{"id":20517,"date":"2018-02-14T14:54:08","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T19:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=20517"},"modified":"2018-02-23T14:50:01","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T19:50:01","slug":"good-vs-better-at-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/02\/14\/good-vs-better-at-bad\/","title":{"rendered":"Good vs. Better at Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joe Cieplinski<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Without knowing where “good” is, anyone can wave either one of these comparisons away and chalk it up to priorities. Some people care more about the sound quality. Some people care more about the smart stuff. Sounds like a toss-up, right?<\/p>\n

But there’s a threshold of quality where people consider something “good.” Where the general public—not just a niche of enthusiasts—agrees that a technology has gotten significantly good enough to make it ready for prime time.<\/p>\n

We reached the “good” threshold for speakers decades ago. The subcategory of affordable bookshelf speakers got there sometime in the past few years.<\/p>\n

But we’re nowhere near “good” yet when it comes to digital assistants.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

I like the way his final chart visualizes this.<\/p>\n\n

\n

So yes, other platforms may currently be “better” than Siri. But when none of the platforms is good<\/em>, what difference does that make, except to a small niche of enthusiasts? By all means, enjoy the Echo if you want to live on the bleeding edge of voice assistants. But don’t try to convince me Apple is doomed in this space[…]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

The “doomed” narrative has taken hold because it seemed like Siri started out ahead but has<\/a> fallen<\/a> behind<\/a> and is now facing a network effect. What reason do we have to think that it can or will catch up? Still, it’s far too early to know who will win the race, or whether that’s even the right question to ask. Perhaps at some point they’ll all be good enough that people choose based on other factors. Some would argue that’s what happened with maps, where Google remains ahead, and may even be increasing its lead<\/a>, but yet Apple Maps is improving in an absolute sense and many people use it successfully.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2018-02-15): Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

But I maintain that, even if Amazon and Google aren’t that<\/em> much closer to a fully assistive software or hardware product, the ways in which Siri frequently fails are unacceptable.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2018-02-23): See also: Matt Birchler<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Cieplinski: Without knowing where “good” is, anyone can wave either one of these comparisons away and chalk it up to priorities. Some people care more about the sound quality. Some people care more about the smart stuff. Sounds like a toss-up, right? But there’s a threshold of quality where people consider something “good.” Where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1518,1360,1351,1584,247],"class_list":["post-20517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-alexa","tag-amazon-echo","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-homepod","tag-siri"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20517"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20683,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20517\/revisions\/20683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}