

------
enraged_camel
>>"It was slow, when it worked at all," Williamson said. "The software was
riddled with serious bugs. Those problems lie entirely with the original Siri
team, certainly not me."

As Steve Jobs said, once you become a VP you can’t make excuses anymore. You
have crossed the Rubicon and need to start taking responsibility for the
failures of your team.

This guy has a lot to learn about leadership.

~~~
Shebanator
I know, right? I read this and instantly thought "man, I never want to work
for this guy"!

~~~
Spooky23
The upside is that without answering the question, he answered the question.

------
wuliwong
The title of the article is

"So this is why Siri is way behind the Google Assistant and Alexa".

The submission title should be changed.

~~~
cheald
Mashable A/B tests their headlines. The original headline is one of the
candidates.

~~~
wuliwong
I opened up Firefox and loaded the link and I actually saw the other headline
for an instant.

Edit: Actually it happens on every refresh in Chrome as well.

~~~
rhizome
Good A/B'ing sets a cookie in your browser so that you don't screw up the
numbers by reloading.

------
CharlesW
It's sort of sad to read a story about a story, and not be able to figure out
which problems were created in the source vs. the retelling.

Mashable: "Right now, it looks like Siri won't be blown up and a [sp]
rebuilt". Yeah, well, that'd most likely be a huge mistake[1] depending on
your definition of "blown up" and "rebuilt", and also Siri's already been
rebuilt twice.[2]

The Information: "One of Apple’s original plans was to launch its speaker
without Siri included, according to a source." Of course — there are always
contingency plans. To me, this is a much more damning comment about the Siri
team than Apple's "vision".

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-
should-...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-
do-part-i/)

[2] Mesosphere blog post, definitely reviewed and approved by Apple:
[http://archive.is/YNMLh](http://archive.is/YNMLh)

~~~
flounder3
Regarding [1], the move to Mesos was not a rewrite. Some core components had
to be improved, but [2] was primarily an infrastructure upgrade that happened
to make Siri considerably faster by ditching hypervisors. It was a massive
feat that was accomplished by relatively few engineers.

There were always many components under review for reengineering; keep in mind
that Siri was released before WebSockets was a thing, let alone RFC.

The snowball effect of Siri's failures originated from iOS Program Management
pushing us to expand into as many other languages as soon as possible from the
beginning, thus diverting resources from implementing or polishing original
"Siri, Inc." features and various "nice to have" improvements to en-US usage.

Source: I worked on Siri from the moment it was acquired, and no longer work
at Apple. Richard Williamson's recent comments are pathetic.

~~~
MBCook
I always wondered how much of a toll Apple’s multilingual support was compared
to the small number that Google and Amazon have.

~~~
refulgentis
Google supports all of the same languages as Siri, and also supports Brazilian
Portuguese. Amazon supports 2 languages

~~~
jacksmith21006
Plus is actually far more functional in the languages compare to Siri.

------
rixrax
How/for what do people actually use Siri, or Alexa for?

I mean I can't think of having seen anyone use them for a long time for
anything but to either test them out for curiositys sake, or for demoing their
new Alexa controlled drapes.

Hopefully this wasn't too off-topic. Maybe HN should have an ability to create
a poll and attach them to a thread. ;-)

~~~
jd20
Having two newborns has made me come to appreciate Alexa in a whole new way:
my hands are almost always full with one (or both) babies and being able to
use my voice to control the lights, play music for them, set reminders or
alarms for myself, has been a godsend.

While my wife was bedridden after her C-Section surgery, she loved being able
to use Echo's ability to call other Echo's in the house (or outside the home)
when she needed something. Kind of like an intercom system. The problem with
the iPhone is that it was usually either on the charger, or battery was dead,
or it was left on vibrate. The Echo was always 100% reliable for her, which is
really critical when you can't even get out of bed.

------
thescribe
Is a voice assistant the killer app for anyone? I haven't ever used them, and
I've only ever seen someone use it as an ironic 'look at me' at a party.

~~~
chetanahuja
For users who have reasonably functioning products, yes. For Siri users, looks
like not so much.

------
remir
In my opinion, the problem with these assistants is that interacting with them
using voice give you the impression that they're intelligent, but it's just a
trick.

When it works, it can be useful for certain tasks, but when it doesn't work,
you lose trust in the system pretty quickly, especially if you're in a
situation where you expect and need the assistant to work, like when driving.

~~~
jacksmith21006
Would agree with Siri but the Google Assistant is pretty incredible at
figuring out what you want.

------
segmondy
Are we surprised? Apple is not a software company, and has never been good at
it. Apple is a design company, they make pretty things. Their hardware and
software looks pretty. They figured out how to make their hardware robust.
Their software not so much so.

------
dharma1
It's what happens at large orgs, esp ones with leadership problems - they
can't move fast to improve products, even when something is obviously not
working.

The only thing I use Siri for is on the desktop for starting apps - I've
hooked it up to a keyb shortcut. I find its a bit faster than fumbling around
spotlight or the dock. Alfred would possibly be even faster.

Google assistant has the best knowledge graph for generic questions, and much
better machine learning models for voice recognition and language parsing. I
primarily use it for route finding, finding out opening times, currency
conversions, sometimes calling people.

Alexa for almost only music, and timers, since it's hooked up to my kitchen
speakers. It's terrible for general knowledge questions.

------
robotkdick
Siri has 20x more active users than Alexa. Not sure about Google.

While they are perceived as having fallen behind, Apple is still way, way
ahead.

And when she works, like driving directions, people aren't even aware they're
using Siri.

Damned impressive given the car is moving through a vast network of
roads/traffic/construction while instructions are being given.

Meanwhile, Alexa gets to sit at home and help with baking timers...

The competition will help everyone (no matter what platforms you choose).

~~~
jacksmith21006
What? Think you drank the Kool aide and then poured it all over yourself and
took a bath in it.

I carry both a iPhone and a Pixel 2 XL and there is no comparison between Siri
and the Google Assistant. Now a bit of a Apple fanboy but can be realistic.

------
kennydude
Siri to me is just useless most of the time.

I can ask it to set a timer and 8 times out of 10 it'll think I just said
"poop" and nothing else.

------
spentdeath
All the known techniques for NLP and NLU are mediocre. From Apples
perspective, it makes a lot of sense to not invest so much money for such
little gain. Google Assistant is supposedly better, but I don’t notice/care.
Google/Amazon pour a lot of money into their personal assistant tech, but the
end result is hardly noticeable or useful.

~~~
arvinsim
TL;DR I don't find it useful so it must be the same for other people

~~~
jacksmith21006
Problem is people that put Siri in the same bucket as the Google Assistant and
assume they are all not helpful. The issue is how bad Siri is.

------
ilyaeck
Say what you will about Siri, but it was the watershed product that unleashed
a new generation of mass-market voice assistants, including later bloomers
such as Alexa, Google Assistant, etc. Yes, it was (is?) relatively rudimentary
technology, but the founding team was visionary. As for the mismanagement,
Apple's bureaucracy is to blame.

------
billfruit
I haven't use Siri, so I am guessing here: Perhaps a major advantage of Google
Assistant is that Google has more aggressively worked towards recognising and
speaking regional accents. Assistant in India quite reliably understands
Indian accents and speaks in an Indian 'News' accent.

~~~
SamBam
And Google was working it that space _really_ early. Did anyone here use
GOOG-411? A service you could _call_ way back in 2007, before most people had
smart phones, and ask natural questions and get search results back.

Obviously that was early Google Assistant prototyping, and also a huge wealth
of voice data to mine.

------
killion
Not being able to flag requests that Siri failed to parse tells me that the
Siri team isn't serious about making Siri better.

Just adding a small "That isn't what I asked" button or letting me say
something like "Hey Siri, you got my last request wrong" would give Apple a
mountain of usable data.

~~~
jd20
There's actually a way to do this, for a long time. In older versions, you'd
see a wavy underline on certain words it was less confident about, letting you
choose alternatives. The current version has a "Tap to edit" link.

Problem is discoverability. And having a mountain of "this request was wrong",
without knowing what the answer should have been, would require too much
manual sifting.

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progval
Short version: they did not push updates to Siri often enough, waiting for
major versions of iOS.

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godelmachine
Not only Siri, Apple went downhill on a lot of other features after Jobs
passed away.

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EGreg
I wrote this a few years ago:

[http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234](http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=234)

 _If Steve Jobs still ran Apple_

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addicted
If the Siri infrastructure is so bad I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t
already have several skunkwork teams trying to create a fresh alternative for
the past few years.

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dzhiurgis
There should be an open standard to use whichever assistant you want, not
limited to OEM one.

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untangle
Apple fell behind in voice on Jobs' watch and prior to the Siri acquisition.
In fact, it's probably more accurate to say that Apple was behind on iOS
progress and facing a ho-hum 4s launch. Hence, the quick 8-figure Siri buy and
hurried integration that put them behind the 8-ball on voice ever since.

The broader context is that Apple doesn't seem to get: "It's the 'AI,'
stupid!"

As an aside (OT), it's interesting the way Mashable essentially republished
paywall-protected content. If there was new reporting there, I missed it. But
that's the nature of modern media.

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singularity2001
How much of Siri's failure is due to the fact that Apple was strangled by the
industire's monopolist (Nuance)?

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notadoc
Was?

~~~
wlesieutre
The article URL slug is "why-siri-is-so-dumb" so clearly someone over there
agrees with you.

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moronicalox
So the takeaway here is that it was dumb because was poorly built?

Also, how different is that "Information" report behind the paywall? It would
not surprise me to see Mashable rewriting an article but to do so with paid
content seems inappropriate.

~~~
jacksmith21006
Do not think anyone can really explain why Siri is so bad. Just that it is
really bad compared to the Google assistant.

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gowld
It's hard to imagine Steve Jobs ever allowing a hit piece like this to get
published while/if he was alive.

~~~
bdcravens
It's hard to imagine anyone, SJ or otherwise, having enough influence to
control freedom of the press to prevent any article from being published.

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happertiger
I’m going on the record as not actually liking the name Siri. Pithy though
that sounds, it’s the Sharon or Ralph name in digital assistants and I don’t
even like saying it. Try saying “hey Siri” in a quiet room sometime and feel
the awkward.

Also it doesn’t work.

