cush 14 hours ago

I'll bite

1. Have a user interface. Sometimes I'll ask a question and Siri actually provides a good enough answer, and while I'm reading it, the Siri response window just disappears. Siri is this modal popup with no history, no App, and no UI at all really. Siri doesn't have a user interface, and it should have one so that I can go back to sessions and resume them or reference them later and interact with Siri in more meaningful ways.

2. Answer questions like a modern LLM does. Siri often responds with very terse web links. I find this useful when I'm sitting with friends and we don't remember if Lliam Neeson is alive or not - for basic fact-checking. This is the only use case where it's useful I've found, when I want to peel my attention away for the shortest period of time. If ChatGPT could be bound to a power button long-press, then I'd cease to use Siri for this use case. Otherwise Siri isn't good for long questions because it doesn't have the intelligence, and as mentioned before, has no user interface.

3. Be able to do things conversationally, based on my context. Today, when I "Add to my calendar Games at Dave's house" it creates a calendar entry called "Games" and sets the location to a restaurant called "Dave's House" in a different country. My baseline expectation is that I should be able to work with Siri, build its memory and my context, and over time it becomes smarter about the things I like to do. The day Siri responds with "Do you mean Dave's House the restaurant in another country, or Dave, from your contacts?" I'll be happy.

  • baxtr 6 hours ago

    Thanks for sharing. 1. Could be fixed today. 2./3. need a good enough LLM.

    btw: I hope you will visit Dave's House someday in the future.

  • hyldmo 8 hours ago

    >If ChatGPT could be bound to a power button long-press, then I'd cease to use Siri for this use case

    This should be possible, go to Settings->Action Button->Controls and search for ChatGPT

  • alanning 10 hours ago

    My wife and I got a kick out of your “Games at Dave's house” example. Thanks for sharing

  • sandytoast 11 hours ago

    Isn’t its voice the ui? It should respond using the same context of the request. Voice and natural language.

    If you ask for a website it should open a browser.

    Edit: everything else spot on

    • cush 10 hours ago

      > Isn’t its voice the ui? It should respond using the same context of the request. Voice and natural language.

      Yeah it’s an interesting idea, but visuals are required sometimes. Even the simple task of “List the highest rated Mexican restaurants near me” works perfectly well enough with old crappy Siri. You’ll get a list of the highest rated Mexican restaurants near you. But as soon as you open the first restaurant, Siri closes and the list is gone. You can’t view the second restaurant. To get the list back you need to ask Siri again.

      There’s no world in which that user experience makes a viable product. It’s a completely broken user experience no matter how smart the Gemini model is.

krferriter 12 hours ago

I'm sorry, I can't answer that right now.

Would you like to click this button which takes what you said and executes it as a Google search in Safari?

  • fragmede 10 hours ago

    Now playing You're Missing, by Bruce Springsteen on Apple Music

    • adastra22 4 hours ago

      Here is Missing by Everything But The Girl on Apple Music

    • ulfw 10 hours ago

      You don't have a subscription for Apple Music. Here is 1 month free trial.

woah 18 hours ago

Siri to function above the level of Dragon NaturallySpeaking '95

  • ohyoutravel 14 hours ago

    Fantastic reference. I remember pirating this from microcrap.com in about 1996.

    • mcny 12 hours ago

      > 1996

      I'm chuckling at the idea of pirating software in 1996.

      iirc even in 1999, I couldn't figure out why Windows update required me to use internet exploder. It would take forever to download updates over dialup.

      • thisislife2 9 hours ago

        Don't remember if it was the 90's, but we got trial versions of Photoshop on some magazine CD and it was then all about searching for cracks / patches to it. These were quite small and bearable to download on dialups. And of course, even otherwise, dialups really taught all of us patience ... our generation thus knows the value of delayed gratification :).

      • croon 4 hours ago

        BBS existed long before that, and even before that we had "sneakernets" or "copy parties". I assume the term "pirating" is much newer than the concept of copying software, or copyright of said software.

      • karlshea 12 hours ago

        I definitely pirated Photoshop around 1996 from the macfilez (possibly zelifcam by then) AOL chat room.

      • cbozeman 12 hours ago

        My older brother and I were pirating software from BBSes before the World Wide Web existed.

        Talk about being there when the deep magic was written.

    • [removed] 13 hours ago
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codepoet80 17 hours ago

ANY ability to answer simple questions without telling me to open Safari and read a webpage for myself...?

andy_ppp 11 hours ago

I should be able to completely control my phone with voice and ask it to do anything it is capable of and it should just work:

"Hi Siri, can you message Katrina on WhatsApp that Judy is staying 11-15th Feb and add it to the shared Calendar, confirm with me the message to Kat and the Calendar start and end times and message."

  • rdn 9 hours ago

    They will never do this, and the lack of it can be marketed as a security feature.

    • cush 8 hours ago

      Well that’s what they sold people in June 2024

taspeotis 11 hours ago

Could it just fucking work? "Hey Siri turn on the [room name] room lights" and it gives me a positive chime and ... doesn't turn any lights on? In any of my rooms?

  • akoboldfrying 11 hours ago

    Judging by another comment, it probably turned the lights on in a restaurant in a different country.

    • ethbr1 10 hours ago

      Somewhere deep inside your iPhone, an LED is toggling.

  • Mistletoe 10 hours ago

    Apple’s insistence on not ever displaying error messages is infuriating.

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