{"id":42669,"date":"2024-03-28T15:12:40","date_gmt":"2024-03-28T19:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=42669"},"modified":"2024-04-26T11:34:50","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T15:34:50","slug":"giving-up-on-siri-and-homepod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/28\/giving-up-on-siri-and-homepod\/","title":{"rendered":"Giving Up on Siri and HomePod"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jdalrymple\/status\/1770154960610537945\">Jim Dalrymple<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jdalrymple\/status\/1770154960610537945\">\n<p>Siri has done what no person could for 30 years: Make me stop using an Apple product.<\/p>\n<p>I am giving up on my 8 HomePods\/minis out of the sheer frustration of trying to use Siri.<\/p>\n<p>I&rsquo;ve been in tech for 30 years and this is one of the worst technologies ever and only getting worse<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.loopinsight.com\/2024\/03\/22\/the-dalrymple-report-march-madness-siri-and-ipads\/\">The Dalrymple Report<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.loopinsight.com\/2024\/03\/22\/the-dalrymple-report-march-madness-siri-and-ipads\/\">\n<p>We also talk about my continued frustration with Siri and why I&rsquo;m so upset with Apple.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StormGarelli\/status\/1770213687493570855\">Storm Garelli<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StormGarelli\/status\/1770213687493570855\"><p>When the HomePods were first launched, Apple said the onboard Siri had deep knowledge of music.<\/p><p>5 years later it still pronounces live albums as if &ldquo;live&rdquo; rhymes with &ldquo;give&rdquo;. And it still thinks Rush had an album called &ldquo;Two Thousand, One Hundred, and Twelve&rdquo;.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Most basically, it just doesn&rsquo;t work very well for requesting music, even for purchases that it <a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/31\/homepod-late-adopter\/\">actually has access to<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChristianSelig\/status\/1773036712437883048\">Christian Selig<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ChristianSelig\/status\/1773036712437883048\"><p>While I&rsquo;m complaining about Siri devices, it still blows my mind that HomePod, a product that has existed for over half a decade and is marketed as a speaker for your Mac, cannot pause audio in Apple&rsquo;s own apps without a 5 second delay<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/secondfret\/status\/1770441569101054024\">Josh Johnson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/secondfret\/status\/1770441569101054024\">\n<p>I honestly think Apple should kill the Siri brand. I&rsquo;m not sure it can recover from the universal understanding that it&rsquo;s just not good. Launch an LLM-powered assistant that actually does things, call it something else. Let Siri die.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Pifman\/status\/1770494754918146265\">Ty Belisle<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Pifman\/status\/1770494754918146265\">\n<p>Man, you&rsquo;re right. I&rsquo;ve thought they should make a very bold &ldquo;Siri 2.0&rdquo; announcement, but it&rsquo;s true the name Siri is so spoiled that they should ditch it. Would also allow them to come up with a new 3-syllable name (like &ldquo;Alexa&rdquo; - less accidental triggers, but still one word).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/03\/28\/siri-regressions-in-ios-17\/\">Siri Regressions in iOS 17<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/22\/2023-six-colors-apple-report-card\/\">2023 Six Colors Apple Report Card<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/12\/how-do-you-request-music-using-siri\/\">How Do You Request Music Using Siri?<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/03\/31\/homepod-late-adopter\/\">HomePod Late Adopter<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"giving-up-on-siri-and-homepod-update-2024-03-29\">Update (2024-03-29): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@craiggrannell\/112175265050526537\">Craig Grannell<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@craiggrannell\/112175265050526537\"><p>You know Apple has a tech problem when your 9yo is complaining about the HomePod you bought to replace a <em>first gen<\/em> Echo. (She&rsquo;s unhappy how Siri &ldquo;isn&rsquo;t fun&rdquo;, &ldquo;doesn&rsquo;t give you good answers&rdquo; and that it is triggered far too often when you&rsquo;re just talking. I&rsquo;m also deeply unimpressed with it from a playback standpoint. Takes far too long to respond to devices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/blog\/giving-up-on-siri\/\">Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/pxlnv.com\/blog\/giving-up-on-siri\/\">\n<p>Of course, that is not what Siri is tripped-up by &mdash; it transcribes me perfectly most of the time. But it delivers utter nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, after I ask Siri to reply to a message, it will ask which contact details to use instead of just sending the message to the phone number or email address from which it came. Just now, I asked Siri how much three tablespoons of butter weighs, and it responded in litres. This is basic shit.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Something I cannot help but wonder is whether Siri would still be so bad if users could pick something else. That goes for any platform and any product, by the way &mdash; what if you could pick Google&rsquo;s assistant on an Amazon device, or Siri on a Google device? I am not suggesting this is how it ought to be. But what if these voice assistants actually had to compete with each other directly instead of in the context of the products in which they are sold? Would that inspire more rapid development, higher quality, and more confidence from users?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@gruber\/post\/C5BxNEyxwhy\">John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.threads.net\/@gruber\/post\/C5BxNEyxwhy\">\n<p>First impressions really matter, but in Siri&rsquo;s case, it&rsquo;s over a decade of lived experience. If I were at Apple and believed the company finally had a good voice assistant experience, I&rsquo;d push for a new brand.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ajD7stzXKNE\">The iPhoneography Podcast<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.loopinsight.com\/2024\/03\/29\/the-dalrymple-report-wwdc-siri-and-defending-apple\/\">The Dalrymple Report<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"giving-up-on-siri-and-homepod-update-2024-04-01\">Update (2024-04-01): <a href=\"https:\/\/initialcharge.net\/2024\/03\/siri-homepod-give-up\/\">Mike Rockwell<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/initialcharge.net\/2024\/03\/siri-homepod-give-up\/\">\n<p>To add my two cents, I&rsquo;ve disabled &ldquo;Hey Siri&rdquo; on every device in the house. I didn&rsquo;t really find myself triggering it accidentally often, but any number of false positives is enough to be annoying.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"giving-up-on-siri-and-homepod-update-2024-04-11\">Update (2024-04-11): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jdalrymple\/status\/1777776824514228233\">Jim Dalrymple<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jdalrymple\/status\/1777776824514228233\">\n<p>So I was one of the morons that bought into the &ldquo;you can use HomePods for your home theater&rdquo; bullshit. Now I&rsquo;m stuck with HomePods in my home theater.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"giving-up-on-siri-and-homepod-update-2024-04-24\">Update (2024-04-24): <a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2024\/04\/18\/should-apple-kill-siri\/\">Tim Hardwick<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2024\/04\/18\/should-apple-kill-siri\/\">\n<p>Enthusiasm for Siri has undeniably waned in the intervening years. Despite regular updates and improvements from Apple, Siri has struggled to keep pace with its advancing rivals, and in an era of generative AI chatbots and large language models, Siri's failings have only been magnified. Issues ranging from misinterpreted commands to limited contextual understanding have not only hindered Siri's usability but have also led to an almost universal perception of the virtual assistant as a source of user frustration rather than assistance. This persistent underperformance begs the question: Is it time for Apple to kill Siri and start over?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"giving-up-on-siri-and-homepod-update-2024-04-26\">Update (2024-04-26): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@davemark\/112304212197872500\">Dave Mark<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@davemark\/112304212197872500\">\n<p>Everyone&rsquo;s experience with Siri is different. But I can tell you from personal experience that not a day goes by that Siri does not do something unexpected and, for me, just plain wrong. Piping up in the middle of a conversation where neither one of us said the word, Siri. Or understanding what I said just fine, but giving me incorrect information in reply. Every single day now.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jim Dalrymple: Siri has done what no person could for 30 years: Make me stop using an Apple product. I am giving up on my 8 HomePods\/minis out of the sheer frustration of trying to use Siri. I&rsquo;ve been in tech for 30 years and this is one of the worst technologies ever and only [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2024-03-28T19:12:44Z","apple_news_api_id":"97d013be-c682-4152-97ff-8e740d4e708a","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-04-26T15:34:55Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Al9ATvsaCQVKX_450DU5wig","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":[1230,95,2536,2538,1584,157,247],"class_list":["post-42669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-music","tag-audio","tag-audioos","tag-audioos-17","tag-homepod","tag-music","tag-siri"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42669","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=42669"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42958,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42669\/revisions\/42958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}