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Siri Sucks, Even By Apple’s Numbers
The Wall Street Journal’s technology columnist Joanna Stern interviewed Apple software chief Craig Federighi (watch the interview) ahead of the Apple Intelligence launch. It is a good chat, but one bit caught my attention:
Joanna: Siri was introduced 13 years ago, which is kind of hard to believe. Is Siri gonna finally live up to that promise?
Craig: The journey never ends. Siri processed today, I think it’s something like 1.5 billion requests every day.
If my memory serves me correctly, it’s roughly the same number Apple shared during the WWDC keynote. So, essentially flat. While 1.5 billion might appear big, when it comes to internet scale, it isn’t such a large number for a company the size of Apple. I looked up the number of active Apple devices. That number is estimated to be 2.2 billion devices — I assume this includes phones, computers, watches, headphones, TV-streaming devices, and speakers. So 1.5 billion requests a day is actually far less than one daily request per active device.
I have most of Apple’s devices and rarely does Siri get any use. And when it does, it is when I have accidentally called up Siri on occasion. I wonder if Apple includes erroneous Siri requests in this number. The only time I really use it is to start a phone call or send a text message on the Apple Watch — even though at times it calls the wrong person or garbles the message because of my East Indian accent.
In other words, I avoid Siri if possible. I have no such problems with any of the modern “voice” engines — though I know I’m compromising my privacy and giving them my voice samples for likely future abuse. Anyway, having used OpenAI’s voice interface, for example, I know what a good experience looks, feels, and sounds like. And Siri isn’t it. I pointed this out in my post earlier this week.
Siri, no matter how you look at it is a 13-year-old product. It was born in an era before the emergence of current technologies such as LLM, which carry a lot of context and understanding. Siri is a good brand to build upon, but Apple needs to really jettison Siri-as-we-know-it and replace it with something more current, modern, and functional.
Let’s hope Apple Intelligence helps Siri get a much-needed makeover.
October 23, 2024. San Francisco
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It’s not like Apple doesn’t know this, all of the leadership use Apple products every day and they must be using Siri at least some of the time. And at least some of the leadership follow tech media where the complaints about Siri run rampant. And surely they have used ChatGPT 4, Perplexity, and other audio technology and experienced the difference in quality. Since the reason can’t be that they don’t know, there must be something else going on. Perhaps the technology behind Siri is so screwed up that they are waiting for an entirely new technology to be finished. Other than that, I can’t think of any reason why we’re putting up with this.
Siri is 13-year old. The technology is outdated. The LLMs have shown a new way of voice. Siri is a great brand. They should just go with the brand and build a brand new back end and a new Siri.
Yes, that’s what I was suggesting that they’re trying to do and for some reason, probably technical challenges, it’s not implemented. Personally I wish they would just buy Perplexity but even that would have to be integrated into their infrastructure
The challenge with Perplexity is that it is much less of a big deal than most people think. Regardless, let’s see what they “build” and do with their Siri.
I wish we could turn Siri off as I have never wanted to use it. I have an aversion to any single tech platform as a monopoly in my life and that goes double for any with the ability to listen or track me.
You have been able to do this for years by flipping a switch in Settings….
Guess my wife and I are outliers then. 🙂 We use Siri all day long for home automation control, media control, timers, reminders, adding things to the shopping list an my wife is big on using Siri for search and to send texts.
I am glad that it is working for you and your wife. I mean when it does work, it can be a godsend. But it is spotty at best for most if not all. And that is the challenge of an aging technology they have not really improved.
Oh, for sure. While it is useful to us, I’ll be the first one to admit it is brittle and the underlying technology is well past its sell-by date. I also hope that Apple Intelligence leads to a re-vamp of the Siri back-end.
A very negative take on Siri, not entirely undeserved… but not completely deserved either. Like Omar, I use Siri almost every day to control things in my home, to open apps, get directions, and to look up info. We had an understanding: Siri does useful things for me, as long as I keep the limitations in mind. It was a happy arrangement. Unfortunately, in what seems another misguided change, iOS 18.1 seems to have broken many of the useful things Siri did without adding any new value. Using the old stock voice (Siri 4) I did a double take at the new, more throaty voice. Not a good start. This voice sounds angry, or put-out when it speaks. And simple things like “Siri, open Oura” are broken. “You don’t seem to have an app called [aura | ora | …].” And when I asked my Homepod “Who said ‘a busy life is a wasted life'” it suggested the answer would be available if I asked on my iPhone. On my iPhone Siri suggested if I need help I should call emergency services. Sure, Siri didn’t really get better as AI developed around it, but it used to work within certain bounds. Now it’s a crap shoot. Which is likely at the root of why so many people didn’t bother to make any requests.
Jon
I have not tried the new Siri thoroughly, so will comment once I have lived with it. I appreciate your comments and feedback.
I will be interested to hear your thoughts. I’m curious why in 18.1 with AI all the Siri voices have been modified in a way that makes them sound rather odd, and to my ear, seem more difficult to understand. It seems a step backwards; I don’t care for them at all.