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Comment by grandalf | Hacker News Reader

I'd never used Siri in the 5+ years I've been using an iPhone. Then I switched to Android for a month while awaiting the iPhone 7 (my previous phone screen cracked and could not be repaired a month before the new release).

After being impressed with "OK Google" I decided to try out Siri on my iPhone 7. I have been shocked how much better "OK Google" works than Siri. I think Apple has a fair bit of catching up to do in this area.

With OK Google you can basically just tell it what app to open, what to do, etc., and it works. With Siri, something as simple as asking her to play a song doesn't actually start playing the song, it forces you to interact with a clunky UI on the siri screen first, then it doesn't even open the correct song in Apple Music.

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I'm not sure what "clunky UI" you need to interact with, you can play music without touching your phone. You literally just say "Hey Siri, play Two Weeks by FKA Twigs" and it will begin playing. It shows your request being transcribed when its made but that screen goes away on its own shortly after.

Most people's complaints about Siri as far as I can tell (via Twitter mostly, so it's a tech crowd) is that it's basically not Google Now. That is, Apple doesn't have a search engine so it can't answer general interest/trivia questions unless it's specifically related to a domain Apple has included (such as Wolfram Alpha or MLB for baseball).

Now many people think it should be able to do that, but that's certainly not what it was designed for. Siri is a "personal assistant" to help you do things on your device via voice. They've recently begun to expand these integrations by creating a Siri API which will probably expand to cover more domains over time.

Hmm, I'll try that. Edit. Ahh, Siri seems not to know how to play albums, only songs. It also mis-parsed an album name of a song I have hearted in Apple Music. The mis-parse was for a more obscure title, but the incorrect behavior for playing an album was for a more mainstream one.

Did you say you wanted an album specifically? I've never had any trouble with saying "play the album X".

I'll try saying "play the album", I've just asked her to play <album name>...

It works for me.

> Play me some <Artist name here>

> Play <Album name>

I've noticed that since my Apple Music trial expired I have to say "play MY song Self Control" or "play MY album Endless" for Siri to properly work. If I don't do that Siri just says it can't find the music.

>Now many people think it should be able to do that, but >that's certainly not what it was designed for.

That's just a cop out though to say it isn't designed for that. Siri's biggest competitor is designed for it and does it very well on top of doing everything Siri does besides that (except perhaps wolfram and witty replies). Apple's hand is forced on the matter, and frankly their hands are tied without having an extremely powerful search engine under their belt. I doubt they are gonna get too far scraping Bing before MS steps in, if that's the route they decide to go.

It certainly doesn't do everything Siri does on iOS devices, because it can't. Apple's hand won't be forced because no one buys an Android device over an iPhone/iPad because Siri doesn't do the same things Google Now does. Google believes that is a feature that can sell phones, but I predict that the Pixel will never pose a threat to Samsung or Apple and likely won't sell much more than Nexus devices have.

Apple also has a good working relationship with Microsoft so if they wanted this functionality it wouldn't be via "scraping".

Oh well sure it can't on iOS devices, but that is Apple's doing, not Google's.

It does have full functionality on all GMS (Google Mobile Services) Android devices though (Sammy, HTC, LG, 1+, Sony, etc.). As for people not buying a device for it's assistant, I think that is an extremely short sighted comment. At least in the US where everyone has an iPhone and considers Siri near worthless, not many people use their assistant. And many of those that do are locked into a mindset that it can only do basic things/answer simple questions (i.e. remind me of x, whats the weather, whats score of the game, text nick hey). My friends head nearly fell off the other day when I asked my phone why people put nitrogen in their tires and it read back a perfect response without me even having to touch it.

As people break out of the "assistants are shitty" mindset in coming years, and especially as talking to your phone becomes more socially acceptable, I think there will be much more focus on who does it best. Without a doubt the future is going to be riddled with AI. In that sense to write off personal assistants as marketing gimmicks sounds as ludicrous as writing off the electric light bulb as a neat trick in 1850.

You missed my point, which was that Google Now can't do the things Siri can on iOS. This is important because Apple has aggregated a large and highly valuable user base. Contrary to your claim otherwise, this user base makes 2 billion Siri requests per week [1]. The fact that Google Now can't insert itself into this position works to Apple's advantage because that dataset will enable Apple to improve the product over time. It also means that everyone who wants to reach that audience will partner with Apple and/or use the newly available Siri API (as many have done), which will further add new functionality.

And if Apple really wanted to replicate the "answer general interest questions" use case with Siri it wouldn't require Apple to create a search engine, just a bizdev deal with Microsoft and some engineering work (probably from both parties).

I also never made any claims that assistants are shitty or would stay shitty. I said that Assistant/Google Now isn't enough differentiation to convince a customer to purchase a Pixel over an iPhone (or a Samsung Galaxy for that matter). The iPhone's competitive advantage doesn't rest on any one single feature or service. It isn't enough for Google to make a better assistant, they must be better than Apple on a number of vectors (too many to list, one big one that tech nerds often don't consider is Apple's retail footprint and the customer service advantage that provides).

[1]http://www.apple.com/ca/pr/library/2016/06/13Apple-Previews-...

Just curious, what are those things that Siri does and Google Now doesn't (except being more conversational and telling jokes, which 'Google Assistant' does too now with Pixel phones)?

I'm definitely bought over by the Google Assistant, it only improves upon the vastly useful and very smart Google Now already and is going to get a lot better with every release.

I keep seeing this posted and I just really have no idea what people are talking about.

I've been using Android since..right after the Nexus one came out and I don't see this awesome ok Google feature everyone talks about.

All I have ony Nexus 5X is the same old voice search that gets the basics right and not much else.

Everyone I know has an iPhone and I've always enjoyed interacting with Siri more and have never noticed a big difference.

Do you have an accent? Most complaints about poor recognition on google now comes from people with accents, it seems to struggle with what are typically considered heavy accents (some very localized accents or English as a second language speakers)

If not, try asking it any questions you can think of. You'll be surprised at how good it is, not counting "population of x" or "whats the weather?" type questions. Some examples: How long do you cook chicken for on the grill? When did the current pope become pope? Why do some people fill their tires with nitrogen? Do LED bulbs contain mercury? What's the loudest sound ever heard on Earth? Is it dangerous to drink distilled water? Why do canon printers have 2 black ink cartridges?

I use it a ton and it reads back an answer about 70% of time. Sometimes it misses easy ones and sometimes it nails really challenging ones. Sometimes it will work when your question is phrased one way but not another. Usually it prefers direct phrasing rather than vaguer phrasing (i.e. how long do you cook chicken on the grill vs how do you cook chicken on the grill). Overall though it is ridiculously powerful compared to other assistants.

> Do you have an accent?

Google's voice recognition works extremely well, at least with certain accents. I'm from India, and it gets me right almost always. Not just that, it recognizes some ridiculously hard to pronounce names of places in India.

I don't know which accent you're talking about, but I have a strong Indian accent, and one of the major selling points of Google Now is the amazing accuracy with which it works for that! Yes, you have to actually go and set the Voice language to English (India), because the default English (US) doesn't do that great for my accent - but as soon as I switch that, it works really awesome. When we friends sit together, we always compare our Indian English on Google Now v/s Siri. All I have to say is Siri is a joke in comparison. Not only does it listen to our accent correctly, it also speaks back all the regional words in the right way they're supposed to be spoken which is very comforting.

Lucky for you India is one of Googles favorite markets. They put a lot of effort into accommodating Indian users because of the massive untapped market. It's no surprise that it works well with an Indian accent.

The most common accent complaint I have heard is from people in the Southern US with very specific local accents. Look up Cajun and Appalachian English.

No, I just don't see a huge difference in functionality - my comment was tongue in cheek.

Fellow 5X user here. Seriously, I can't tell much of a difference between Now and Siri. They're both equally frustrating to use. Siri has the upperhand, imo, because it at least has a physical means of activating it (whoda thunk it...Apple with the physical button). Google Now I can long hold the "O" button, but then I still need to tap the microphone. There's always the hands-free "OK, -Assistant of Choice-", but that has always been incredibly hit and miss for me.

Siri is really bad. Another grievous example is once you choose a Bing result to explore from the Siri screen, there's no apparent way to get back to the results screen to try another one.

Reactivate Siri, scroll down.

"Siri, set an alarm for 8am Wednesday."

"I can't set an alarm for more than one day ahead. How about a reminder instead?"

"Siri, close Google Maps."

"As much as I would like to, I can't close apps."

Stuff like this really confuses me. They went to all the trouble to have it say "sorry, I know what you want but I can't." Why not actually implement it instead?

"I can't close apps" is easy to understand. It's a good thing to have in case it misunderstood you command.

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