Siri Is a Gimmick and a Tease | Hacker News Reader

Siri Is a Gimmick and a Tease

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29 pointstokenadult51 comments

What makes this worth saying is the context provided by the media's initial flood of breathless assurances that this would change everything. In the intervening months, without much attempt to revise the initial estimates, they have pretty much just stopped talking about Siri; the last I heard about it was that Apple disabled prostitute-finding.

In that specific context it's good to have a story saying, actually this is turning out not to be such a big deal.

When the two comments in this thread say "well yeah, Siri's probably over-hyped and its usefulness is actually quite limited" they aren't disagreeing with the article nearly so strongly as they are disagreeing with the majority of what the tech press was saying when Siri first arrived.

A web slowly spinned:

   ...The bad news is I didn’t find it magical-
   while Google’s voice feature understood my 
   queries more often than Siri did, it still 
   made several mistakes, and it often failed 
   to give me useful answers.
   [...]
   But the best thing about Google Voice Search 
   is that she’s overflowing with knowledge. 
   Many times she’ll answer your questions with 
   exactly the right answer. Other times she won’t 
   speak but will at least give you a search page 
   full of answers, almost always correct ones.
   [...]
   Last week I met with Scott Huffman, 
   one of the engineering directors on 
   Google’s search team.

Is this a PR piece? It sure isn't about Siri.

Do other people __really__ want to speak to computers?

To me, at least, it seems silly... even for Star Trek.

I would feel foolish doing it behind closed doors, let alone in public. As far as I am concerned the only thing any of these voice control things are good for is showing off how much better your phone is than someone else's in a bar.

Why is it silly? It makes some interactions with your smartphone/computer quicker. Telling Siri to remind me of something is a lot better than me having to:

- Unlock my phone

- Tap the Reminder app

- Possibly press the home button to close whatever app was opened before my phone locked

- Tap the "+" button

- Type a reminder

etc.

With Siri I just have to:

- Hold phone to my ear

- Speak

It's pretty handy when I'm cycling. Much easier to speak into my Android than use the soft keyboard.

I was with you, I mean really wouldn't it be embarrassing to be talking to your computer? Wouldn't it bother people around you? And then I noticed that people have decided that when they are on their cell phone nobody around them can hear them (protip: we can) and I expect that this same suspension of acoustical reality will make talking to your computer popular.

I think it makes sense in a "plain conversation" sort of way: when asking a computer for something is as plain as asking a friend to pass the remote.

To push a button, then speak in to the device, then watch it recognize it, then wait for a result is a ridiculous interaction. I Have found it useful when driving, where I can push a button and say "Navigate Home" (android) and the GPS fires up and starts directing me. But the part where I have to hit the "listen" button first is an annoyance and distraction.

I absolutely feel that a voice-only UI would be plain stupid. I'm saying using voice as an additional interface while simultaneously using other interfaces. If I could have a conversation with my computer while working, I could see it being quite useful and efficient.

Say I'm writing something, and while still finishing typing a sentence, say aloud "find me synonyms for [word]" and then keep typing while the system finds a list and opens them up in a background tab in my browser with a "ding", where I can say "go on" when I'm ready to hear them or see the tab. Even fancier if it highlights that word and shows the list, which I can click and have it replace.

Or maybe while coding, I could hit the save button, and while mousing over some files to figure out what to work on next, I can say "commit changes with message 'some commit message' and deploy". Open my next file and carry on (Of course "deploy" would include the automated tests and builds and so on).

These example aren't amazing, but the point I'm making is that it only makes sense when it works conversationally as an addition rather than a replacement.

And it has to be as if I were speaking to someone in the room. No buttons; No little microphone with a meter next to it; No recognition graphics, spelling out what I said. I just say what I need and it lets me know, subtly when there are results ready, which I can deal with when I'm ready to deal with them.

Don't interrupt me. Don't show me that you're thinking. Stay out of my way and help me do things when I ask you to and then listen intently in case I need something else.

In that respect, no, I don't think it would be silly at all, and yes, I absolutely would like to speak to computers in such a way.

I think the ability to speak to computers will be incredibly valuable once it reaches the point of ambient availability. No need to push a button or carefully phrase a question--just address it by name whenever you need something, and it understands and responds or takes an action for you.

You can speak in any situation, including running, driving, walking down the street, chatting with friends, etc. We know how to talk and do other things at the same time. But we can only look at one thing at a time. This is why Google Glasses are not going to take over the world.

While Google's voice recognition is much, much faster, the other comparisons are mostly apples and oranges. As long as you stick to what's in their wheelhouse, both perform fairly well.

Siri is a "personal assistant" while Google Search is more of a "personal librarian."

> These limitations aren’t exactly by design; on the iPhone, Apple’s restrictions in third-party apps make it technically difficult for Google to do everything Siri does.

That explanation is just lazy journalism. Sure, some of Siri's OS integration might rely on private APIs, but a lot of this stuff is exposed publicly [1].

It also obscures the real reason that Google Voice doesn't do this stuff, which is that it's trying to solve a different problem to Siri. Google are (unsurprisingly, when you think about it) making a voice interface to a search engine[2]. Apple are making a voice interface to a phone. The difference in capabilities reflects their different purposes.

The problem with Siri is that it isn't clear enough about what it's there for. The skeuomorphic 'personal assistant' thing really doesn't help either. Maybe Siri would have been better received if it had just presented itself as a new way of setting appointments, etc.

1. For example: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/EventK...

2. If it did this stuff, I bet it'd take you to your google calendar whether or not the iOS APIs are public.

I personally find it to be quite useful, but you have to adapt to it and figure out what it's good at. I use Siri for:

1. Setting location-based alerts using Find My Friends. Saying "tell me when my wife leaves work" is effective, convenient, and about twenty times faster than setting up the alert by hand.

2. Again with Find My Friends, finding out where people are. If I'm meeting somebody I can just ask, "Where's Bob?" and it shows me, so I know if they're running late or whatever.

3. Setting reminders, especially location-based reminders. As I'm walking along, I suddenly remember that I need to fix the windshield wipers on my car or something. "Remind me to fix the windshield wipers when I get home", and done. Again, way faster than setting this up by hand.

4. Quick text messages while on the go. It can both read an incoming message and write a reply. Faster than typing a reply, usually.

5. Setting timers and alarms. Put a pizza in the oven, then "timer, 15 minutes", and I get an alert when it's done.

I don't think the article is wrong, but it's a bit narrow. It concentrates entirely on search, and I agree that Siri is pretty weak with that. But Siri is good at doing stuff, at least certain stuff, on your behalf. Google's voice search can't do this on iOS at all, and my understanding is that even on Android its capabilities are much more limited.

Siri is probably over-hyped by Apple, but i personally still find it to be quite useful. It's not the all-powerful personal answer-machine that some people want it to be, but it's a handy alternate UI for many of the phone's functions.

> even on Android its capabilities are much more limited.

That's not true - in fact, Android has had functionality far beyond Siri's for ages - since FroYo at least if not Eclair or Donut - long before Siri came out. Even Engadget (of all sites!) did a comparison of the two and declared that Android's voice functionality was better.

On top of that, the new (ICS or JB) updates are really fantastic, particularly when you pair them with Google Now.

I take it that Google's page for this stuff is incomplete? http://www.google.com/mobile/voice-actions/

Is there a place with a more complete listing of what it can do?

What a great comment. I didn't know that most of these use cases worked. Thanks!

There lies one of it's biggest flaws: poor discovery.

I once sat down for a few hours and asked it tons of random questions and got a good feel for what it can and cannot answer/do. After that, it became a lot more useful to me. But most people don't seem to do that.

You can just ask it, "What can I say?" or similar and it will come up with a big list. Although I don't know how you can discover that feature... bit of a chicken-and-egg there.

There is also the (i) button on the screen that you can tap. It shouldn't be hard for anyone to find, though I guess it must be?

I recently got an iPhone 5 (been using the 4 for about 2 years now) and it came up with the big list the first time I held the home button to use it, so that functionality is not hidden.

Yeah I'm aware, but that list is not comprehensive, and doesn't do much to spark the imagination.

Here is a FULL LIST OF SIRI COMMANDS I learned a few tricks from:

https://gist.github.com/4081758

(Though it looks like this list was missing Find Friends related options.)

I think that's just the contents of the "i" button.

Pardon my ignorance as I have never used a smart phone ... you are saying Bob publishes his location to you, and you can check it at any time? I must be getting old because that sounds terrible.

There's an optional Find My Friends app which lets you check peoples' location at any time. You have to explicitly request it and they have to explicitly authorize it. You can also set up temporary events for e.g. visits to family so that you can keep track of each other temporarily but then have it expire.

I personally find it to be incredibly useful for meeting friends and such. Of course, if you don't like it, you don't have to use it.

The app "Find my Friends" allows users to accept requests to be added to someone's FMF contact list, which allows the person who added them to ping their phone at any time to find their location. It's pretty privacy breaching, but I only have 3 people added who I trust very much, and to whom it is useful.

Terrible for whom? Recalling of course that both parties consented to the idea.

I find it (or rather, Google Latitude) AWESOME. One, it's awesome for rendezvouses. Both the planned kind (I arrive first, she's not here yet, where is she, maybe I could walk a block and meet her first) and the unplanned kind (sometimes I find out my wife is downtown when I didn't expect her to be... hi honey!).

Two, I'm still tracking friends back home even though I don't live near them any more. It emphasizes the community in the world. It'd be better if more people used Latitude, though.

"sometimes I find out my wife is downtown when I didn't expect her to be... hi honey!"

Some people will find that terrible in itself, but even if you don't, there are unintended consequences. Suppose she is out there buying you a surprise present. You catch here with the present in hand; she is disappointed that you found out about it. So, next time, she switches off the 'find me' feature. You see she switched it off, and either think 'she is trying to surprise me', in which case half the surprise is gone, or worse, 'what is she hiding?'.

> "Some people will find that terrible in itself"

Right, and if they do find it terrible, they don't use the software. It's not rocket surgery.

> "What is she hiding"?

Please, I'm not a sitcom character.

To attempt to address the apparently spirit of your concern, of course there are unintended consequences (to anything). The important question is whether the net effect is "terrible" (GP's impression), "awesome" (my experience), or somewhere in between. It seems to me that the main differentiator is what relative value you (and the close friends who would be candidates for sharing location data) put on secrecy (among those close friends) vs information (about those close friends). And I am reporting that in my life, I have yet to experience any downside, I've experienced plenty of upside, and some of the upsides have been awesome.

I would certainly be horrified and angry if Google turned this feature on by default, or if user locations were published to people they hadn't consented to, or something like that.

> what relative value you ... put on secrecy ... vs information

For the last time, privacy is not about secrecy, and it is not a battle against information. It's about dignity. It's great people get value out of these features, but do understand that to those who have not assimilated into this new culture, the idea that having to dawdle in uncertainty for 10-15 minutes while you wait for your wife to meet you downtown is some burden is ... crazy!

I thought mobile phones were supposed to solve that problem anyway. It seems nobody's content enough to agree on a meeting and patiently wait for their company anymore. Either that or they are worry-warts, or just plain distrusting. I find these new values very difficult to relate to, as I cannot imagine another reason for tracking your companion like they're a specimen of some endangered species.

I'm not sure what to say to this besides, I don't know, try harder to understand other people's points of view, if you want to. Or don't, it doesn't much matter to me, although I don't see the point of popping up in these discussions otherwise.

I use Google Latitude to share my location with my girlfriend. As another poster points out, it's really handy when we're meeting somewhere and trying to figure out how long until the other arrives.

Practically it means the only people I could ever use this with would be my close family, and even then it's creepy.

>5. Setting timers and alarms. Put a pizza in the oven, then "timer, 15 minutes", and I get an alert when it's done.

Funny thing is that there are timers, alarms, AND reminders. All with different quirks.

* Timers: "Set timer for 10 minutes." Ignore the mute switch, but you can only have one at a time.

* Alarms: "Set alarm for 10 minutes." Ignore the mute switch, but don't get cleaned up automatically.

* Reminders: "Set a reminder for 10 minutes". Prompts for subject. Muted by mute switch. Require confirmation.

It's very odd from a naive perspective that the same basic commands works so differently due to slightly different wording.

I really only use Siri while driving, but there it is amazing. "How long until I arrive at my destination?", "I need gas", "play song X", things that are helpful without taking attention away from the road. I understand some higher end cars come with that functionality from the factory already, but I'm just a poor farmer, so it is amazing to have in an affordable device from my perspective.

I often wonder if Siri, and the new maps, is ultimately intended as a play for Apple to enter the automotive space in a big way. Perhaps as a hedge against Android/Google Driverless Car integration?

Voice recognition software has been like that for ages, that is an area that hasn´t improved much. There are no huge differences between them, they will just fail at different tasks.

I remember using IBM´s Via Voice back in 2000´s to dictate my school work, and it worked flawlessly - when it worked. Small deviations from the pattern were enough to make the software fail miserably.

Voice recognition is not about making it understand everything perfectly as much as it´s about providing sane failure modes.

I used it back when it was a standalone app (I'm on iPhone 4). Unless it's gotten worse meanwhile, it's far from a "gimmick".

Siri is quite good at a few mundane tasks like setting alarms and such. Is it a gimmick? Sure, but most applications are one trick ponies. It's far from completely useless. It may not be the best press for "it just works" Apple, but it's worth pursuing.

Did anyone in the tech community with knowledge of the complexity of NLP (which I would hope to be most of HN readers) really believe that Siri was anything but a gimmick? It's not as if it introduced ANY new technology--Siri's functionality has been in OS X for as long as I remember, and has sucked just as much the whole time.

However, I really like it when driving, so I don't think it's entirely a gimmick.

The new technology is the ability to track the subject of a conversation through multiple steps of indefinite pronouns. This is a subtle change but, as I understand it, very difficult to accomplish. Here's a paraphrased example I've published here before:

Me: Will it be cold tomorrow? Siri: Not too bad, the low temperature will be 57 degrees. Me: How about Saturday? Siri: Looking colder, the low temperature will be 34 degrees.

It is my second question that is the hard part. Siri "knows" that I'm still asking about the temperature, despite no reference to temperature in the text of my question. OS X and previous versions of iOS cannot do this.

> Siri's functionality has been in OS X for as long as I remember

I thought it was a recent acquisition?

Wikipedia claims April 2010: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri_(software)

What Siri was going to be before it was acquired by Apple was a voice activated way of interacting with a whole host of web services out there, like getting movie tickets from fandango, reservations from open table, etc. I think Apple will eventually get there, but it seems to be happening slower than I thought it would. It should really be my personal assistant.

I sincerely doubt it. Then again, my standards for voice activated computer assistant is hardened by Star Trek since childhood - and nothing short of true AI will probably ever get there.

Siri already talks to Open Table, and fandango can't be far behind with all the movie stuff you can do with Siri already.

Very interesting look at Siri's potential (via everyone's favorite Gruber): http://counternotions.com/2012/11/12/siri-future/

If Apple would allow developers to extend Siri with some sort of script (MAS approved even) it would be awesome. Even if the functionality was limited to speaking an address macro and then pause-to-tab you could do a lot with some personal server-side action and basic webform.

OmniFocus came up with a hack for this, using the Siri to email bridge. You can email OmniFocus, Evernote, Pinboard, etc. by making a contact for the app name. So you can Siri to them too, though at the moment only OmniFocus takes Siri related actions.

Apple is a Gimmick and a Tease

Open minded.

I only tried Siri once before deciding it was useless for me.

I asked Siri "How many inches in a foot?" which Siri heard as "How many inches in a fort". I retried it about twenty times modulating my voice to try and get it to hear foot instead of fort and eventually gave up.

If you edit the result, changing fort to foot, it seems to quickly learn the nuances of your voice. Depending on when you tried, iOS 6 also seemed to improve the results significantly, at least for me.

Yeah, it boggles my mind that people use it and expect it to work right away 100% of the time. It's almost as if they have no experience with computers or technology in general.

Or Apple has set unrealistic expectations for their product.

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