Siri is so bad at everything(reddit.com) |
Siri is so bad at everything(reddit.com) |
What most of these sorts of features do is not to add convenience; instead they remove the need to exercise impulse control. They reduce "friction," which means you do the action more often. But they don't improve convenience. Convenience is not needing to walk outside to the well to fetch a bucket of water. It's not someone making an app so automatic that you no longer need to use your executive function.
I sometimes use Siri to set timers while cooking. Unfortunately, adding items to the shopping list doesn't work well enough, Classic Siri is not smart enough to place them in the food section.
A voice assistant is similar in an analogous way. A button works every time you press it, but a voice assistant works very sporadically. It's hardly convenient to repeat yourself frequently and randomly. A voice assistant requires internet access, which wastes your data (again, when you could have just pressed a button) and the quality of the voice assistant will change over time. It's less consistent, more expensive, and more complex. And for what? So you can use your phone more often? You already use your phone too much.
Edit: There are other cases where hands are not free as well - like cooking - where it's useful to be able to start music or add a todo.
I did some side by side navigation queries and was surprised how much more I preferred the responses from a company that isn’t even really trying to be a major AI player
Just wait until you're not driving.
Folks who parrot the same are just a symptom of the underlying epidemic that permeates the ecosystem.
Some of their engineering deficiencies just happen to be masked by integration with better hardware.
For example, the iOS mmap limit is stupid and ridiculous. But it paved the way for us to work around the restriction by rebuilding Dip's architecture, resulting in a better, more simplified mental model along with increased performance and parallelism.
These benefits are applicable cross-platform and not just for Apple's OS. This subsequently also acted as an indirect but causal trigger to later build our own KV engine: Singularity.
Thus my experience with Apple has been bittersweet. The frustration with their ecosystem and their stupidity was beneficial in hindsight.
I am torn halfway between pitying and thanking them.
You're getting downvoted here (possibly flagged within the next few hours), but I see this happen on half the posts made here daily. Someone notices out loud how fake the engagement has become and they get railroaded.
"Call Fred."
"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."
"Call Fred."
"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."
"Call Fred."
"OK, calling Fred."
Phone is locked in my pocket the entire time. Like, make your damn mind up. Every time I try to call from the car now I have to ask it at least twice, usually three times.
And a completely baffling one recently, not even anonymizing names, also in car:
"Call George."
"OK adding L.S.D. by Hallucinogen to your Liked Songs playlist."
WTAF.
Literal 10 seconds later.
“Setting the scene good night.”
Another 2-3 seconds later, the lights go off.
I don’t understand what it’s trying to do, simple tasks should be instant, what am I waiting for? The entire Siri became unusable and simply trash.
Edit: For reference, it used to turn off the lights as I complete my sentence and put my wrist down.
I've switched to Home Assistant and the same devices on the same network work instantly, as they should.
Apple is so terrible at this. They have nobody to blame: it's their system, their protocol (I have pre-Matter devices), their home hub, their certified devices.
Home Assistant with a pile of community-maintained python hacks runs circles around Apple.
What probably happened is that it used to be one of the preset instructions it pattern-matched your request to, but now they inserted an LLM in between all of that, so you have to wait for it to return some tokens and then eventually call the internal method for triggering the scene.
Last week:
Me: Hey Siri, turn off the bedroom lights. Siri: I’m sorry, I can’t change a scene. Me: Hey Siri, turn the bedroom lights off. Siri: OK!
This week:
Me: Hey Siri, turn the bedroom lights off. Siri: I’m sorry, I can only do one thing at a time. Me: Hey Siri, turn off the bedroom lights. Siri: OK!
Next week:
Me: Hey Siri —— Siri: The red zone has always been for loading and unloading of passengers. There's never stopping in a white zone.
Like, please just pick one and stick that in the integration tests. I promise I’ll learn the syntax if you choose an official one. Any official one.
It's the only way I can explain some of the totally bizarre Siri (and other iOS and macOS) bugs.
Uh, can anyone do that? Can pickpockets and government stooges do the same thing to get into my phone?
Siri needs to be spoonfed the most basic things, and it's not getting any better. Google doesn't get any passes since my Google Home appears to be getting alzheimer's after the Gemini "upgrade".
Settings > Siri > Apps > Messages > "Learn from this App"
Unfortunately Apple makes you toggle this off individually for every single app, seems like an intentional dark pattern that they don't let you toggle off all apps in one go. Also, each iOS updates seems to re-enable Siri for every single app so it doesn't respect your previously disabled apps.
Another thing I've noticed is the horrible lag with updating the UI. An example: On Apple Watch I have the temperature complication bottom center. It sometimes shows the current temperature, sometimes it hasn't updated in minutes or hours (bug #1). For example right now, it shows 66 which I know is incorrect. I tap it to go to the Weather app, a different temperature will be shown (56) (bug #2) and then about 10 seconds later (bug #3) it finally updates to the actual temperature (72).
If I go back to the home screen, finally the complication shows the correct temperature (72).
These kind of async refresh bugs are not unique to WatchOS, it's endemic throughout the Apple ecosystem.
Why? Is this poorly coded JavaScript web view apps? Is this React? Some sort of other async framework that works fine when you are testing on the Apple campus but doesn't work in the real world?
The question I'm asking is "why" - why would Apple ship code that is so horribly broken (from a UI/UX) perspective.
I thought for sure that this slow-temperature-update bug would be fixed in WatchOS 27, but it's just as bad as in 26 and before.
Sometimes the temperature UI will show "--" instead of a temperature, until it finally updates, so clearly they do have code for the "no temperature data" case.
It just boggles the mind that "6 hour stale temperature data" doesn't trigger this same behavior.
The only downside is that it lacks the OS integration of Gemini or Siri. I've been trying to figure out a way to trigger it with the button on my pixel earbuds, but no success - seems it only works with Gemini.
I went from being overly exuberant on AI to now thinking it probably should be banned outright. From a consumer perspective, the tech industry is a dead end and the internet now is at best a pipeline for content for your TV and sound system and the rest feels like it should be ignored and avoided.
Unless there are radical changes on the horizon, there is no way I’m investing any more in the Apple ecosystem and I’m saying this as a former Apple employee and fan.
What a pile of garbage Siri is.
“Play Powerwolf on Apple Music.”
“Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.”
“Play PowerWOLF on Apple Music.”
“Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.”
“Fine, just play Sabaton”
It got that right I guess :/
But aside from the accuracy, I’m finding requests take much longer to action. 15 seconds to add a reminder yesterday. Not sure if that’s just me or normal now?
Inconsistent capabilities: it can toggle do not disturb, but not "silence unknown callers". It can disable auto-brightness but not automatic screen lock.
Completely brain-dead responses even within things it is capable of affecting: "delete all alarms except for my 7:30 AM alarm" → "I deleted your 7:30 AM alarm"
And even with features that actually do work, subtle details of that feature inexplicably change over time, and they happen to be details I was relying on: asking Siri to set an alarm for a given time used to respect whatever ringtone I had last chosen (and which IS respected when I physically tap the + button to add a new alarm), but sometime over the past five or so years it switched to creating alarms with the default sound.
And so many more things that I can't recall the top of my head right now. Siri is an inexcusable failure by a company that supposedly prides itself on user experience and which has had every opportunity for a decade and a half to do better.
edit: One more I just remembered. For a decade, me saying "call [WIFE'S NAME]" would 100% of the time result in my wife being called. Back in the spring, Siri inexplicably decided to call the number of a woman I hadn't seen in the past decade, and whose name is pronounced the same but spelled differently. I had to delete that contact from my phone to be able to call my wife again using Siri.
Like yeah, I'll use ChatGPT all the time at home, and Claude all the time at work. I'm not anti-AI.
But I'm an Android user and I barely use Gemini at all. I don't have a smart home and never will because it just seems pointless. I walk by the light switches on my way in/out of a room. It takes less effort to just reach up and hit the switch as I walk in/out than to say "okay google, shut off the office lights" and hope it answers.
On rare occasions, if I want to find out a quick factoid, I'll ask a question, but that's as far as my usage goes.
Unfortunately, the Nest app is already pissing me off too much by trying to get me to give it more data and/or convert to a Google Home app, and constantly asking me to allow my power company permanent control over my thermostat for a small one-time Amazon gift card (no? what an incredibly untempting offer) so I can only imagine how annoying it would be to have two of the damn things.
Home automation is of course a completely unnecessary luxury, but it's also a little silly that we have access to such powerful computers and sophisticated software and it's still somehow an entire hobby just to get your lights to turn off at night, or your place to regulate your temperature in an energy efficient way. Why is it so hard to get your computer-controlled HVAC to talk to your computer and do what you want??
This finally works in iOS 27. Something Alexa has been able to do for what 5 years? Probably longer.
Is Apple acknowledging it? Do they have an explanation? What’s their narrative?
The old way of doing commands and voice was far superior and made far fewer mistakes.
Funnily, I saw a skyrim mod I believe here on HN that got this right. They did fast commands through more standard voice and language recognition and shunted off more complex conversations only when that failed. It enabled them to do really impressive things with their ingame dog.
- Call Mom
- What app should I use? (only offers the default Phone app
Immense rage - The only freaking app I've ever used to call her. You didn't even give me a reasonable alternative. We don't talk on FB Messenger/WhatsApp/etc (nor do I use them at all).
New Siri is _very slightly_ better for some tasks and infinitely worse in others.
I'm not sure if it's Gemini's fault or Apple's, I lean heavily towards it being Apple's fault and at the end of the day it doesn't matter if the underlying model is blame, it's the model Apple picked so it's Apple's fault.
I had hopes that "New Siri" would help wash away the stain of WWDC 2024 and the incredibly embarrassing new (old) Siri launch. Instead they've doubled down to prove their complete incompetence.
It's telling that I sit here with AirPods on my desk, an Apple Watch on my wrist, an iPad sitting next to me, an iPhone on a stand in front of me, all while typing on a MBP, and I have zero interest in touching their "AI" with a 10-ft pole while I use millions-billions of tokens other models every month. My phone would be the ideal AI device if it actually worked worth a damn. Instead I do use AI on my phone all the time, through the Claude and ChatGPT apps which would both blow away Siri if they had the access to my phone's data. I recognize the dangers in that, I've even agreed with Apple's line in the past about how they are the only ones that can be trusted with that access but they are terrible stewards who clearly don't have a clue what they are doing.
I have better results remote connecting to a Claude Code session on my computer to do anything of value instead of reaching for Siri.
Tried to set a timer via Siri
after a spinner for several seconds:
"Cannot set a timer because the Clock app is not installed on this device."
F to the ninth heck whoever is in charge of that crap at Apple.
There is no use for it if I cannot simply raise my wrist and set up a timer or create a reminder without any problems.
I’m not going to have a full conversation with Siri when I’m moving about and need to remember something or need a quick timer for a meal.
Do these engineers ever use these products or do they simply throw it away after the fancy presentations they do?
With that said - there are three areas of their products that are substandard.
- Siri, as discussed here
- autocorrect - which is insanely bad. I switched to Gboard a while back - and despite its occasional lagging (it depends too much on an internet connection) it’s such a relief. No more fighting autocorrect over words, especially after committing by hitting space.
- and… the whole way you register devices with Apple home - incredibly painful. Thinking they were trying to make it more secure, but they utterly failed at friction and usability. I suspect their ecosystem would be a lot bigger if they simplified how you interact with Home to register devices.
That being said - not adding any more examples of “Siri bad because” for my blood pressure staying on normal levels - one thing that also is one more example how hard Apple fail at basic things:
Ok, so there’s this feature that charges your phone until it presumes you’ll need it?
Why on earth does it arbitrarily decide to be finished at 04:00 when I did set an alarm to 06:30?
Why oh why…
One thing you might do is only charge to 80% or 90%, to improve battery lifetime, unless you detected the user is going on a long flight tomorrow and needs it at 100%. But I don't see any reason for the opposite behaviour.
From what I can see the only thing that durably keeps me on iOS at this point is Facetime.
(Siri AI is bad. Lots of "Did you mean". I'm back on Siri Classic now.)
You might as well take an old iPod and stick it to the wall. (Yes I said iPOD, not iPad)
These corpulent Hutts are long overdue for a choking
A smarter release would have been extremely limited in scope, heavily tested, and aimed simply for feature parity. Or even scoping it to just one section, like editing/adding/updating calendar events and all associated functionality. Or even exploring routing to much-less hallucinatory, more performant models like CNN for certain tasks instead of just throwing everything at probabilistic model and hoping for the best.
But that's not the way of AI-pilled middle manager thinking now.
While I’m away from my phone: “hey dingus play podcasts”
“I’m sorry you don’t have Apple Music subscription”
Apple should stop pushing for subscriptions. Especially when nothing is working anymore.
> Optimized Battery Charging is designed to reduce the wear on your battery and improve its lifespan by reducing the time your iPhone spends fully charged. It is available when Charge Limit is set to 100 percent. When the feature is enabled, your iPhone will delay charging past 80 percent in certain situations.
Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/108055
The idea is that having the battery sit at 100% charge for an extended period of time is bad for the battery. So the phone charges to 80% immediately and then to 100% a little while before it expects to be unplugged.
Then I learned there was no way to give the new Wi-Fi password to any of these devices without manually re-pairing them in HomeKit and reconfiguring all scenes and everything else...
Like, that seems like basic functionality Apple should have included in the HomeKit design.
In the end, I gave up and just put the Wi-Fi password back.
Yes, I know, for ONE DAY it identified as MechaHitler, but it genuinely is not the "Elon Nazi Bot" like people treat it. It regularly dunks on right-wingers all the damn time who summon it to try to back up their crazy assertions.
There was the massive amount of CSAM it produced for weeks that wasn't an oopsie, the company adamantly refused to do anything about it for a long time despite the outrage.
Plus there has been all of the monkeying with the system prompt to push random propaganda elon wants.
Also the weird fixations on white genocide, election lies, and other nonsense.
On top of all that any data or funding sent to this company directly supports the ongoing destruction of US democracy and state capacity.
But that wouldn't explain why it wants you to unlock it
Even if Apple is too cheap to pay the $0.00001 to get me real time temperature updates, you would think there would be an OS API to query the temperature, and that the various apps and complications would query this to get the source of truth.
But from the actual UI/UX, it must be that every App, and complication, and UI element are caching their own value.
That's the only way I can explain seeing 3 different temperatures displayed within a few seconds.
(NB: these are all Apple apps, I'm not using any third party apps)