Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

glen e

macrumors 68030
Jun 19, 2010
2,619
2
Ft Lauderdale
I don't have a problem with siri at all. It is beta. It seems the fanboys want this to be like star trek and do everything. It did not cost me any more and for setting timers, setting calendar events, and creating notes, it works extremely well...that all I ask for now.
 

Ledgem

macrumors 68020
Jan 18, 2008
2,042
936
Hawaii, USA
I've been very impressed with Siri, and most of the time I use it through a crappy Bluetooth headset that lacks noise cancellation. I've been pretty impressed with the accuracy despite that (it's almost perfect in quiet environments). I've hit a few glitches, but I suspect that most of it has to do with the Bluetooth headset rather than Siri itself.

I hope that those of you experiencing problems with Siri can get it resolved soon. I thought that Siri would be a bit of a gimmicky feature, something that I might use once a day (if that), but so far I've been issuing 10-20 commands per day (if not more). It's frustrating when it gets commands wrong (even if they're only rare), but it's really incredible to have it working.

If anyone has a Bluetooth headset that does a good job of cutting out road noise and that works well with Siri, please message me with your recommendation!
 

OldMike

macrumors 6502a
Mar 3, 2009
537
219
Dallas, TX
My wife just got her 4S and the first thing I did once we got it set up was play with Siri. My brother in-law has been using the 4S for about a month now and said that Siri was amazing. I, on the other hand, was less than impressed. The recognition was correct about 85% of the time, which in my opinion is not good enough. I do admit that at times I speak like I have marbles in my mouth, so I could be part of the problem.

I showed my wife how to use the feature, but I am almost sure that she will never really use it.

Perhaps my impression was skewed since Siri was so overhyped. I decided to give an Android phone a try this time, but if I did purchase the 4S like my wife did, I don't think I would find Siri all that useful at this point in its development.
 

heyloo

macrumors 6502
Nov 2, 2006
268
1
NY
I do agree that Siri does seem a bit over-hyped at the moment... I do see a huge potential with Siri however and I'm sure it'll be here in the coming months. Siri's still noted as being in 'beta' so I'm willing to give 'her' some time to take some lessons and mature :)

It'd be nice if Apple starts to allow developers to work with Siri. I think that's when we'd begin to see some crazy things ;)
 

Gordonw

macrumors member
Oct 9, 2011
34
0
I am having the EXACT same trouble with my new 4s! I switched from a Blackberry to the new iPhone 4s on Sprint, but so far, the Siri feature has been useless. I cannot seem to voice dial anymore. For example, I have three entries for my Dad -- separated by different names: Dad Home, Dad Mobile and Dad Work. Three seperate entries, not one entry under Dad and then separated by fields. This worked better on Blackberry, saving me an occasional second step of answering, "Which Dad?" By making a separate entry called "Dad Home" that is all I needed and the phone would dial his home.

But Siri cannot even get that far. I say, "Call Dad Home," and Siri responds with, "Which Dad? Dad Home, Dad Mobile or Dad Work?" I say again, "Dad Home," and Siri just repeats the same question. This goes on over and over again. It will NOT dial my father's home automatically. I have to then pick up the phone, look at it and then highlight Dad Home.

I have a lot of entries in my address book that are like this.

Siri really sucks.

I want my OLD voice dial feature.

So, bleomycin -- you are NOT alone. And the other users -- sheep -- on this site have been extremely rude to you, I see. Siri is simply not working for me either.

I would agree Siri is far from perfect but unfortunately you're using Siri like a simple voice dial feature when Siri is a little more intelligent than that. Like NotAdvisable said, you should just create one contact for your father with all his contact numbers. I have my brother set up with four contact numbers. If I want to call him, I can tell Siri to call my brother, and Siri will ask which of the four numbers to use. It will ask whether to call his home, or work, or Google Voice, or iPhone number. If I want to be more specific, I can tell Siri to call my brother at his <specified> number.
 

yodaxl7

macrumors 6502a
Jan 25, 2010
768
0
I find this pretty offensive, i cam here to ask if others are having issues, did my best to explain the problem *exactly* and everyone is jumping on the troll bandwagon? Am i not even allowed to ask if others are having issues without being labeled a troll? The only reason i listed that wp7/android are working is because they ARE and because instead of others chiming in with something helpful they immediately began attacking me with meme's and the assumption that i cannot even speak the language. If you're not interested in having an actual discussion about what appears to be a legitimate issue why bother posting at all.
Only one person mentioned that you seem to be a troll and now you said everyone! Mine works great! Make sure your network is up and running and apple server does go down with Siri especially they are selling that phone like crazy.
 

rpd

macrumors newbie
Nov 30, 2011
1
0
Only one person mentioned that you seem to be a troll and now you said everyone! Mine works great! Make sure your network is up and running and apple server does go down with Siri especially they are selling that phone like crazy.


Good job responding to a message from a month and a half ago. And work on your reading comprehension...
 

WonTonChin

macrumors newbie
Dec 1, 2011
1
0
No, but the fact that your impression of peoples suggestions such as talking clearer as negative criticism, and interpreting my blatant troll comment as a personal insult leads me to wonder if english is your first language and if it is not perhaps that is an underlying cause of your dictation issues.

WOW. Just wow. First post here. Searched on "Siri problems" because 4 or 5 of us at work purchased 4s' and we ALL can't get it to do anything useful at all.

So I pop in this thread and see this trash from you. Wow. So you are obviously such and Apple sycophant that you have to take to message boards and label people asking genuine questions as trolls? I guess you gapped on the fact that YOUR actions were trolling. Nah, I am sure you gapped on that fact.

----------

I was going to say the same thing...


people need to understand this more.. it is not a finished product...

so to the others stop the complaining..


HA, really? They sure market it on TV like a finished polished product. Maybe they should stop doing that until it works for the majority of "beta" testers that purchased the iPhone 4s based on the cool looking Siri ads. Or maybe, better yet, you need to stop using beta as an excuse for Siri's failures.
 
Last edited:

scorpsgsxr

macrumors newbie
Nov 15, 2011
13
0
I've had no problems with Siri,the more i use it the more accurate it gets ,i use it mostly in the car on a hands free
I have found speaking to fast can cause it to make mistakes and also talking to slow does the same , to answer txts its worked brilliant.
its also a learning curve for the user, if I ask it "phone someone" it will bring up the contact details but if i say "ring someone" it does .
people haven't any patience just persevere and it only gets better

ps i have a broad cockney accent I just have to not drop T's and H's
 

parseckadet

macrumors 65816
Dec 13, 2010
1,493
1,273
Denver, CO
I am having the EXACT same trouble with my new 4s! I switched from a Blackberry to the new iPhone 4s on Sprint, but so far, the Siri feature has been useless. I cannot seem to voice dial anymore. For example, I have three entries for my Dad -- separated by different names: Dad Home, Dad Mobile and Dad Work. Three seperate entries, not one entry under Dad and then separated by fields. This worked better on Blackberry, saving me an occasional second step of answering, "Which Dad?" By making a separate entry called "Dad Home" that is all I needed and the phone would dial his home.

But Siri cannot even get that far. I say, "Call Dad Home," and Siri responds with, "Which Dad? Dad Home, Dad Mobile or Dad Work?" I say again, "Dad Home," and Siri just repeats the same question. This goes on over and over again. It will NOT dial my father's home automatically. I have to then pick up the phone, look at it and then highlight Dad Home.

I have a lot of entries in my address book that are like this.

Siri really sucks.

I want my OLD voice dial feature.

So, bleomycin -- you are NOT alone. And the other users -- sheep -- on this site have been extremely rude to you, I see. Siri is simply not working for me either.

Let me get this straight. Your Blackberry's voice dialing was so terribly implemented that you had to modify your behavior in such a way that you had to create and refer to your contacts in a non-natural way in order to use it the way you wanted to. And now you're complaining that your iPhone doesn't understand this non-natural way of accessing your contacts that was forced on you by the OS of another device that you no longer use? You're kidding right? I would think you would be thrilled that you no longer had to have three separate contacts for the same person! Won't it be much easier to find a contact in your address-book when it's a third the size than it used to be?

Let me describe how it works on my iPhone. I have a single contact for my wife, which includes phone numbers for her iPhone and her work phone. This is the natural and most logical way that such a contact would be created. Once I told Siri who my wife was I was able to say "Call my wife at work." When I do so my iPhone immediately dials her work number, without asking for clarification. Is this not EXACTLY what you've been looking for? This this not the most natural and logical way of not only creating the contact, but also instructing your phone to dial the number you want?

Apple is beginning to create a device which we interact with in a NATURAL way. We have all been training over multiple decades that you can't interact with computing devices in a natural way, so it is understandable that there would be some growing pains when we all begin to encounter this change. However, that doesn't mean we should complain that the device should be have more like our older devices. Instead we should take a step back, recognize the change, and judge it on its own merits.

Notice that I didn't say they HAVE created such a device, or said that Siri is the realization of interacting with our computing devices in a natural fashion. I think Siri is merely a single, but important step, down that road. It still has problems, just like all technology does early in its development. It's not perfect, but I do enjoy using it when it does do its job well.
 

ntrigue

macrumors 68040
Jul 30, 2007
3,805
4
Siri is wasted money. Downtime exceeds uptime and it isn't very smart like commercials want you to believe.
 

Antowns

macrumors member
Jul 24, 2009
97
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

I've noticed that it's got to be fairly quiet for it to work and it doesn't work even in the car on the motorway without raising my voice. I guess this is due to the sensitivity of the microphone.
 

Benbikeman

macrumors 6502a
May 17, 2011
616
1
London, England
I've noticed that it's got to be fairly quiet for it to work and it doesn't work even in the car on the motorway without raising my voice. I guess this is due to the sensitivity of the microphone.
In a car, it's best to connect it to your car stereo (easily done via bluetooth with most modern stereo systems). Siri works perfectly for me via my Parrot stereo.
 

Powers11

macrumors newbie
Dec 6, 2011
1
0
Siri only works to initialize phone calls

I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced the same problem I have using Siri. I've had my new iphone 4S for less than a week, but I'm about to give up on using Siri for anything other than initializing phone calls. Evertime I ask Siri to do anything, it automatically begins to dial someone in my contact list. Granted, I have over 900 contacts in my directory because this is also serves as my work phone. It appears as if no matter what I say to or ask Siri, it tries to match my words with some name in my contact list and begins to automatically dial them. It makes Siri useless for anything other than dialing someone that is already in my contact list. I've had other people try using my phone for simple commands to make sure that is wasn't just my speech or ponunciation, only to have the same results of automatically dialing from my contact list. Is there anyway around this so that Siri will perform the other functions it is capable of performing?
 

bgtrack

macrumors regular
Jun 6, 2011
127
0
East Lansing
I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced the same problem I have using Siri. I've had my new iphone 4S for less than a week, but I'm about to give up on using Siri for anything other than initializing phone calls. Evertime I ask Siri to do anything, it automatically begins to dial someone in my contact list. Granted, I have over 900 contacts in my directory because this is also serves as my work phone. It appears as if no matter what I say to or ask Siri, it tries to match my words with some name in my contact list and begins to automatically dial them. It makes Siri useless for anything other than dialing someone that is already in my contact list. I've had other people try using my phone for simple commands to make sure that is wasn't just my speech or ponunciation, only to have the same results of automatically dialing from my contact list. Is there anyway around this so that Siri will perform the other functions it is capable of performing?

I had the same problem when I first got the phone...as you talk more to siri you learn to speak clearer in a way that it understands...that or siri somehow learns to understand you...the dictation used to suck for me as well when I spoke anything longer than a few words...now I can speak a full paragraph and siri won't miss a single word.
 

Gordonw

macrumors member
Oct 9, 2011
34
0
I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced the same problem I have using Siri. I've had my new iphone 4S for less than a week, but I'm about to give up on using Siri for anything other than initializing phone calls. Evertime I ask Siri to do anything, it automatically begins to dial someone in my contact list. Granted, I have over 900 contacts in my directory because this is also serves as my work phone. It appears as if no matter what I say to or ask Siri, it tries to match my words with some name in my contact list and begins to automatically dial them. It makes Siri useless for anything other than dialing someone that is already in my contact list. I've had other people try using my phone for simple commands to make sure that is wasn't just my speech or ponunciation, only to have the same results of automatically dialing from my contact list. Is there anyway around this so that Siri will perform the other functions it is capable of performing?

It would help if you explained in detail what your asking Siri to do. I don't Siri much to dial numbers. I use Siri primarily to add reminders and send text messages.
 

BrunoWill

macrumors member
Nov 3, 2011
99
0
Siri can only recognize "I love you""Peter""maps""what are you doing" from me, maybe my accent is too heavy.
 

RosyT

macrumors newbie
Nov 2, 2011
6
0
Mine has a mind of its own! Some times it works and others times it will tell me he can not take any commands at the moment?? WORK DAMN IT!!!! :mad: :apple:
 

paulevy

macrumors newbie
Jul 12, 2008
4
0
SIRI sucks

I agree that Siri sucks. Much better to just use Google. Siri never gets anything right, no matter how many ways I try it. Sorry I bought the 4S.
 

jayhtee

macrumors newbie
Dec 16, 2011
12
0
Southern California. Clearly everyone has an accent of some type depending on how you want to define it, but our "accent" is definitely not what is causing the issue.

Exactly! Funny how everyone thinks they have no accent but others do!
 

Goodeye

macrumors 6502a
Jan 30, 2009
823
381
I agree that Siri sucks. Much better to just use Google. Siri never gets anything right, no matter how many ways I try it. Sorry I bought the 4S.

If you bought a 4S strictly for Siri you wasted your money
 

GaresTaylan

macrumors 6502a
Nov 11, 2009
870
30
In a car, it's best to connect it to your car stereo (easily done via bluetooth with most modern stereo systems). Siri works perfectly for me via my Parrot stereo.

I was doing this for awhile and stopped. I also use my iphone with the navigon app. If i have my phone connected to my stereo via bluetooth with siri and then turn on navigon... I dont get my directional prompts anymore on the phone. The audio stays connected via bluetooth but the prompts never come through the car speakers. If i choose in the navigon app to use the phone speakers instead of the car ones... It reverts back to the car speakers on its own after time.

Sounds like an issue with the navigon app more than the phone id say, but still a pain. Anyone else have similar issues?
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.