> aware of Maps & fixing it, albeit slowly
Slow is relative here: this isn't an overnight fix. It's very, very complicated.
> iOS […] is getting tired fast & it's highly visible to the consumer.
Really? What consumers? They're on track to sell 46m iPhone 5 units in this quarter.
When people bellyache about iOS it serves to remind me that the people who debate phone operating systems on the internet are categorically not the target market. If you happen to like it then great. If not, Apple doesn't give a shit: this is a mass market consumer device.
> Siri is still a gimmick
Siri is really, really useful when it works. It needs to work faster, and it needs to work more often (i.e. not garble my input), but I'm highly impressed by it.
> esp when compared to Google's voice offerings
Which are far less sophisticated
> & how fast they've reached par & exceeded it
Unless I'm missing a Google Siri beater, you're talking about Google's voice search in its iOS app. It's much faster than Siri, but it's also much less sophisticated. I asked this very question on Quora recently[1].
> Stil no APIs, no offline capability, slow response times when it's working
Apple is feeling this out. Don't expect APIs until they work out a way to do it really simply.
Offline capacity is a joke, right? We live in a world where we're online on airplanes and even on the subway (in London). Is it in Apple's interests to spend precious engineering resource on a solution to a problems which won't exist in a few years? And I bet a lot of Siri's usage is for online activities anyway. Or put it this way: what's the point in building offline mode for Siri when it's just for setting reminders (can't do geofencing: no signal), launching apps (which can't connect to the net) and writing emails and text messages which won't get sent.
You're totally right on slow response times. It's painfully slow. My guess is that performance is now Apple's top priority with Siri.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Siri-software/Why-is-Siri-so-much-slow...