Siri was also completely miscommunicated from the beginning. I could never get Siri to do what I wanted, because I didn't realize that it had a very strict and narrow menu, but it never communicated what that menu was, and had no way of saying "here are the 5 things you can tell me about." And then there were the network communication issues where you don't know why you're not getting a response, or if Siri is going to work at all.

Every few years I would try to use it for a few days, then quit in frustration at how useless it was. Accidentally activating Siri is a major frustration point of using Apple products for me.

Siri is really a pretty useless product. Its annoying that sometimes I can say “siri is x y” and it will answer me but other times it will respond “sorry I cant google this while youre driving” or whatever response. I see no reason I cant say “siri read me the wikipedia page on the thirty years war”. Why cant I query with siri? “Siri where is the closest gas station coming up?” I basically only want siri whilst driving and half the features are turned off then.

Alexa is in the same boat. Compared to old-fashioned finger-and-screen interfaces, maybe voice simply isn't a great way to interact with computers in the general case. It's inconvenient, unreliable, and even if it works quite slow. Yet you see companies continue to chase the dream in the current generative AI craze.

I get the sci-fi "wow" appeal, but even the folks who tried to build Minority Report-style 3D interfaces gave up after realizing tired arms make for annoyed users.

> A decade and a half is insane timeline in tech industry, and huge majority of users use Siri the same way today as 15 years ago, setting a timer or an alarm clock.

Also quite good for making shopping lists, with some bonus amusement when you get a weird transcription and have to try to work out that "cats and soup" is "tonkatsu sauce" several days after you added it to the list.

if anything, siri has gotten worse over the years, which is wild.

it used to be able to set a timer or alarm 100% of the time, now sometimes it decides it needs to ask chatGPT for help.

Steve Jobs passed away the day after Siri’s release, and I don’t think anyone else had the confidence and internal credibility to push the hard organizational changes Siri needed, similar to when he moved Apple to a single P&L when he returned.

I'd throw in the failure to do anything meaningful with home automation, which I guess could fall under the Siri umbrella of failure. Maybe I'm still peeved big tech bought up the industry just to kill any innovation.

Uses for Siri:

1. Checking the current temp or weather

2. Setting an alarm, timer, or reminder

3. Skipping a music track or stopping the music altogether roughly 3 seconds after hearing the command, or 1 second after you assume it didn't work

<end of list>

The tension is that there's a big chasm of utility from those things until you're compete-with-Google-Search levels of good. I feel like I heard there was an Amazon UX study that said weather, music, and alarms/timers are all people use Alexa for. And even with the best LLM, that's probably all you want out of a smart speaker.

A whole bunch of assistants have gotten way worse in the last decade by chasing features at the expense of utility. I don't care about whatever new feature my speaker has, but if it fails to play a song or check the weather, I'm PISSED.

It's actually crazy how they've seemingly managed to do absolutely nothing with Siri in a decade and a half. I legitimately have no idea what features it has had added, but I still try basic things and am shocked at how useless it is.

I was excited when I recently got an iPhone 16 Pro - it comes with Apple Intelligence! Surely this is how Siri leaps into the future and starts doing things like translating for me, or responding with a photo and some basic facts when I ask who Ariana Greenblatt is, or letting me convert from Krore to USD (it gives results for rupees every time it seems?) or...

Anyways, I asked it something basic, and Siri said it would have to use Apple Intelligence. Not like, prompting me if I want to use it, just saying it's needed, then turning off. I'm pretty confused as to what Apple Intelligence is at this point, since I assumed it would be Siri. "Hey Apple Intelligence" doesn't do anything, so I ask ChatGPT. It informs me that AI is, in fact, part of Siri. I... do not know why it gave me that response.

Back to timers and alarms.

Edit - this is your daily reminder that you can NO LONGER SHUT OFF IPHONES BY HOLDING DOWN THE POWER BUTTON.

It also pioneered billions of other users with "hey google" and "siri" uselessness which also copied and then completely flatlined with things to do beyond calling the wrong person in your call list, setting timers, and playing the wrong song.

Voice Assistance was a thing long before Siri, and was arguably more useful because it was less smart, the keywords worked more predictably.

Siri isn’t the only one.. Amazon has the same story with Alexa, but they did get to Alexa+ before Siri’s successor bowed.

Yep. It was theirs to lose… and they lost it.

I know, it's lame. Over that amount of time Apple with the help of third party developers could have walked much of useful distance we now are trying to run to with LLMs for controlling devices. Unfortunately Apple neither wanted to give up the interaction point to developers nor develop it themselves, and only gave users some control super late with Shortcuts.

I used it exactly so (timers and alarm clocks) until after some updates it wouldn’t react to my voice even half the time. I haven’t tried it since in 10 years.

People really thought Siri was what LLM chat bots are today.

So now can we all agree that voice interfaces are mostly useless? Other than "Siri, set a timer for ten minutes" while your hands are full in the kitchen. Siri could never work because voice interfaces are not good.

Google Now. It's even completely gone and forgotten.

Honestly, my experience with Siri is that it works worse than it did 10 years ago. It's not clear to me if that's with Siri itself or just the general decrease in quality of Apple software over the past N years, but zero changes would have been an improvement.

Things that seemed to work reliably for me 10 years ago but now do not:

1. "Call mom". Siri has apparently forgotten who my mother is. I tried "Hey Siri <name> is my mother" and I got an error. I'm sure it's resolvable but come on.

2. "Directions to <destination>" This always used to fail when it couldn't find places, but lately, when I'm driving, Siri will respond "Getting directions to <destination>" and then... nothing. No directions come up. I have to do it 2-3 times to have the directions actually start.

I'm amazed 'set a reminder for x when I leave this location' still doesn't get the 'when I leave this location'. It's clear user expectation created internally (by siri marketing) and externally (by ai tools) has far outpaced capability.

The one God-damn thing I really liked using it for, "skip to next chapter" in CarPlay podcasts, they REMOVED.

It’s got worse in the past few years, I think thought they might have impeded it so that the waited for improvements were that much more apparent.

> A decade and a half is insane timeline in tech industry, and huge majority of users use Siri the same way today as 15 years ago, setting a timer or an alarm clock.

When it works!

I’ve spend days where it goes wonky and says something went wrong for anything I ask. How is it that with modern phones the voice recognition and whatnot isn’t running locally?

hey, the most reliable way to send something to yourself is still via email. if it works it works.

Because almost no one (outside of accessibility needs) truly needs or wants to use voice to control their device. It’s one of the few UX fetishes that refuses to die.