Should Apple Kill Siri and Start Over? | Hacker News Reader

Should Apple Kill Siri and Start Over?

macrumors.com

32 pointsmarban41 comments

You all are crazy. It desperately needs work, but Siri is the only mainstream assistant thing that meets users where they are instead of forcing them into whatever ecosystem it's attached to. Sure, Google Assistant's contextual awareness is super cool, but it only works if you use Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contacts, Google Tasks, etc.

If we include the umbrella of machine learning stuff in iOS that gets branded "Siri", Siri finds useful connections between my firehose of email from Fastmail, my work Gmail, my text messages, and my Nextcloud calendar and contacts. Completely offline, without even mentioning iCloud.

The voice assistant is extremely clunky and I do hope they'll borrow from LLMs to improve it it, but they really are doing something right here with their modest approach, and "just use ChatGPT" isn't the solution people seem to think.

Google is hopeless at doing things offline. You can't even search for photos by their filename in the Android Google Photos app without enabling "backup to the cloud" first.

> Siri is the only mainstream assistant thing that meets users where they are instead of forcing them into whatever ecosystem it's attached to

I must be missing your point, because afaik, Siri is only accessible via the Apple hardware ecosystem.

Yeah, aka evidently the only place that has hardware & software teams good enough to do all this stuff on device.

Siri only works for a few specific apps, most of which are from Apple, and only on Apple hardware.

It's not meaningfully better than Google's walled garden, and the voice assistant is so hilariously bad that it reduces the functionality of the stuff that Siri is actually adequate at handling.

Now that we've got a bunch of free ChatGPT alternatives, I'm not sure that we need Siri to compete with those, but certainly needs to be improved.

My wish/expectation would be that I could at use Siri to 100% control my phone and access content on my phone, certainly anything from Apple's own apps (photos, messages). Preferably it could also access content from apps I've got installed such as GMail or WhatsApp, and maybe control those apps too ("send gmail to ...").

Given that Siri tries to answer more general web-based questions, it needs to do better than "Here's a link about that". Siri doesn't need to become ChatGPT, but if it's going to do web retrieval to answer a question, then it should be able to summarize the content and read it to me.

If it works, no one will care what it's called, beyond as a convenient wake word.

If it doesn't work, no one will care even that much.

Clickbait will remain clickbait, either way.

The key thing is that voice has low discoverability. Having a big announcement, “We’re replacing Siri with Iris” will make people who’d given up on Siri give it another try even if Iris is just a continued incremental advance that would have happened without the name change. The key thing is to not do this until you’ve got an incremental change that really is a broad improvement.

Mostly I use Siri to do things like start workouts (currently semi-broken—it won’t correctly do anything other than a timed walk last I tried), timers and set alarms. Other than the workout issue, it mostly works, although I’ve found that Siri will tend to time out if I’m at the edge of my wifi network (like if I’m at the alley about to start a walk). There is also the challenge that there’s no convenient way to direct Siri to a particular device so I had to set my phone to only respond to “hey siri” while my watch will accept “siri” so I can force workout starting to be on the watch (if the phone gets it, Siri becomes confused and asks me what app to use). I’ve disabled voice wake up for Siri entirely on my MBP and iPad for this same reason. It’d be nice to specify different wake words for different devices (even better, custom wake words so I can address my phone as Renfield, but that’s just me). But without there being some compelling reason, I’m unlikely right now to expand beyond my basic Siri usage or even discover if they’ve finally fixed that d—n workout bug or not.

Eh. I feel like an OS upgrade offers enough scope for messaging that a name change may not add much, but I could see arguments either way.

I also feel like "Apple makes a serious AI move", in 2024, is a big enough news story that messaging may not be that big a problem to begin with. No matter how it plays out, it is going to attract an enormous amount of attention, enough so that folks who aren't really tuned in to tech would still have a pretty good chance of hearing about it and trying it out.

And on the third hand, if I were making product decisions here, I might not mind a relatively slow uptake. As I see it, Apple doesn't tend to early adopt because Apple differentiates partly on polish (this is why the Android fan critiques of Apple's slow adoption are so nonsense) - and it's hard to get polish right at the bleeding edge. AI Siri in 2024 feels a little daring. If it goes badly sideways, having fewer customers impacted would be better than more.

(Siri isn't really hurting Apple in any way I can see, because nobody has a product in the space that doesn't suck. I could see them getting nervous about that changing, maybe. But I could also see them deciding it's still better to get it right than be first to market, which is why I'll believe the rumor only when it stops being one any more.)

I looked at the list of complaints in the article. They're almost the same problems I've been noticing with Alexa. Alexa has become very slow lately. I wonder why they're both having that problem now.

Are they really worse or we just so used to the product now that its small mistakes are more noticeable?

Good question. In the case of delayed replies, it's really getting worse. We often think she didn't hear and start asking again - she heard and she's just thinking about it. Home internet and wifi are fast in general.

That's weird I have not experienced that issue. Alexa is pretty responsive for all my queries. I use it every day but mostly just for setting kitchen timers.

They've also been reducing the level of acknowledgement intentionally over time - sometimes I will hey siri on my airpods and think it didn't hear me, only to be hit with a "yes?" a few seconds later.

I've always been frustrated with the limited usefulness of Siri. It's good for sending text messages in the car, adding to the calendar, the weather, may be reading a text message, I haven't found a use for it otherwise. It didn't seem revolutionary at the time, and it still doesn't seem that way.

It sets timers well (for me, at least)

They should rebuild it from the ground up and call it Iris

I’d vote for Sirious.

I'm going to push it bit further but since we are talking about Apple [0], it could be named: Eris.

[0] ΤΗΙ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΗΙ

I have never used Siri despite owning iPhone, Mac

I have an Echo but it's use is generally "Alexa play LBC" as I do housework.

If though Siri can beat this, please do tell me

"Alexa, what noise does a hamster make"

Just tested this. It does squeak at me.

Does it "Squeakty Nom Nom Squeakty Squeak"?

You're missing out on what I believe to be the most killer use of Siri that should be in every marketing video: outsource your short/medium term memory to it. I'm guessing Google's assistant can do this too. It's not particularly advanced but needs a physical device you pick up all day to work:

"Siri, remind me to lookup that form for the tax guy tomorrow at 10am"

"Siri, remind me in an hour to order more dog food"

"Siri, remind me in 3 months to cancel the trial for X subscription"

I just hold the side button, dictate the fleeting thought, and move on. No unlock, nothing to type, no navigating a time picker. Eventually it'll pop up and I'll be happy because I absolutely forgot X task already, and it'll stay as a notification on my Lock Screen until I do something with it. Often times I just pick an arbitrary time and get to it eventually that day, and then I'll dismiss it. I can also snooze for a later time period with a long press, etc.

This is so integrated into my life I literally cannot imagine not having this ability. I'd forget things all the time.

... then one day someone close to you talks to Siri ...

"Siri, remind me to turn the gas off"

"Siri, remind me to put the cats out"

You, in your home think .... what?

Tech turned against you?

Unless they’re pressing the button on your phone, it’s not an issue.

Yeah. Especially good for things you think of while driving, or falling asleep (assuming you don't have an already-sleeping partner in the same room)

I find that Siri regularly mangles the "body" of the reminder nearly beyond all recognition, but does reliably at least get the reminder time correct. I think she's actually been 100% accurate at that part for me.

So, like clockwork, I get the reminder on time. And then sometimes it takes a little work to figure out what the reminder was supposed to be for.

I find Siri is... sometimes... effective for playing specific songs/playlists while I'm driving. Sometimes. She is certainly better than the alternative of dying in a fiery crash, I guess.

I wish it could store the original audio with it. I have this problem too.

I’m sure Apple will try and make this work better without the cloud as cloud costs are insane for their scale. FaceTime used to use AWS and their billing was huge apparently.

If anything, I just need better map instructions.

It’s too repetitive and verbose, always seeming to interrupt an important part of my conversation or audio book.

On the right side of the Maps UI, there's an audio icon. Tap it. You can have it be completely silent or only announce important alerts.

True, it is possible to turn it off. I find it hilarious that the middle ground between the two modes is a “hazards only” option. A smarter guide would be nice, but maybe I’ll just keep using Waze.

I really miss when Google maps simply made a ding at important times.

I don't think it's hazards only. It will alert you if the directions change (e.g., traffic or if you're following a different path).

I am sure Apple gets millions of requests a day for Siri just as Alexa does.

Starting from zero with yet another name for a similar product seems way worse than just fixing Siri.

The only reason to ditch the Siri brand name would be if they are pivoting away from the idea of having a general purpose “do anything” assistant, which I don’t think they are contemplating.

Yes, they should "just fix Siri." That would do the trick.

Today I checked my blood pressure. I asked Siri to record the blood pressure measurement in the health app. I haven't done it before, but it feels like one of those things my Apple phone should be able to do (i.e. record something very basic in Apple's own health app). Of course, it couldn't do it.

This works for me.

Apple has a press release, https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/12/siri-can-now-help-use...

I didn't have to allow Siri to access health data, which it only prompted when I asked with the health app open.

I have my permissions all set up according to how Apple specifies it needs to be set up in their documentation.

Unfortunately, when I try to log it (using the exact language syntax Apple has in its documentation), Siri says, "Sorry, I can't help with that. You can learn more about logging your health data with Siri at Apple.com"

Rename it to “Sorri”

I've given up on it.

Hey Siri, add Macarons to the shopping list.

Later: what the fuck are Salty Albanians?

That and the AI image recognition stuff repetitively can't tell the difference between cows, yak, horses and cats. I just want to go back to where I did the work because it's less hassle.

please

Edit: I say this because I love Apple but much like how iTunes needed to be thrown out and rebuilt, so does Siri. Keep the brand and the infrastructure, but give her a new brain.

Rebuilding Siri from the ground up could revolutionize its capabilities. Imagine a Siri that anticipates your needs, seamlessly integrates with each device's strengths, and leverages advancements in natural language processing for a more intuitive and personalized experience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com