I hate Siri.

[rmoliv]

It seems that Siri was designed mainly to cater to the English-speaking public, mainly the U.S. (of course), Canada, United Kingdom and Australia/NZ. Everywhere else, except maybe a few select countries such as Germany, France, China (I'm guessing here, what is your experience with it?) Siri is mostly a JOKE. When I want to listen to music I usually interact with it in English as it will understand the name of the artists and songs. HOWEVER, when I switch it back to my native language I basically can't use it to play music because it won't understand most of the artists and song names, which are English. If I ask for the news in the English version it won't show/tell me the national news but rather give me American or British national news topics and stories. When I want to send a message it also won't get the person's name because most of the people on my contacts list don't have English names and less so would it be able to type a message in my native language of course. It's not even available on my Apple TV 4K even if I set the language to English! And I could go on with this list. So as you see I find myself switching Siri between English and my native language which is far from practical. Thus I am here wondering why Apple advertises so much Siri as a top reason to buy product A or B or C when it's so underdeveloped or even completely unavailable in certain regions and products bought in those regions. Is it that hard to make Siri available in every region (I'm not even talking about remote regions, but the European Union)? To make it understand English names of songs and artists even when it's set in a different language? I don't get it. Just makes me want to throw all my Apple products at Tim Cook's mug.

 

[Starfia]

Mm, yes. Thinking globally (which in my opinion, Apple has always exemplified in other ways – fonts, app localization, speech synthesis) when designing a personal assistant that actually needs to parse speech and reference products and services cross-language and cross-region must be one of the most staggering technical challenges in today's tech world.

I understood a fair amount of the actual cases you mentioned, which sound unique to you. I'm not sure what you meant when you said "it's not available" on your Apple TV – did you mean sending messages? I don't think that's ever been a feature there yet.

If you're interested in at least a hint about their thinking, two of the VPs who lead this stuff actually talked a little about it on this episode of The Talk Show, particularly around 18 minutes in.

https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/02/12/ep-146

But this was in 2016 – if you can describe in detail specifically where you hit walls, it seems like the kind of thing they'd want to hear from their users on.

 

[rmoliv]

I'm not sure what you meant when you said "it's not available" on your Apple TV – did you mean sending messages? I don't think that's ever been a feature there yet.

I meant that Siri's Apple TV functionalities are only available in select countries (U.S., Mexico, Germany, China...). However, it's retail price is the same - at least in those countries where the currency is the Euro which is the reality I live in. I pay the same €199 for an Apple TV 4K 32 GB as someone in, say, Germany does, however I am not able to fully enjoy the Apple TV experience as that someone in Germany is. Doesn't seem quite fair. If they're planning on expanding Siri's availability on Apple TV they're taking too long honestly.

If you're interested in at least a hint about their thinking, two of the VPs who lead this stuff actually talked a little about it on this episode of The Talk Show, particularly around 18 minutes in.

https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2016/02/12/ep-146

But this was in 2016 – if you can describe in detail specifically where you hit walls, it seems like the kind of thing they'd want to hear from their users on.

I am interested. Thanks for the link.

 

[nnoble]

It seems that Siri was designed mainly to cater to the English-speaking public, mainly the U.S. (of course), Canada, United Kingdom and Australia/NZ. Everywhere else, except maybe a few select countries such as Germany, France, China (I'm guessing here, what is your experience with it?)

I've only ever used Siri in China and as you describe, it's pretty hopeless with everyday products, names, music etc. When I arrive back home after a decade here I guess I might have a higher opinion of Siri.