Should Apple Kill Siri and Start Over?

[TheLinkster]

• He probably bought eight HomePods because he had a use for eight HomePods.
• I would say he either hoped that Siri would improve overtime or bought HomePods before he knew how frustrating it would be on a day-to-day basis.
• I agree that the Internet is a mess when comments like these make all kinds of assumptions about an individual’s needs and perspectives, and then calls them an idiot.

No one has a use for 8 homepods.

 

[Rychiar]

Are people just expecting too much from Siri?

I use Siri mainly for stuff like turning on and adjusting homekit accessories, setting timers, simple reminders, and so on. It works 98% of the time, and the other 2% is simply because it didn't hear me well due to noise in the environment or Bluetooth issues.

I think the problem is people want their computers to think for them, which almost never goes well. And believe me, using "AI" isn't going to make it much better. It'll seem better but make far more mistakes.

you are a lucky one. Siri doesn't even respond to my basic HomeKit scenes that it easily responded to 6 years ago. One of my first commands was one called "tv time" which is completely stopped responding to... so I created "movie time" which I usually have to yell about 5 times to get it to engage but usually I just get annoyed and press the button on my phone instead which takes a split second unlike Siri.

 

[TheLinkster]

They only way to save Siri is to make it so good the "brand" is resurrected. If they're going to start from scratch, and we'll have to suffer from teething issues all over again, best to leave Siri behind.

I suspect we'll be saying "Apple" or "Hey Apple" in the near future. Would suck to be Gwyneth Paltrow or her kid, however.

 

[nt5672]

It seems like other technologies at Apple, once the keynote is over, assign a couple of foreign developers with no experience with the product, start the main team working on emoji updates for the next keynote.

If Apple has spent millions on Siri, with management support for making it best in kind, then the whole team needs to be fired.

What I expect happened is that the Siri team was whittled down to nothing and the experienced software engineers went elsewhere. Which is a management issue and that starts at the top with Cook not understanding how bad Apple looks when a core feature is so neglected.

 

[yeah]

H

I really don’t understand the absolute fixation on Siri here.

Occasionally I ask it to call someone or set a timer. What other things do I need an “assistant” for in my daily life?

For those who compare it to things like chatGPT, are you looking for Siri to write essays for you or something?

Downvotes are easy, maybe explain what you actually want out of a “new” Siri? If I could go back to the Voice Commands prior to Siri I would 🤷‍♂️

Here’s what I found on the web for: “What other things do I need an assistant for in my daily life?”

 

[mannyvel]

The problem with Siri is it was built using what was considered "real AI" back in the day. Behind all the gloss Alexa is a keyword matching engine, which isn't really an "AI" as it's usually defined.

However, users don't care about technology, they care about results. And Alexa is much, much better than Siri (although it's been a bit flaky lately).

Apple built its AI architecture around "real AI," and have been unwilling or unable to change it.

Hopefully the LLM revolution has caused Apple to change course on that.

 

[NT1440]

It's because you can't ask it to do more. If you could, you would.

I remember back when I used Windows Phone, I could ask Cortana to just remind me next time I was at Target to pick up an item. It was game changing. I was blown away. And I'd get to Target, get out of my car, and get a reminder from her.

The last time I tried asking Siri that, she also gave me a reminder, as I was pulling into my driveway... just after getting back from Target.

Beyond that, Siri has made their HomePod a useless device. It only integrates well with Apple Music, and even then you can only interface with it properly using Siri. Even using an iPhone to get it to play music on your HomePod isn't guaranteed to work correctly -- so the entire product line of "smart speakers" are rendered nearly useless. She's good for setting timers, usually, and alarms, most of the time. But beyond that, even just getting the correct song to play out of the speaker is an exercise in frustration. And because my bedroom has a homepod, my wife's iPhone, my iPhone, and an iPad on my night stand, when I say something like "Siri, turn off the lights", there's a 20% chance at least one of the devices will - at maximum volume - say "Alright, which room would you like me to use", and then proceed to list 10 different rooms, when I just want to sleep...

Yeah. Siri's useless. She makes homePods useless. Cortana was about 1000% better before MS neutered her.

Edit: I almost forgot: While listening to music- "Siri, pause the music". "<pauses music> There's nothing playing". <music resumes>. Gahhh!

Thanks for the expanded reply.

I guess people here are just way more invested in “smart” products, music services, and home automation than I am?

I’m a systems administrator but in my personal life I use as little technology as possible, so I’m probably the odd one out given this is a tech forum after all.

 

[tomtad]

Given they've just changed the wake word from Hey Siri to just Siri, I can't see them changing it anytime soon.

 

[nt5672]

Asking Siri to turn on a light and then it starts playing a song instead. I mean, does this not happen to Tim and Phil and all these execs as well? I sure hope so.

They don't use it, obviously. Otherwise they would not tolerate the poor performance.

 

[iZac]

"Uh huh?"

"Here's what I found on the web for <INSERT VOICE REQUEST HERE>"

 

[Henry S]

It usually comes up with the music I request. It sets timers and turns off the lights. That's all I really need it for.

 

[01241984]

note to self: get faster internet/wifi, don't ask Siri anything with my mouth full of Cheerios and my heavy regional accent, "learn" to speak to be understood. Don't walk away from Siri as you ask "turn off the lights".

 

[CoMoMacUser]

Siri sometimes suggests things based on past activities, such as taking a run. That's useful. But I've never activated its speech recognition because I have no interest in voice interaction with anything: my Android phone, iPhone, Apple TV remote, Roku remote or Cadillac CUE. I find it easier and more accurate to type.

 

[ghostface147]

I don’t use Siri that much, but I do wish it would stop triggering from time to time when I don’t say anything to activate it.

 

[stocklen]

SIRIs inconsistencies across devices is the main issue for me.

I actually find that addressing the iPhone directly is the most successful way to get SIRI to do what you want.

I have multiple HomePods and for reasons I really cant understand... the SIRI experience on the HomePods is borderline unacceptable.

'SIRI, Play music upstairs' often seems to flummox the system and lead to pauses, delays, and all kinds of incorrect repose if any at all.
However, if you then pick up the iPhone and give it the same command... more often than not (although itself not flawless) it WILL work and do as instructed.

I just dont understand how SIRI on one device is significantly different to SIRI on another device.

Im not sure SIRI needs a rename - but it is desperate for a rebrand.

 

[Speed38]

Apple should be embarrassed at how poorly Siri performs. Another pet peeve with Apple is the totally bizarre list of addressees it produces when you click the Share > Message option on the iPhone.

 

[Apple$]

They only way to save Siri is to make it so good the "brand" is resurrected. If they're going to start from scratch, and we'll have to suffer from teething issues all over again, best to leave Siri behind.

I suspect we'll be saying "Apple" or "Hey Apple" in the near future. Would suck to be Gwyneth Paltrow or her kid, however.

I'm sorry, I couldn't understand: Hey OPPO.

 

[Docsta80]

I’ve said this for many years and I will say it again. Siri is a giant ball of crap. Always has been always will be. I would pay to have something like Amazon Alexa on my iPhone. It is far superior in every single way.

 

[fontman]

Few features have promised to revolutionize the way we interact with our Apple devices as much as Siri, the company's ubiquitous virtual assistant. Launched in 2011, Siri was introduced as heralding a new era in human-computer interaction, offering an intuitive voice-controlled interface for accessing information, scheduling appointments, sending messages, and much more. The vision was grand: A personal assistant in your pocket, capable of understanding and acting upon a wide array of voice commands with ease and accuracy. So what happened?

Enthusiasm for Siri has undeniably waned in the intervening years. Despite regular updates and improvements from Apple, Siri has struggled to keep pace with its advancing rivals, and in an era of generative AI chatbots and large language models, Siri's failings have only been magnified. Issues ranging from misinterpreted commands to limited contextual understanding have not only hindered Siri's usability but have also led to an almost universal perception of the virtual assistant as a source of user frustration rather than assistance. This persistent underperformance begs the question: Is it time for Apple to kill Siri and start over?

Siri's Birth Pangs

Siri's conceptual roots at Apple can be traced back to the company's early exploration of human-computer interaction. Thirty years ago, Apple commissioned a group of employees to create a video showing how in the future humans might interact with computers using spoken language. The video, known as "Knowledge Navigator," featured a professor chatting with a virtual assistant to perform everyday tasks and academic research. In one of the tasks, the professor asks the assistant to search for a five-year-old publication. The assistant pulls up an article dated 2006, suggesting the video is supposed to be set in September 2011.

The video was criticized at the time for being an unrealistic portrayal of the capacities of a virtual assistant in the foreseeable future. Yet the demonstration inspired developers Adam Cheyer, Dag Kittlaus, and Tom Gruber, who began AI research on virtual assistants at SRI International, a DARPA-funded research laboratory in Menlo Park, California. Their work would result in a spin-out called Siri, named by Kittlaus after a co-worker in Norway. (Siri is short for Sigrid, which has its origins in Old Norse for words meaning "victory" and "beautiful".)

In February 2010, Kittlaus launched Siri as an app on Apple's App Store. Steve Jobs soon began playing with the app and was impressed with how it allowed the user to search the internet by voice. A few weeks later, Apple acquired the start-up. Siri's AI backend was in place, while its voice recognition technology would be supplied by Nuance Communications. Apple subsequently released its Siri virtual assistant (in beta) for the iPhone 4S in October 2011, just one month later than the fictional future in which Knowledge Navigator had been originally envisioned.

Fiction vs. Reality

Apple marketed Siri as more than just a tool — it was your intelligent assistant ready to help with a variety of tasks. Whether setting reminders, sending texts, making phone calls, or finding information online, Siri aimed to streamline it all with a simple voice command. There was nothing like it at the time and the initial results were impressive, but the underlying promise was that Siri would not only understand you but also learn from you, becoming more efficient and personalized over time.

Regular iOS updates in the intervening years have worked towards making Siri more effective and realizing its original promise. Whenever a new iOS feature comes along, Apple usually ensures that it works with Siri, and these days it can be used to identify songs, get driving directions, send money via Apple Pay, and control HomeKit products, to name just a few of its skills. In 2021, Apple announced that Siri would work offline by default – whenever possible, it would process user requests on-device, with the same quality of server-based speech recognition.

However, even now, the assistant that was supposed to understand context and grow with the user still faces significant challenges with context, understanding, and integration, regardless of whether it pings Apple's servers or processes requests locally. Many Apple device owners often say it struggles with even basic commands. Indeed, many users believe that, at least in some areas, Siri's abilities have gotten worse over time, especially since the release of iOS 17.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1770458039986131054

Michael Tsai's blog has done a good job of recording users' more recent frustrations with Siri. Here are just a handful of serial issues some users have recently reported:

• Setting timers instead of alarms.
• Bungling music requests (even for purchases that Siri has local access to).
• Delayed responses over fast data connections.
• Nonsense responses to conversion requests.
• Creating notes instead of reminders.
• Acknowledging requests without acting on them.
• Overwrought punctuation when dictating.
• Inability to consistently control smart devices.

The list could go on. But has Siri really gotten more stupid? Could most issues be put down to fringe use cases, or over-expectations in a brave new world of chatbots powered by immensely resource-heavy large-language models? Consider what Walt Mossberg said in 2016, writing for The Verge:
Before Apple bought it, Siri w... Click here to read rest of article

Article Link: Should Apple Kill Siri and Start Over?

I don't know I think it's so bloated now that there's no fixing it it barely recognizes me or any of my users in my household I am always having to reiterate my commands and it does things automatically when it hears something on the television it doesn't know the difference and every OS update seems to make it worse scrap it start over

 

[antiprotest]

Wait, why did that guy buy 8 HomePods if he had been in tech for 30 years? I wouldn't trust anything he says about tech. The vast majority on this forum would have known better if the product depends much on Siri. Siri sucks, but that guy did it to himself with both eyes open.

 

[Siliconguy]

"Should Apple Kill Siri and Start Over?"

Yes.

I love easy questions in the morning.

 

[jz0309]

GenAI will take the same path…
Overhyped technology that doesn’t add value in day to day work/use…

 

[Neil J. Squillante]

Unpopular opinion in these parts but I don’t think the Siri brand is universally despised. Many non-techies think it’s cool to use their HomePod to get weather forecasts, set timers, and the few other skills that Siri executes well. They don’t run into “ask me from your iPhone” as often because they stay within the current limits.

I would advocate for a new brand for a different reason. Siri hails from the era when Apple used its main brand sparingly. This changed with the Apple Watch. Without having to trash Siri, Apple could name its new service Apple AI or Apple Assistant solely on the basis of using the word Apple in its more recent branding.

 

[airwalk331]

Yup. Ditch Siri. It sucks!

 

[Stevez67]

Thanks for the expanded reply.

I guess people here are just way more invested in “smart” products, music services, and home automation than I am?

I’m a systems administrator but in my personal life I use as little technology as possible, so I’m probably the odd one out given this is a tech forum after all.

You have to keep things in perspective. This forum, like several others, vociferously advocated for how popular, ground-breaking, and sure sales-leader an iPhone mini would be.