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murermaderyesterday at 11:27 PM2 repliesview on HN

> Siri does what I need it to do

Not true for me at all, it fails at the most basic tasks, sometimes even at tasks it has done before. Three examples:

- "Timer 5 minutes" -> Loading spinner is shown. Siri disappears after a few seconds. No error, no confirmation. I then have to manually check if the timer was set or not (it was not).

- "Turn on the lights in the living room" to which it responds "Sorry, I cannot do that". I have Phillips Hue lights that are connected to Apple Home, of course Siri can do that. It did that before.

- "Add tooth paste to my shopping list". The shopping list is a list I have in reminders. It then tries to search for the query on Google. I then tried "Add tooth paste to the list shopping list in reminders" which worked, but if I have to be this wordy, it is no longer any convenient.

There are many more simple cases in which Siri always / sometimes fails. I also have the feeling that it performs far worse if asked in my native language (German) than in English.


Replies

bombcartoday at 5:27 AM

The lights thing is insane and annoying.

"Turn on living room lights" - "There are no lights in the living room"

"Turn on living room lights" - lights turn on.

Naming some of my lights Greg has helped a bit.

DrewADesignyesterday at 11:31 PM

Yeah that’s strange. I set timers constantly both at home and work and I can’t recall a single time it hasn’t worked. I periodically add things to lists without issue. I have zero experience using it in another language. Maybe their testing sucked for that?