Lets be honest iOS users...Siri sucks

[OneOfTheseDays]

I had high hopes for this feature, but frankly the baseline performance makes it largely unusable for me. The bottom line is the network that Siri depends on is flaky at best, often times commands take 10-20 seconds to process before Siri just gives up and you have to retry. Voice recognition is usually pretty good, but Siri isn't as good as Google at getting the contextual meaning of what you are saying right.

I hope they keep plugging away at this and don't give up, there's lost of promise here. I can't honestly recommend someone buy an iPhone based on this feature though, it has largely unimpressed me.

 

[TuxDave]

It works pretty well for me. It's usability does highly depend on the speed of the network you're on and so if you're in some spotty network coverage Siri is terrible. But when you got some decent speed I haven't had any issues.

What have you been trying to do that you've been failing at? I've been able to get sport scores pretty quickly (using a lot of team nicknames instead of the official names) and now that I get turn-by-turn I started asking Siri a lot more of "Tell me how to get home" or "How do I get to <BLAH>"

 

[Wonderful Pork]

I just got an iPhone 5 and Siri has been pretty good so far. I have really good LTE coverage by my place and it understands what I'm asking like 90% of the time ("how do I get to Courtyard Hotel Providence RI")

 

[VashHT]

It's been better than I thought it would be but I haven't used it a ton yet. I used it a lot for directions this weekend and it processed stuff in a couple seconds. It's been really good at understanding what I say too, the only thing it's failed at was when I told it to play a song, it just kept processing. I'm not sure if it's able to do that or not but I would think it should be able to.

 

[kyrax12]

One thing I don't get is why SIRI requires internet connection for simple tasks that can be done on phone like organizing the calendar and etc.,?

 

[Eug]

One thing I don't get is why SIRI requires internet connection for simple tasks that can be done on phone like organizing the calendar and etc.,?

Data mining. Big brother is watching.

 

[vshah]

One thing I don't get is why SIRI requires internet connection for simple tasks that can be done on phone like organizing the calendar and etc.,?

the voice recognition is done server-side. it can't understand what you say without a data connection.

audio file goes to server, words come back, siri then interprets. some interpretation may even be done server side.

 

[pm]

the voice recognition is done server-side. it can't understand what you say without a data connection.

audio file goes to server, words come back, siri then interprets. some interpretation may even be done server side.

But notably the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 had voice recognition for simple tasks ("what time is it?" "play songs by adele", "call my wife on the home phone") and they didn't require an internet connection. It seems to me that they could have split it out into simple and complex tasks if they'd wanted to.

 

[nickbits]

The only thing i use it for is "timer x minutes"

 

[mikegg]

I had high hopes for this feature, but frankly the baseline performance makes it largely unusable for me. The bottom line is the network that Siri depends on is flaky at best, often times commands take 10-20 seconds to process before Siri just gives up and you have to retry. Voice recognition is usually pretty good, but Siri isn't as good as Google at getting the contextual meaning of what you are saying right.

I hope they keep plugging away at this and don't give up, there's lost of promise here. I can't honestly recommend someone buy an iPhone based on this feature though, it has largely unimpressed me.

Google Now or whatever they call it on my Nexus phone sucks. I never use it. It's hard to dial numbers with it while driving. You have look at the screen to click on the title little bitsy speaker phone.

There are plenty of things that Siri does that Google Now can't. Google Now needs to have way more commands than it does right now. It needs to actually tell you information instead of just searching your query on Google. If I wanted to search for something, I'd go to the search engine. I want answers.

 

[Kaido]

The only thing that bothers me is how long it takes to dial a name. I'll say "Call Joe" and it can take up to 60 seconds for it to go out into the cloud, process it, and return it back to my phone. But I don't want to get caught using the phone in my hand, so...I wait

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Google Now or whatever they call it on my Nexus phone sucks. I never use it. It's hard to dial numbers with it while driving. You have look at the screen to click on the title little bitsy speaker phone.

There are plenty of things that Siri does that Google Now can't. Google Now needs to have way more commands than it does right now. It needs to actually tell you information instead of just searching your query on Google. If I wanted to search for something, I'd go to the search engine. I want answers.

But that's all siri does. If you want information, it just enters it into wolfram alpha and then spits back what wolfram alpha gives it.

Google does the same thing, except it has the benefit of having googles entire data archives behind it.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

But that's all siri does. If you want information, it just enters it into wolfram alpha and then spits back what wolfram alpha gives it.

Siri is more conversational. It can ask follow up questions which Google Now will not do.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

Siri is more conversational. It can ask follow up questions which Google Now will not do.

Google has already said that Google Now is a pure information aggregation tool. It is not your friend. What kind of follow up question will ever be relevant? I always ask the phone a specific question and I don't really need it to try and interpret offshoots from it. Its stuff like that, that makes siri look silly when it misinterprets the want for pictures of stallions and then asks a completely irrelevant follow up question.

 

[ControlD]

The only thing that bothers me is how long it takes to dial a name. I'll say "Call Joe" and it can take up to 60 seconds for it to go out into the cloud, process it, and return it back to my phone. But I don't want to get caught using the phone in my hand, so...I wait

That's why I use bluetooth. The voice command interface for dialing contacts has nothing to do with Siri and it works quite well. I think I tried Siri for about a week before I realized how bad it sucks and I haven't used it since.

 

[Mopetar]

What kind of follow up question will ever be relevant?

The simple example is:

Make me a reservation at 7:00 for restaurant X.

> Sorry, restaurant X is full at 7:00.

How about 6:00?

Without saving any context, the second question gets interpreted very, very differently. Siri, and many other speech recognition engines, aren't always good at doing this, but it is important. However, it's not a problem that's easy to solve and I doubt that we'll see anything more than slow progression towards it working incrementally better.

 

[ponyo]

Google Now is not about asking questions via voice. At least that's not how I use it. It's about having cards for things and info you frequently search without having to ask or search. Sort of like a widget. I don't really ask questions via voice. What I do is swipe up to see the traffic info and scores of the Braves and Falcons. And any appointments I might have forgotten about.

I view Google Now and Google Voice Actions as separate.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Google Now is not about asking questions via voice. At least that's not how I use it. It's about having cards for things and info you frequently search without having to ask or search. Sort of like a widget. I don't really ask questions via voice. What I do is swipe up to see the traffic info and scores of the Braves and Falcons. And any appointments I might have forgotten about.

I view Google Now and Google Voice Actions as separate.

Ok, that's half of Google Now. There's the part that gives you information based on what it thinks you want and in a preemptive manner.

There's also the part where Voice Search is now merged with Google Now in that you get the same information cards.

I think we're only talking about the voice search part.

 

[TuxDave]

Google has already said that Google Now is a pure information aggregation tool. It is not your friend. What kind of follow up question will ever be relevant? I always ask the phone a specific question and I don't really need it to try and interpret offshoots from it. Its stuff like that, that makes siri look silly when it misinterprets the want for pictures of stallions and then asks a completely irrelevant follow up question.

Yes, people have made Siri look much worse than it is by manipulating the follow-up feature. There was that video which made Siri seem obsessed with stallions because it was trying to figure out what you wanted to do with it in the first place.

I know that being able to follow up does help in cases where Siri mishears me and so I need to correct it.

"Set a timer for one minute" (when I meant to say two for instance)

Siri sets a timer for 1 minute.

"Sorry, change that to two minutes"

Siri changes it to two minutes.

 

[trmiv]

Aside from setting reminders, I found Siri rather useless when I owned an iPhone. Granted I also feel Google Now is rather useless on my Galaxy Nexus too.

 

[TuxDave]

Aside from setting reminders, I found Siri rather useless when I owned an iPhone. Granted I also feel Google Now is rather useless on my Galaxy Nexus too.

Before iOS6 it was mostly for calendars, alarms, timers and calling. Every once in a while I needed to convert some units but that didn't come very often.

Now.... it's mostly sport scores lol. I technically have a sports app but using Siri is still in the novelty stage.

 

[gorcorps]

Aside from setting reminders, I found Siri rather useless when I owned an iPhone. Granted I also feel Google Now is rather useless on my Galaxy Nexus too.

I haven't used Siri, but I've found google now to be useful at times. The voice recognition is good enough that it's been faster to say "where's the nearest..." rather then open my apps, open the maps app, and type in my search. I imagine Siri would be just as good in this regard so I've found uses for it. It still fits in the "gimmick" or novelty side for me, but it has made a few searches quicker.

 

[Crono]

Voice commands are the equivalent of 3D on televisions: impressive at first, but mostly just a gimmick feature.

 

[pm]

Voice commands are the equivalent of 3D on televisions: impressive at first, but mostly just a gimmick feature.

I disagree. I use voice commands constantly while driving and cycling. In fact, I think several times per day I'll hit the bluetooth button in my car and tell it to "play playlist my top rated" or "call my wife". I have a complex corporate-required passcode on my phone and I'd rather talk to it than unlock it... particularly while driving. Punching in some 8 digit alphanumeric code to unlock the phone, followed by then hitting the phone icon, and then scrolling down to whomever I want to call is much harder than just saying out loud "call steve". I know a lot of my co-workers do the same thing. I think it's a matter of personal preference and how you have things set up... bluetooth in a car is pretty cool.

 

[Zaap]

^ Same here. I use voice commands all the time in the car and now I see it as a vital feature.

That said, all of it sucks to some degree if you're expecting it to be your friend that has an intelligent conversation with you. For quick hands-free commands and information, it's great.