{"id":29014,"date":"2020-05-22T15:57:41","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T19:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=29014"},"modified":"2020-05-22T16:00:13","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T20:00:13","slug":"what-time-is-it-in-london-siri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/05\/22\/what-time-is-it-in-london-siri\/","title":{"rendered":"What Time Is It in London, Siri?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2020\/05\/22\/what-time-is-it-in-london\">John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/daringfireball.net\/linked\/2020\/05\/22\/what-time-is-it-in-london\">\n<p>Nilay Patel asked this of Siri on his Apple Watch. After <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/reckless\/status\/1263582402900713472\">too long<\/a> of a wait, he got the correct answer&#x2009;&mdash;&#x2009;for London Canada. I tried on my iPhone and got the same result. Stupid <em>and<\/em> slow is heck of a combination.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Worse, I tried on my HomePod and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/reckless\/status\/1263582402900713472\">Siri gave me the correct answer<\/a>: the time in London England. I say this is worse because it exemplifies how inconsistent Siri is. Why in the world would you get a completely different answer to a very simple question based solely on which device answers your question? At least when most computer systems are wrong they&rsquo;re consistently wrong.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>I would certainly appreciate better smarts from Siri, but the main problems I consistently have are:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p>Siri says it&rsquo;s having trouble connecting and gives up. This happens frequently, even when at home on a strong Wi-Fi signal.<\/p><\/li>\n<li><p>Siri beeps and then just gets stuck. It never acts or reports an error or resumes the audio that was playing, and it doesn&rsquo;t respond to any further commands.<\/p><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p>After nearly 9 years, I don&rsquo;t expect a perfect AI, but the basic stuff should be reliable.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/patel-siri-london\/\">Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/linklog\/patel-siri-london\/\">\n<p>What bugged me most about this, though, is that searching Maps locations through Siri and by keyboard entry frequently requires an unnecessary amount of precision. For years, getting directions to the Ikea location here in Calgary required typing &ldquo;Ikea Calgary, Alberta&rdquo;, otherwise it would consistently get directions to Ikea in Edmonton, about three hours away. Apple has fixed that now, but there are plenty of other times where it has directed me to similarly-named pizza joints and dry cleaners in the southern United States instead of mere blocks away. Why is Siri so eager to prioritize proximity for a query that is about time difference by distance, yet Maps search reliably thinks I want to travel many hours to get furniture or dinner?<\/p>\n<p>Most egregious to me was that time, earlier this year, when Siri <a href=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/blog\/rage-against-the-machine-learning\/\">suggested an inconceivable day-long road trip<\/a> instead of a route to my office. It got every possible aspect wrong of something I do with scheduled regularity.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/leancrew.com\/all-this\/2020\/05\/siri-and-context-four-years-on\/\">Dr. Drang<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/leancrew.com\/all-this\/2020\/05\/siri-and-context-four-years-on\/\">\n<p>The interesting difference between my 2016 experience and John Gruber&rsquo;s and Nilay Patel&rsquo;s 2020 experiences is that I <em>did<\/em> want the nearest city with the name I gave. It&rsquo;s fun to see the wide variety of ways in which Siri manages to choose the worthless answer, but we really should have a better assistant by now.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/15\/airpods-pro-thoughts\/\">AirPods Pro Thoughts<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Gruber: Nilay Patel asked this of Siri on his Apple Watch. After too long of a wait, he got the correct answer&#x2009;&mdash;&#x2009;for London Canada. I tried on my iPhone and got the same result. Stupid and slow is heck of a combination. [&#8230;] Worse, I tried on my HomePod and Siri gave me the [&hellip;]<\/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":"2020-05-22T19:57:44Z","apple_news_api_id":"57dfec6a-97c1-45ae-8574-ff29847d6945","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2020-05-22T20:00:16Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AV9_sapfBRa6FdP8phH1pRQ","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":[2],"tags":[618,992,1351,131,1584,31,1667,85,1947,247],"class_list":["post-29014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-maps","tag-apple-watch","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-bug","tag-homepod","tag-ios","tag-ios-13","tag-iphone","tag-m","tag-siri"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29014","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=29014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29015,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29014\/revisions\/29015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}