Tried to set a timer via Siri
after a spinner for several seconds:
"Cannot set a timer because the Clock app is not installed on this device."
F to the ninth heck whoever is in charge of that crap at Apple.
There is no use for it if I cannot simply raise my wrist and set up a timer or create a reminder without any problems.
I’m not going to have a full conversation with Siri when I’m moving about and need to remember something or need a quick timer for a meal.
Do these engineers ever use these products or do they simply throw it away after the fancy presentations they do?
"Call Fred."
"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."
"Call Fred."
"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."
"Call Fred."
"OK, calling Fred."
Phone is locked in my pocket the entire time. Like, make your damn mind up. Every time I try to call from the car now I have to ask it at least twice, usually three times.
And a completely baffling one recently, not even anonymizing names, also in car:
"Call George."
"OK adding L.S.D. by Hallucinogen to your Liked Songs playlist."
WTAF.
Literal 10 seconds later.
“Setting the scene good night.”
Another 2-3 seconds later, the lights go off.
I don’t understand what it’s trying to do, simple tasks should be instant, what am I waiting for? The entire Siri became unusable and simply trash.
Edit: For reference, it used to turn off the lights as I complete my sentence and put my wrist down.
What a pile of garbage Siri is.
Inconsistent capabilities: it can toggle do not disturb, but not "silence unknown callers". It can disable auto-brightness but not automatic screen lock.
Completely brain-dead responses even within things it is capable of affecting: "delete all alarms except for my 7:30 AM alarm" → "I deleted your 7:30 AM alarm"
And even with features that actually do work, subtle details of that feature inexplicably change over time, and they happen to be details I was relying on: asking Siri to set an alarm for a given time used to respect whatever ringtone I had last chosen (and which IS respected when I physically tap the + button to add a new alarm), but sometime over the past five or so years it switched to creating alarms with the default sound.
And so many more things that I can't recall the top of my head right now. Siri is an inexcusable failure by a company that supposedly prides itself on user experience and which has had every opportunity for a decade and a half to do better.
edit: One more I just remembered. For a decade, me saying "call [WIFE'S NAME]" would 100% of the time result in my wife being called. Back in the spring, Siri inexplicably decided to call the number of a woman I hadn't seen in the past decade, and whose name is pronounced the same but spelled differently. I had to delete that contact from my phone to be able to call my wife again using Siri.
“Play Powerwolf on Apple Music.”
“Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.”
“Play PowerWOLF on Apple Music.”
“Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.”
“Fine, just play Sabaton”
It got that right I guess :/
But aside from the accuracy, I’m finding requests take much longer to action. 15 seconds to add a reminder yesterday. Not sure if that’s just me or normal now?
The old way of doing commands and voice was far superior and made far fewer mistakes.
Funnily, I saw a skyrim mod I believe here on HN that got this right. They did fast commands through more standard voice and language recognition and shunted off more complex conversations only when that failed. It enabled them to do really impressive things with their ingame dog.
With that said - there are three areas of their products that are substandard.
- Siri, as discussed here
- autocorrect - which is insanely bad. I switched to Gboard a while back - and despite its occasional lagging (it depends too much on an internet connection) it’s such a relief. No more fighting autocorrect over words, especially after committing by hitting space.
- and… the whole way you register devices with Apple home - incredibly painful. Thinking they were trying to make it more secure, but they utterly failed at friction and usability. I suspect their ecosystem would be a lot bigger if they simplified how you interact with Home to register devices.
Is Apple acknowledging it? Do they have an explanation? What’s their narrative?
From what I can see the only thing that durably keeps me on iOS at this point is Facetime. Is there any way to tap into Facetime from a non-Apple device?
A smarter release would have been extremely limited in scope, heavily tested, and aimed simply for feature parity. Or even scoping it to just one section, like editing/adding/updating calendar events and all associated functionality. Or even exploring routing to much-less hallucinatory, more performant models like CNN for certain tasks instead of just throwing everything at probabilistic model and hoping for the best.
But that's not the way of AI-pilled middle manager thinking now.
While I’m away from my phone: “hey dingus play podcasts”
“I’m sorry you don’t have Apple Music subscription”
Apple should stop pushing for subscriptions. Especially when nothing is working anymore.
Legend2440•38m ago
The only downside is that it lacks the OS integration of Gemini or Siri. I've been trying to figure out a way to trigger it with the button on my pixel earbuds, but no success - seems it only works with Gemini.
modeless•13m ago