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Should Apple Kill Siri and Start Over?
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I like Siri! I like the name too.
I’ve only had an iPhone for <2 years. Never tried Android’s voice stuff because I don’t trust the devices. But I like how Siri can set a timer for me when my hands are dirty. Even when they’re not. I actually don’t even use the timer on my oven anymore because Siri is easier to use.
Can’t really think of other stuff Siri can do though. Reminders and alarms are impossible for me to do with Siri but my phone is not set to English so it’s probably my own fault. I think it once found a song for me but you need like 30 extra commands to make it go to Apple Music for example. And Siri can’t use AirPlay so I needed my hands anyway.
I like Siri and I trust her but it’s just very limited.
Oh it can Shazam of course! I show older people that on their iPads. They love that.
Edit: Oh I’d love to make notes with Siri. I’d use the **** out of that lol. But I have no idea how to do it and I don’t like how you end up with garbage in 20 different apps if you decide to attempt to make a note.
I’ve only had an iPhone for <2 years. Never tried Android’s voice stuff because I don’t trust the devices. But I like how Siri can set a timer for me when my hands are dirty. Even when they’re not. I actually don’t even use the timer on my oven anymore because Siri is easier to use.
Can’t really think of other stuff Siri can do though. Reminders and alarms are impossible for me to do with Siri but my phone is not set to English so it’s probably my own fault. I think it once found a song for me but you need like 30 extra commands to make it go to Apple Music for example. And Siri can’t use AirPlay so I needed my hands anyway.
I like Siri and I trust her but it’s just very limited.
Oh it can Shazam of course! I show older people that on their iPads. They love that.
Edit: Oh I’d love to make notes with Siri. I’d use the **** out of that lol. But I have no idea how to do it and I don’t like how you end up with garbage in 20 different apps if you decide to attempt to make a note.
A new name and backend might seem wise but I don’t relish what that means for devices that no longer receive updates.
No, they should just try to improve it. I wouldn't want it to be scrapped. I use it every day to play music on HomePods, turn on and off lights, set reminders, using it in CarPlay, etc. If they want to replace it with something better, fine, but I wouldn't want to do without some version that at least does what it can do now.
I should mention that I am not in love with it compared to Alexa. Alexa can answer questions without telling you to find your phone. That aspect of it is ridiculous, but I like the music, reminder, and alarms that we use it for every day...usually multiple times. I also think they need to allow users to use more than one name. I have turned off Siri on the phone, just because it would answer when I would want to use HomePods. I just hold down the button the phone when I want to use it. I would probably do that anyway, but having different names, like Alexa, would be nice when so many people have multiple Apple devices.
I should mention that I am not in love with it compared to Alexa. Alexa can answer questions without telling you to find your phone. That aspect of it is ridiculous, but I like the music, reminder, and alarms that we use it for every day...usually multiple times. I also think they need to allow users to use more than one name. I have turned off Siri on the phone, just because it would answer when I would want to use HomePods. I just hold down the button the phone when I want to use it. I would probably do that anyway, but having different names, like Alexa, would be nice when so many people have multiple Apple devices.
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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?
![Should-Apple-Kill-Siri-Feature.jpg]()
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.
![siri-phil-schiller.jpeg]()
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.
![siri-iphone-4s-examples.jpg]()
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.
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:
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 Verg... Click here to read rest of article
- 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.
Article Link: Should Apple Kill Siri and Start Over?
My first experience with a VA was when I got a Amazon Alexa device mainly to play music where I relax. Alexa was horrible at recognizing names of artists and I had to make playlists with simple words Alex would hopefully understand. Other than that I just use Alex for news and weather. So when I got a back to Mac world and hearing how bad Siri is I just don't even bother. I've used Siri a couple times to tell it to open an app and it usually fails. So in the end I think VA in general suck. The only good thing about Siri is frustration with it led me to discovering CMD+Spacebar to popup Spotlight to launch app's. Apps I use all the time I only have to type one or two characters and Spotlight fills the rest in, I hit <CR> and it loads.
Who’s speaking?![]()
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?
![Should-Apple-Kill-Siri-Feature.jpg]()
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.
![siri-phil-schiller.jpeg]()
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.
![siri-iphone-4s-examples.jpg]()
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.
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:
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 Verg... Click here to read rest of article
- 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.
Article Link: Should Apple Kill Siri and Start Over?
It’s so bad I don’t use it, but I also don’t want to give google or amazon any more info on me, so I like the idea of on device persona assistant if it actually worked like a personal assistant.
This is literally one of only two features that I miss from Android. Google's assistant is very very good, and quite useful. Siri is only good at "Here's a link I found on the web.." when answering questions.
Let me say one thing: I own 9 Alexa/Echo devices and a HomePod. Both devices suck HARD. Good for (1) turning lights on/off (2) Doing simple math (3) Telling me how old some random actor is. That's it. All of these things have not gotten better over time and in fact, gotten worse.
All I need to by voice:
- Dictate messages, either new ones or replies.
- Set timers.
- Set reminders.
- Add things to a shopping list.
Siri is adequate at these things, though there's often bizarre gibberish in the dictation or occasional requests to ask which Jane I wanted to message (even though it's the same one every time) and whether that message should go to Jane's mobile or landline (always the mobile).
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Just give us chat gpt with siris voice and a custom gpt in the background trained on some Apple Knowledge and behavior. Then let it tap into apples apis that Siri is currently using to control our devices. Let it look through everything that spotlight can currently look through. That’s all anybody could ask for.
It’s really bad and sad. A really basic one that baffles me is Siri can’t do the following command:
“Play ___ for 60 minutes.” or “Play ___ and turn off after X time.” Why?!
“Play ___ for 60 minutes.” or “Play ___ and turn off after X time.” Why?!
If you're actually open to expanding your view on this and understanding the potential people see in voice assistants, then I can tell you that you're exhibiting a poor understanding of what voice assistants are for. Watch the 30 year old video embedded in the article that inspired the developers of Siri, and Steve Jobs in acquiring it, and you'll get a better idea.
Want specific use cases?
- I recently had to plan a complex trip involving half a dozen stops with between 20 to 30 possible cities in which I could stop. I set chatGPT on my kitchen table and spent an hour speaking with it in natural language, with long pauses in between, suddenly remembering some possibilities while I was cooking and just speaking as if I was talking with a person with access to all the knowledge of the internet. It helped me pick my itinerary in a collaborative fashion, with a complex series of requisites. I seriously would've spent days iterating on this plan, spending tons of time on my own googling destinations, reading blogs, looking up weather patterns and I still wouldn't have thought of everything.
- My team and I had a sudden problem on Black Friday when one of our top SKUs developed a packaging issue. We had the same product in a sample size that could meet demand for the popular product so we sat down to work the problem and re-brand multiples of the sample sizes as a limited edition travel kit. We had a basic idea but given the urgency to fix the problem, we didn't have time to iterate on it – we needed it solved immediately. I took out my phone, put in the middle of the team and we collaborated on brainstorming, with chatGPT acting as an idea taker, and bouncing off options. It didnt solve the problem for us, instead it helped us work together by making connections between the team members' ideas and coming to a single solution. It didnt replace us, it became a powerful tool to improve how we worked.
- Last one: Siri's initial solution was to take requests and go out and take care of the details, saving you time, serving as a memory notetaker and researcher of your own life, while preserving privacy by doing it all on device.
User: I'd like to go out for dinner tonight, there was this place I passed by last week. I took a picture of it, it had a red umbrella, remember?
Siri: I found it in your pictures. That was Sandro's Kitchen, you passed by on Thursday. Would you like me to book a reservation for two tonight at 8? I see that you're off work at 5. That should give you a few hours to get home, get ready and arrive at 8.
User: Yes. Wait.. let's do 7:30. I want to grab a bottle of wine on the way.
Siri: I've reserved a table for two at Sandro's Kitchen for 7:30 and added it to your Calendar, with an itinerary with a stop over at a wine store.
Impossible with the old Siri, this is now a completely realistic scenario, made even more powerful by Apple's access to all of your data, including photos, maps, calendar, contacts and apps like OpenTable. It's not about making mashed up photos or writing essays for you, it's about serving as an actual assistant so you can spend your time doing more enjoyable things.
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Holy hell … yes they should. It’s a huge dumpster fire. I stopped using it finally months ago, after giving it so many chances and trying so many things. I just finally gave up on it entirely. It’s a completely useless feature to me at this point.
I whittled down my use case for it to a simple means to play a playlist in the car. Something it hasn’t been able to do reliably for me since last fall.
Amazon did a much better job with Alexa.
I whittled down my use case for it to a simple means to play a playlist in the car. Something it hasn’t been able to do reliably for me since last fall.
Amazon did a much better job with Alexa.