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John Gruber trashes Siri

Did anyone ever stop to think why Apple, a company with bottomless pockets never bothered to make Siri better?

Siri feeds Apple with terabytes of anonymous user data which shows how much people are using and it and crucially, what they're asking it to do. I'd put good money on 99% of the market using it for nothing more than setting timers, reminders and playing music. Despite its inferiority compared to Google and Alexa, it does these basic things really well.

In other words why waste $Billions in R&D making a product better when only 1%, the sorts of tech enthusiasts that make YouTube videos or post on forums would ever actually use it? I'm not giving Apple a free pass or saying they shouldn't make it better, just that people should maybe stop and question why these things do and do not happen.
 
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Ctrlos said:
Did anyone ever stop to think why Apple, a company with bottomless pockets never bothered to make Siri better?

Siri feeds Apple with terabytes of anonymous user data which shows how much people are using and it and crucially, what they're asking it to do. I'd put good money on 99% of the market using it for nothing more than setting timers, reminders and playing music. Despite its inferiority compared to Google and Alexa, it does these basic things really well.
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The problem is, it doesn't.

Have you tried doing even things like managing multiple, not really that complex mix of timers?

Many's the time Siri has responded with something so dumb or just ignored what I've told it and done something else entirely different that I'm just standing in front of the iPad chuckling to myself, and wondering if I should call it ELIZA instead 🤣

But yeah - maybe you are right after all, and maybe it's more about the majority of Apple users being just as predictable, simplistic automatons that Siri doesn't need any improvements for them...

hmmmmmmmm.
 
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Pakaku said:
What a surprise, AI continues to ruin everything it seeps into
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I've turned off Siri a long time ago - no reason to turn that on again.
As long term meditator, I want peace in my head to do my own thinking on my devices.
I'm not a babysitter for Apple's #@% and lost kid.

WebHead said:
Siri's "Eat up Martha" moment!
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Apple should send a free AppleWatch - at least - to monitor the frustration Siri causes.
 
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seggy said:
The question here is, how far can you go with phones? Not really that much further. They've known that for years.

Vision is the next personal device bet. It will take at least two more iterations before both society and tech practicality accepts it as mainstream. They might have got into it a generation too early, but Cook is probably still in for the long haul.

The car was the other big bet. It didn't work out. The reason is pretty simple I think - the tech wasn't ready for Apple. Apple's big fails have always been when they tried to actually innovate on their own, and with the state of the electric / self-driving car at the time, there was no way Apple was ready for it.

Apple is not an innovator in the new technology sense. Where they've massively succeeded is when they cherry-pick what already works and may still be in the early adopter stage, and iterate/re-mix it from a marketing-driven standpoint to make it socially acceptable as a premium consumer product.
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All tech gradually becomes cheaper OR it advances to keep pricing up. And if you can’t innovate, you compete with pricing. Whats that going to do for Apple? Before your alternative was iPhone or cheap Asian phones that were half as good. Now they are cheaper AND (arguably) better. What Apple has over everyone’s head is the allure of. Which is, fading slightly?
 
Ctrlos said:
Did anyone ever stop to think why Apple, a company with bottomless pockets never bothered to make Siri better?

Siri feeds Apple with terabytes of anonymous user data which shows how much people are using and it and crucially, what they're asking it to do. I'd put good money on 99% of the market using it for nothing more than setting timers, reminders and playing music. Despite its inferiority compared to Google and Alexa, it does these basic things really well.

In other words why waste $Billions in R&D making a product better when only 1%, the sorts of tech enthusiasts that make YouTube videos or post on forums would ever actually use it? I'm not giving Apple a free pass or saying they shouldn't make it better, just that people should maybe stop and question why these things do and do not happen.
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The only reason people use it for so few things is because those are the only things it does well.
 
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SegNerd said:
I agree, Siri has fallen way behind Google and Alexa.

And I still get messages from Siri that it can’t reach the Internet, even for things like playing music from my phone. I thought Siri was supposed to be able to handle requests like that on device by now…?
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I was just reading comments from Google users about how the Google assistant has gotten worse over the last couple of years. Alex has also regressed. I think each of these assistants hit a wall for the kind of tech behind them, natural language processing, and cannot adapt to the new situations.

Google is moving their assistant to an LLM. Rumors are that Apple will replace Siri with an LLM version in iOS 19. Even Amazon is preparing to bring out an LLM Alexa.
 
No one has ever managed to give me a good reason why I should even bother using ANY voice assistant. I don't care how well they work, why would I talk to my things like a goober, rather than actually just doing the thing myself?

After asking a bunch of dumb questions to find some amusing answers when Siri was new, I've just ignored it.
 
Try asking ry this for me please.

Ask Siri : these 4 questions:

1. How tall is Mount Everest? (will probly give you an answer in feet)
2. How tall is Mount Everest in metres ? (it wil give you the same answer, again in feet) It might give you answer in metres. the response to this varies over time.

3. How tall is Ben Nevis? (will give you the answer in feet)
4. How tall is Ben Nevis in metres (will either give a uselss web search result or repeat the answer in feet.

The only mountain i can get it to give me an answer in metres is the matterhorn, and thats a webresult lookup.

Now if you ask it to convert the height to metres is doesn't do it, it gives results for websites that do unit conversion.

Siri has absolutely no context awareness about what you are asking, or what information it is providing.

Here's a better one, classic Siri, fresh from about 5 minutes ago IOS 18.1.1 :

Siri is so broken it's practically figuratively and literally unusable.

Pictures speak a thousand words:
 

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Apple has to know that Siri is terrible. I wonder if they haven't just been in way over their heads with the code all this time, but have been unwilling to nuke the whole thing and start over?

I mean hell, at this point it's the only way to be sure. ;)
 
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macjaffa said:
Try asking ry this for me please.

Ask Siri : these 4 questions:

1. How tall is Mount Everest? (will probly give you an answer in feet)
2. How tall is Mount Everest in metres ? (it wil give you the same answer, again in feet) It might give you answer in metres. the response to this varies over time.

3. How tall is Ben Nevis? (will give you the answer in feet)
4. How tall is Ben Nevis in metres (will either give a uselss web search result or repeat the answer in feet.

The only mountain i can get it to give me an answer in metres is the matterhorn, and thats a webresult lookup.

Now if you ask it to convert the height to metres is doesn't do it, it gives results for websites that do unit conversion.

Siri has absolutely no context awareness about what you are asking, or what information it is providing.

Here's a better one, classic Siri, fresh from about 5 minutes ago IOS 18.1.1 :

Siri is so broken it's practically figuratively and literally unusable.

Pictures speak a thousand words:
Click to expand...
Is this tied to your language and region preferences in settings?

Just confirmed that it is tied to the ‘measurement system’ option in language and region. If I change to metric it gives me the answer in metres.
 
Just stop using that trash. Nothing will make me use it again.

It's just a really bad waste of time.
 
mrochester said:
Is this tied to your language and region preferences in settings?

Just confirmed that it is tied to the ‘measurement system’ option in language and region. If I change to metric it gives me the answer in metres.
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It's set to UK. If I set it to metric, and ask again, i get exactly the same results.

Absolute rofl! If i set it to metric and ask it how tall it is in feet, it gives me the answer in metres! doing this set to UK gives me feet both times no matter if i ask in feet or metres. Brilliant!! See attached video:

 
mrochester said:
I get different results after setting it to metric (I get it in metres).
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either way hopefully can both agree that no one give a flying duck that Bromley is 436 miles away when i clearly asked for London to New York, which it seems to understand, but only if I specify 'miles' even though I want it in Kilometres. Absolutely USELESS . Pre-siri apple voice commands were better than siri in every way.
 
macjaffa said:
Try asking ry this for me please.

Ask Siri : these 4 questions:

1. How tall is Mount Everest? (will probly give you an answer in feet)
2. How tall is Mount Everest in metres ? (it wil give you the same answer, again in feet) It might give you answer in metres. the response to this varies over time.

3. How tall is Ben Nevis? (will give you the answer in feet)
4. How tall is Ben Nevis in metres (will either give a uselss web search result or repeat the answer in feet.

The only mountain i can get it to give me an answer in metres is the matterhorn, and thats a webresult lookup.

Now if you ask it to convert the height to metres is doesn't do it, it gives results for websites that do unit conversion.

Siri has absolutely no context awareness about what you are asking, or what information it is providing.

Here's a better one, classic Siri, fresh from about 5 minutes ago IOS 18.1.1 :

Siri is so broken it's practically figuratively and literally unusable.

Pictures speak a thousand words:
Click to expand...
Answering trivia questions requires good web search access and Siri and Apple don’t have their own for full integration I’ve never thought about using Siri for trivia questions like that.

I just use it to set timers and alarms, turn automation on and off, play music, and start routing through maps. I have had pretty good luck with unit conversion. Sometimes Siri will misunderstand a command to fall back to a web search but that is pretty rare for me.

Siri is very old tech that is on the very primitive beginning of AI. All of the first gen voice assistants are that way. They do mostly very basic pattern matching and have not flexibility if the pattern fails. I’m hopeful that, next year, when Apple puts an LLM inside of Siri, that it will be more flexible and better at interpreting the nature of the requests. In the meantime, I’ll still use it for simple daily tasks.
 
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Tagbert said:
Answering trivia questions requires good web search access and Siri and Apple don’t have their own for full integration I’ve never thought about using Siri for trivia questions like that.
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No! If you try it you will see Siri can answer the question fine. She just has no clue about metres or feet or kilometres or miles except when she does, which hilariously is when you ask for the other unit or specifically ask it to convert without context. There is zero joined up thinking.

Also asking it how far between 2 points is not trivial this is an explicit feature supposedly supported by siri and location services.

All the things you said siri is good for is actually all the things you could do by talking to your iPhone before apple replaced the voice control commands with Siri.

The larry david skit is bang on accurate.
 
Somehow Siri was better 15 years ago when it was just an App and Apple hadn’t bought it yet. I’ve always wondered if the reason Siri hasn’t gotten better was because Apple left the wrong people out of the purchase agreement. Other than on device processing, what major changes have there been?

1738918690913.jpeg
 
Bungaree.Chubbins said:
No one has ever managed to give me a good reason why I should even bother using ANY voice assistant. I don't care how well they work, why would I talk to my things like a goober, rather than actually just doing the thing myself?

After asking a bunch of dumb questions to find some amusing answers when Siri was new, I've just ignored it.
Click to expand...
I can press and hold the side button of my phone and say "remind me to put the washing on when I get home" or "remind me to check some report when I get to work" so much easier than manually going into an app, typing the thing, then buggering about trying to set geofencing options.

Similarly saying stuff like "set timer for 5 minutes", "set alarm for 7am" or "turn on living room light" is a no-brainer too then buggering about trying to find open and manually put setting in an app.

So sure, Siri isn't great, but there's loads of great reasons to have a voice assistant you just ask something rather than rummaging around manually opening apps and changing setting in it. It's like texting: sometimes a text is the quickest way to do something, but sometimes if you just phone someone you can get a lot more info into a shorter time.
 
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