Opting Out of Sharing Siri Audio Recordings
Today’s iOS 13.2 beta introduces a new option that allows iPhone and iPad users to delete their Siri and Dictation history and opt out of sharing audio recordings, features that Apple promised after being called out for its Siri quality evaluation processes.
And on Catalina, Steve Troughton-Smith notes:
That’s definitely more explicit than before…
That’s an improvement, but it still says “Not now” instead of “No”
This year Apple lost the ability to write ‘no’, instead they’ve had to replace it with ‘not now’ everywhere.
It’s their new design pattern.
Previously:
Update (2019-10-14): Kaveh Vaghefi:
This is nice and all, but where is this for the HomePod, which is sitting in your home and always listening?
Update (2019-10-16): John Gruber:
In a briefing with Apple, I was told that even if you opt in to “Improve Siri & Dictation”, no one at Apple will ever review a Siri interaction until 24 hours have passed. So if you ever do say anything to Siri you don’t want reviewed, you have a full day to delete your history.
The setting and history seem to be per-device—with the Mac and HomePod versions unavailable so far.
Update (2019-11-05): Josh Centers and Adam Engst:
Apple should be ashamed of the Improve Siri & Dictation splash screen. The choices are “Share Audio Recordings” and “Not Now,” which implies that you will eventually want to share your Siri recordings—resistance is futile. Would it have killed some marketer to say “Keep Audio Recordings Private” or something similar? Plus, you can change this setting later, but Apple hides it in System Preferences > Privacy > Analytics & Improvements. And no, searching for “Siri” in System Preferences won’t find that preference pane.
Update (2019-11-06): Kyle Howells:
This is a pattern Apple uses all over the place now, and it’s so unbelievably user hostile.
It reads as being like the ‘update now or later’ messages & makes me think the choices are “give in now, or be periodically nagged until you eventually give in later’.
Update (2020-01-03): Ben Sandofsky:
At some point Apple decided it was fine to use Settings for growth hacking. First we got Apple Pay prompts, and this year we get AppleCare.
The “days remaining” adds a time constraint, because Settings should pressure you like a used car salesman.
The Human Interface Guidelines says buttons should use verbs. For example, “Continue” and “Decline.” When a salesman calls the shots you get[…]
6 Comments RSS · Twitter
@Peter That is true, although except in the case of Catalina, “Not Now” is usually rendered as text that doesn’t even look like a button, so I’m not sure how many people even realize it’s a choice.
To be honest, I don't mind "not now". It accurately conveys that this decision is not final; I can change it later. What I hate is when the buttons are clearly visually designed and placed to influence me toward their preferred answer.
Button titles should never be "Yes" or "No", and this is in Apple's HIG. Button titles should be actions, like "Save" or "Don't Save", and this applies to radio buttons too. Here's a direct quote from the "Radio Buttons" section of the HIG ( https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/buttons/radio-buttons/ ):
> Give radio buttons meaningful titles. Each radio button’s title should clearly describe the effect of choosing it. Generally, use sentence style capitalization without ending punctuation.
In this way, "Not Now" is actually a violation of the HIG. If these button titles were an action, there would be no need even for the "Not Now" phrasing, and people would understand what they were doing without having to read the whole notification. AND it would get away from the spectacular weasel wording of "Not Now".
@Simone
Good catch! Yet, after years of constantly ignoring their own human interface guidelines, 10.15 was likely not the time Apple was going to start caring. Which is unfortunate.
Now it”s “Your iCloud storage is almost full, upgrade now”
There’s one very positive thing about using "not now" instead of no. Most people probably won’t read the message, and some won’t understand the implications. These people will probably prefer "not now" to get rid of the message and therefore won’t be nagged into agreeing. With just "yes" and "no", I bet that a much larger share would simply agree, as we are trained to do.