>>>But I suspect that people don’t ask those questions because, after trying a time or two and getting no answers or wrong answers, they just give up on Siri.
<<<<p>Absolutely this. I mean, you try a few of this these "long tail" queries and you eventually say "Fuck it!" I attempt these "long tail" queries (which to me, that term sounds like some shitty play-it-down excuse from Apple) weekly just to see if Apple is finally getting their act together in regards to Siri usefulness. I am consistently disappointed and never surprised and delighted.<p>I try to screenshot "Siri fails". Here are the last few in my screenshot album:<p>-------------------<p>"Open last screenshot" → "You don't seem to have an app named 'last screenshot' We could see if the App Store has it [App Store]"<p>"Share this with my wife" (Photo was open in Photos.app) → "I'm sorry Joe, I'm afraid I can't do that"<p>"When is the last time I exercised" → "Interesting Question, Joe"<p>"What year was this song recorded" (In Music app with song playing) → "Interesting question, Joe"<p>-------------------<p>We're living in a world where we can do more and more without using the screen as an interface. It's happening. I'm worried that Siri is a low priority product for Apple right now and they will soon be scrambling to play catch up if they aren't already.<p>EDIT: I'm hoping that Apple's recent buddying up with IBM allows for some of Watson's intellect to seep into Siri. Who knows, maybe in a future keynote we'll hear Tim say, "Ladies and gentlemen, Watson is coming to your Mac and iPhone!"
<i>"It also can’t distinguish between the question of “who is” a person and a request for that person’s contact card. For instance, I have a contact card for Apple CEO Tim Cook. When I ask, “Who is Tim Cook?” Siri shows me the contact card, not his bio."</i><p>Tech reporter humblebrag of the year.
My wife is exactly the customer that's given up on asking Siri questions and uses it for timers. I can agree that Google does a better job at answering questions, but I don't like that Google requires access to just about everything in my life to be at all worthwhile, which is generally why I avoid google services. I realize I'm a minority but I don't like their all or nothing approach to slurping my data.
> When I asked, “What is the weather on Crete?” Siri gave me the weather for Crete, Illinois, a small village which — while I’m sure it’s great — isn’t what most people mean<p>Most of the narrative about Apple's maps products has simply been "Apple bad, Google good" and hasn't looked much deeper than this (with the exception of Justin O'Beirne's cartographic commentary, which is remarkably detailed though much of it is just a matter of taste). But Mossberg really hits on something here:<p>Apple's geocoding is way below par. The cartography is superb IMO. The routing is very good[1]. The source data isn't bad at all. But the geocoding is really error-prone. I've asked it for directions to Milton Keynes, a town with a population of 250,000 just 40 miles from here, and it won't give me anything other than the nearest branch office (in a completely different town) of a company whose HQ happens to be in MK. I've asked it for directions to the village of Brize Norton and it flat-out refuses, sending me instead to the RAF base of the same name, even if I ask for "Brize Norton village", "Brize Norton School" and so on.<p>Yes, geocoding is famously hard. But as an OpenStreetMap volunteer I see that for anything other than granular street-level addresses (where we don't have the data), our grassroots geocoder is more reliable than that built by the most valuable company on earth. And as feedback to OSM shows, bad geocoding is the easiest way to make people think your entire map product is no good.<p>[1] except there's no bike routing... but hey Apple, if you want top-notch bike routing, give me a call ;)
While I ask Android for occasional content (while watching tv, "How tall is blah blah actor" etc) I usually use Androids ability to get my usual directives. "Directions to ..., Weather in..., Call <business> in <location>..., Set timer for...". It does both very well.<p>I stay signed out and opted out of all Google Now features and tracking so this is just it does by default. Voice is my primary ui for my phone. It is very useful and I find it parses my input correctly nearly everytime, it's very rare for it to error.<p>Meanwhile, my wifes iphone 6 gets basic commands wrong frequently and she spends minutes typing all the time. Siri isn't losing, it has lost.<p>I don't think this actually matters to the iOS population however. It's well known they don't buy iphones for features.<p>edit: A sample question from the article "when is the presidential debate" is handled fine as an example
The main gripe I have with Siri is that is still can't understand bilingual (german/english) conversation. This makes this service unusable for me. How do you ask Siri for a song, a movie, a person name which happens to be english, when the device is set to german?
Siri seems so dumb because she is dumb, incredibly annoyingly dumb.
Not compared to humans, but compared to what Apple could have achieved, what others achieved some time ago.
Examples see other comments and: ... “Stop searching the web” “OK” … 1 minute later: “open my email” “I found this on the web for ‘open my email’” (... fixed by now? ...)<p>"here is what I found on the web for 'what is Yen's email address'"<p>O. M. G. ...
I wish Siri wouldn't ever show me web results; If I'm talking to my phone I don't want to click around or often even look at it. Everytime Siri offers to search the web for something, it's a fail.<p>Siri is great for setting alarms and timers -- much faster than using the UI.
I recently switched back to iOS after using Android for a couple years and one thing I found shocking is how little Siri had improved. I only use her for creating timers these days. I'll try to schedule events but I find her success rate at adding things to my calendar accurately is < 50%. Try correcting a time to a just-added event. She can't do it.<p>I asked her for the nearest gas station the other day while driving and I think she responded with a list of google search results? Which is almost comical. I'm not going to grab my phone and sift through Google search results while behind the wheel.
>It puts much less emphasis on what it calls “long tail” questions, like the ones I’ve cited above, which in some cases, Apple says, number in only the hundreds each day.<p>And every one of those "hundreds per day" is another person one step closer to disabling Siri. Which is what I did last month. Siri got things wrong so often, it was worse than useless.
I'd like AIs to have settings so they start engaging me, rather me always having to engage them. e.g ask me what my tasks are today, or other types of interactions initiated by them at a propitious time.
Because voice recognition from all the major providers goes at it completely backwards, being ready to answer any of the world's questions in every situation.<p>In the real world nothing goes like this. We start with context and work outwards from there. And I don't mean know-everything-about-your-personal-life context, there's no need for that either.<p>I'd say more but that is what I am solving at Optik. We're a bit over a year into development and things are really starting to pick up. Using Cortana in the Hololens is making it painfully obvious just how close but how far off the mark remains most voice command software.
What I don't understand is why we don't try to solve this using a huge fact database derived from natural language parsing of the web. Basically the same approach as deep learning - something that was unfeasible 20 years ago, but due to massive improvements in processing power now works.<p>What I'm thinking of is basically SHRDLU [1] on steroids. Parse a ton of web pages. There are great natural language parsers that can parse most well-formed English sentences. Start with simple sentences like "Golden delicious is an apple" or "Barack Obama is the President". Then you store this in a Subject-Verb-Object database (I just learned that this is called a Triplestore [2]).<p>Every statement gets a plausibility value. Deal with ambiguity by adding multiple interpretations of a sentence (with different plausibilites if available). Assign an origin (e.g. website, author, quoted person ...) to each statement. Then, you could query this by asking "What do mice like?"... and it would make "Subject: Mice, Verb: like (enjoy), Object: ???" and return a list of solutions, ordered by plausibility.<p>Does anybody have any insight into why this isn't done or wouldn't work? It seems wierd that I can't ask my phone simple facts about the world, other than those whose form have been hardcoded.<p>(Now that I think about it, the opposite would also work. Hardcode a ton more commands. Hire 100 people, let them sift through the most common queries. Watch a few dozen testers, add add all queries they try to use. Instead of throwing computing resources at the problem, this would throw cheap labor at it.)<p>Anyway, it boggles the mind that I can't shout "OK Google, play 'itsy bity spider' on youtube" when my toddler demands it but won't release my phone :-). It opens a search and shows what I want as the first result (probably customized from my history), but I have to go the last mile myself.<p>[1] <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU" rel="nofollow">https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHRDLU</a>
[2] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triplestore" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triplestore</a>
Apple and Google are both shooting themselves in the foot by insisting on keeping their voice products within walled gardens.<p>Amazon is doing an amazing job of allowing the community to extend the voice functionality of their Amazon Echo. You can build an app that does just about anything you want and release it on their Amazon Echo store. There are already hundreds on there, and it's only a matter of time before someone releases a truly conversational A.I. integration for it.<p>My family uses our Amazon Echoes (all 6 of them, scattered strategically around the house) for hundreds of little things throughout the week. I control all of my lights, my thermostat, my entire home theater (via custom voice activated scripts). I even use it to make my tempurpedic bed vibrate ("Alexa, turn on bed vibration"). I use Echo for timers, and my morning alarm to wake up (which also triggers my bed vibration). I use it to query wikipedia subjects, perform quick math calculations, order new paper towels...<p>If you gave me a couple of hours, I could even whip up an Alexa integration that would let me open my garage door and remote start my car in the morning ("Alexa, turn on my car's air conditioner")! It would just be an Alexa command that triggered a custom script which would log into the web interface for my car link and would click the remote start button. Easy. I love building this sort of thing.<p>The possibilities are endless when you have an open, extensible platform. I don't understand why Apple and Google are being so dumb and close-minded, and still don't understand this!
Due to my (very slight) Eurotrash English accent, Siri doesn't even get over the speech recognition hurdle four times out of five.<p>When it does, it replies 'Here's what I found on the web...'<p>I try tricking Google's app with unlikely stuff but it gets it right most of the time, and gives a reasonable answer too.
I have mixed feelings about Siri. The voice recognition has definitely gotten much better. The domains that it knows about isn't increasing nearly enough. That's not even a matter of AI it's just doing the work. For instance knowing what's on tv.<p>It does come in handy when I'm driving and for reminders. It seems to do pretty well with directions, playing songs, playing podcasts, and messages.<p>I much rather tell Siri "remind me not to forget my lunch when I get out of the car" than try to do that with the reminders app.
When I updated to Sierra, I was excited to try out Siri (I only ever user Android's assistant).<p>I quickly gave up on all the features but using it to control music.<p>Then, I figured out that it's useless at that too unless I set specific playlists.<p>"Play Underoath"
> "Finding results for 'under oath'"<p>... It's even worst for artists with strange names.<p>How am I to say "Play 30h!3".<p>It is even worst when you try to have it figure out music in other languages.<p>...<p>I turned off Siri.
The difference between Siri and Google Now is the real downfall of iPhone (at least for me). I have enough comfort level with Google Now today that I feel comfortable just flinging any question at it when I'm in hands-free mode (say, when driving) and expect a useful answer of some sort. Trying Siri on friend's or colleagues phones, it's always a frustrating experience.<p>And this doesn't even include the automatic actions taken by Google Now. Alerting me about travel times, flight delays, sports scores etc. etc. without even being asked.
Ultimately, in Google's vision, the phones are rapidly becoming just a tiny window (no Microsoft.. not you), into all the knowledge and power that actually resides on the cloud. Not so much for Apple, whose core competency is, and has always been, in hardware design and supply chain management.
I also think Siri fails with Text messaging. I should be able to have an IM discussion using just my voice. But the Siri interface is simply not that involved. I'm constantine having to say "Read Latest Text Message".
Best use for Siri: it can turn off all alarms on its own. Helpful for when I set 5 or more occasionally for something, I don't need to keep scrolling the list and disabling them all one by one.
Add even a faint hint of an ESL speaker accent, and Siri becomes outright useless even for the mundane tasks... like setting a timer or sending a message.
Serious question: Is it possible that Apple keeps Siri artificially annoyingly dumb because they still have to pay Nuance billions for all this 'useless chatter' on a usage bases?
I don't know about the new Google Assistant, but I found Siri to work much better than Google Now.<p>I've been an Android user for about 10 years and just switched to iOS within the last week.<p>Siri is really the only feature on iPhone (so far) that I have found I prefer to Android.<p>While it's far from perfect, so far I have been quite pleased with Siri. It is able to let me do my most common tasks via voice commands. 9 times out of 10 Google Now couldn't even tell what I was saying. I attributed it to my somewhat strange accent, but Siri has been nearly perfect on this front. Good thing though as I loved the Swype keyboard on Android and hate typing on the iPhone; I fat finger everything on that tiny virtual keyboard.
> Me and a friend carrying furniture down the stairs.
Im sorry i didnt catch that..<p>>At the Chinese drive in
& Then.. (ProTip: Cooking recipes line by line for a win)