alt Hacker NewsThe core of Apple's problem boils down to apathy towards their product quality. I just recently switched from using Siri to Google Gemini in my car. The experience is dramatically better.
And this is the case across the board.
My friend's Fitbit works way better than my Apple watch.
Third and final example is how bad Apple's native dictation engine is. I can run OpenAI Whisper models on my Mac and get dramatically better output.
As a long time Apple fan who's had everything since before the first iPhone, I feel this apathy towards product quality cannot be disguised as some strategic decision to fast follow with AI.
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> My friend's Fitbit works way better than my Apple watch.
I went through three FitBits. After the third failed just outside warranty I got an Apple watch, which has outlasted all three FitBits.
The Fitbit is great until it bricks itself. Which it will. Probably in a year or two.
I'll have to disagree on Fitbit being better.
But for everything else, you literally just said, the handful of AI features are better on Google products... That seldom makes the product as a whole better.
>> My friend's Fitbit works way better than my Apple watch.
That's odd because I've used both, along with a bunch other wearables (e.g. Whoop), and I wouldn't give up my Apple Watch for anything. Massively useful, can take calls, make payments, stream music from my Apple playlists, read and reply to messages, and a ton of other things.
You're arguing about product quality by using product availability examples.
Siri isn't competing with Gemini, yet.. Siri is old tech, Gemini is the new tech.
Same with dictation.
Siri hasn't been updated generationally with SOTA to compete with Gemini yet.. it simply hasn't been updated. This is part of the "slow pace" that the post is talking about (part of, not entirely the slowness though).
For example, Amazon updated my old Echo dots with Alexa+ beta, and it's pretty good. I have Grok in my Tesla, and though I don't like Grok or xAI, it's there and I use it occasionally.
Apple hasn't done their release of these things yet.
> My friend's Fitbit works way better than my Apple watch.
My husband has a Fitbit and it's so buggy he left it sit on the shelf most of the time - the only times he'd wear it is for exercise.
Siri is bad though, but I have found Google Voice Assistant and Alexa both really have become bad over time, to the point of us just giving up on them completely. My husband is on Android and I'm really surprised how bad voice assistant is despite all the Gemini launches! (mind you he has an Australian accent)