Somehow it's going on a bit over 12 years now since Siri was released. I'm sad to say, but I've yet to see any real significant improvements since then. Yes sure, Siri on my watch 6 works better than my 2, probably just down to better input microphone, but basic things seem to, well - be frozen in time of a pre-release piece of software. At one point, I was hoping to get out of Amazon's ecosystem for home automation, but Apple still has no viable replacement for $150-$30 Echo Dots, and well - Siri.
Yeah, this is kind of a rant, but had Siri just piss me the heck off yet again. Will just list some examples - if anyone has any workarounds, please share, as after sporadic attempts at 'let's see if Siri sucks less NOW' to inevitably be woefully underwhelmed, I pretty much ignore Siri for anything more than the very basics, in a rinse and repeat pattern for a decade now.
Alarms - I set multiple every morning. Usually I wake up before any of them, but sometimes I have late working nights. Of course, I have a watch, iPad and iPhone - yet of course, Apple couldn't possibly figure this out or coordinate across devices sanely, so it's always a random guess as to which device will respond. So when I wake up before the alarms kick in, I want to do: "Hey Siri, turn off all alarms". Yes, I've tried 'on my phone' but with no luck. iPad and watch turn off their 'independent' alarms, so I shut my iPad and cover my watch to usually get it right.
Of course, today, there's no telling wtf she was even trying to do - instead of turning off alarms, it listed and read them all out. Meanwhile, unlike Alexa/Amazon, who knows 'sometimes it's stupid and just needs to be quiet' I couldn't interrupt Siri reading off some 5-6 alarms.
There is some small level of synchronization happening across devices, but I can't quite decipher it. I've tried to use Siri over Alexa for basic things like timers when I'm cooking, and would prefer those on my watch so it'll thump. But hey, sometimes I have my iPad open with one of my recipes up for reference, and with the iPad MUCH further away than my watch, flip a coin to sort which device will set it's own independent timer.
Initially way before the pandemic, Siri should have been super useful just for sending texts to my wife while I'm driving, as occasionally we'd have work outings or wind up late in the office, and driving both a smaller car and riding motorcycles, well - yeah, am quite familiar with the dangers of everyone texting while driving, so seemed like win/win. Well, yeah, other than it would usually garble the message so badly, even for simple messages, that after several retries I'd be close to road rage equivalent, then just pull over and call my wife - way to go Siri, I just wanted to know if she wanted me to stop and get dinner on the way home, but F you for the time wasted.
It generally does ok for simple conversions, which I'll use occasionally for cooking. It's gotten marginally better at texting, although there is no cue t the user if you can even tell it 'ok now send it already, stop waiting.' It's like Siri was added, then the entire project put on hold for a decade other than nonsense like 'enable Siri on your Mac.'
Enable Siri on my Mac? Omg, HELL NO. Why would anyone subject themselves to that lever of torture? I can type far faster than Siri can figure out basic things, so why would I intentionally piss myself off?
The only GOOD experience I can recall ever having with Siri, was more of an advertisement for Apple Watch. Wife and I were kayaking, and I had just blown an expensive transmission on a vehicle (completely atypical, have worked on cars forever, have lots of mechanical empathy but clutch cylinder went out and literally was rushing wife to hospital, had to power-shift a manual which was fine 90% of the way there) and was waiting on a call from a speciality transmission shop. The phone was in a rolled wetsack, so sat there in the middle of nowhere on the water, and took the call. Oh wait - nope, NOT a Siri win, as I just answered the call on my Watch without Siri involvement. Ok, I take it back, no Siri 'goodness' there either.
Yep, pretty much on a rant here. Was cute when it released, saw all of the future potential, have enough home automation stuff and am happy Apple is pushing Matter as an automation standard, but have yet to see any of the 'should be able to do this by now' even marginal cool things I can trust Siri to do properly at this point, and no way I'll buy into way-overpriced-even-if-cheaper-now HomePods over $20 Echo Dots and $50 on-sale Echo Shows if Siri is involved without major improvements (although ironically I do expect Apple's automation ecosystem behind Siri to be decent).
Any comments welcome - curious as to how many truly LIKE Siri, or even if there's some magic-unknown-to-me config somewhere that would make Siri suck much less in the cases outlined.
Yeah, this is kind of a rant, but had Siri just piss me the heck off yet again. Will just list some examples - if anyone has any workarounds, please share, as after sporadic attempts at 'let's see if Siri sucks less NOW' to inevitably be woefully underwhelmed, I pretty much ignore Siri for anything more than the very basics, in a rinse and repeat pattern for a decade now.
Alarms - I set multiple every morning. Usually I wake up before any of them, but sometimes I have late working nights. Of course, I have a watch, iPad and iPhone - yet of course, Apple couldn't possibly figure this out or coordinate across devices sanely, so it's always a random guess as to which device will respond. So when I wake up before the alarms kick in, I want to do: "Hey Siri, turn off all alarms". Yes, I've tried 'on my phone' but with no luck. iPad and watch turn off their 'independent' alarms, so I shut my iPad and cover my watch to usually get it right.
Of course, today, there's no telling wtf she was even trying to do - instead of turning off alarms, it listed and read them all out. Meanwhile, unlike Alexa/Amazon, who knows 'sometimes it's stupid and just needs to be quiet' I couldn't interrupt Siri reading off some 5-6 alarms.
There is some small level of synchronization happening across devices, but I can't quite decipher it. I've tried to use Siri over Alexa for basic things like timers when I'm cooking, and would prefer those on my watch so it'll thump. But hey, sometimes I have my iPad open with one of my recipes up for reference, and with the iPad MUCH further away than my watch, flip a coin to sort which device will set it's own independent timer.
Initially way before the pandemic, Siri should have been super useful just for sending texts to my wife while I'm driving, as occasionally we'd have work outings or wind up late in the office, and driving both a smaller car and riding motorcycles, well - yeah, am quite familiar with the dangers of everyone texting while driving, so seemed like win/win. Well, yeah, other than it would usually garble the message so badly, even for simple messages, that after several retries I'd be close to road rage equivalent, then just pull over and call my wife - way to go Siri, I just wanted to know if she wanted me to stop and get dinner on the way home, but F you for the time wasted.
It generally does ok for simple conversions, which I'll use occasionally for cooking. It's gotten marginally better at texting, although there is no cue t the user if you can even tell it 'ok now send it already, stop waiting.' It's like Siri was added, then the entire project put on hold for a decade other than nonsense like 'enable Siri on your Mac.'
Enable Siri on my Mac? Omg, HELL NO. Why would anyone subject themselves to that lever of torture? I can type far faster than Siri can figure out basic things, so why would I intentionally piss myself off?
The only GOOD experience I can recall ever having with Siri, was more of an advertisement for Apple Watch. Wife and I were kayaking, and I had just blown an expensive transmission on a vehicle (completely atypical, have worked on cars forever, have lots of mechanical empathy but clutch cylinder went out and literally was rushing wife to hospital, had to power-shift a manual which was fine 90% of the way there) and was waiting on a call from a speciality transmission shop. The phone was in a rolled wetsack, so sat there in the middle of nowhere on the water, and took the call. Oh wait - nope, NOT a Siri win, as I just answered the call on my Watch without Siri involvement. Ok, I take it back, no Siri 'goodness' there either.
Yep, pretty much on a rant here. Was cute when it released, saw all of the future potential, have enough home automation stuff and am happy Apple is pushing Matter as an automation standard, but have yet to see any of the 'should be able to do this by now' even marginal cool things I can trust Siri to do properly at this point, and no way I'll buy into way-overpriced-even-if-cheaper-now HomePods over $20 Echo Dots and $50 on-sale Echo Shows if Siri is involved without major improvements (although ironically I do expect Apple's automation ecosystem behind Siri to be decent).
Any comments welcome - curious as to how many truly LIKE Siri, or even if there's some magic-unknown-to-me config somewhere that would make Siri suck much less in the cases outlined.
