Siri is so bad at everything

The whole thing is buggered. My latest, in car, on 26.6.2 with phone connected via bluetooth. I hold the voice button on my steering wheel down to activate Siri:

"Call Fred."

"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."

"Call Fred."

"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."

"Call Fred."

"OK, calling Fred."

Phone is locked in my pocket the entire time. Like, make your damn mind up. Every time I try to call from the car now I have to ask it at least twice, usually three times.

And a completely baffling one recently, not even anonymizing names, also in car:

"Call George."

"OK adding L.S.D. by Hallucinogen to your Liked Songs playlist."

WTAF.

Here's my tiny anecdote about Siri. It's so garbage I had to name my garage door "The garage door" because without the extra THE it would often refuse or tell me that device can't be opened.

Siri needs to be spoonfed the most basic things, and it's not getting any better. Google doesn't get any passes since my Google Home appears to be getting alzheimer's after the Gemini "upgrade".

Apple Intelligence broke the ability for Siri to run a shortcut that I use daily. I have a shortcut named, "What's for dinner?" I used to be able to activate Siri and says, "What's for dinner?" and it would set off to my personal mealie server, use an API key to fetch the information, then speak the result. Now, Siri looks through my messages and finds a dinner reservation from OpenTable from months ago and declares that to be fact.

I updated my barely 1-year-old Apple Watch Ultra 3 to watchOS 27. Never installed any betas on it.

Tried to set a timer via Siri

after a spinner for several seconds:

"Cannot set a timer because the Clock app is not installed on this device."

F to the ninth heck whoever is in charge of that crap at Apple.

Agree - I've had almost all of these problems with Siri.

Another thing I've noticed is the horrible lag with updating the UI. An example: On Apple Watch I have the temperature complication bottom center. It sometimes shows the current temperature, sometimes it hasn't updated in minutes or hours (bug #1). For example right now, it shows 66 which I know is incorrect. I tap it to go to the Weather app, a different temperature will be shown (56) (bug #2) and then about 10 seconds later (bug #3) it finally updates to the actual temperature (72).

If I go back to the home screen, finally the complication shows the correct temperature (72).

These kind of async refresh bugs are not unique to WatchOS, it's endemic throughout the Apple ecosystem.

Why? Is this poorly coded JavaScript web view apps? Is this React? Some sort of other async framework that works fine when you are testing on the Apple campus but doesn't work in the real world?

Siri is the only thing in the whole universe which can make me rage. Not computers, not $dayjob, not my car, not getting lost while riding a rally in the desert, not people. Siri. Only Siri can do that.

The only voice assistant that has impressed me recently is the new ChatGPT Voice Mode with background reasoning. It's miles ahead of the other assistants.

The only downside is that it lacks the OS integration of Gemini or Siri. I've been trying to figure out a way to trigger it with the button on my pixel earbuds, but no success - seems it only works with Gemini.

I was optimistic that Apple would get this right but Siri AI is yet another embarrassment in a long continuing series of Apple embarrassments.

I went from being overly exuberant on AI to now thinking it probably should be banned outright. From a consumer perspective, the tech industry is a dead end and the internet now is at best a pipeline for content for your TV and sound system and the rest feels like it should be ignored and avoided.

Unless there are radical changes on the horizon, there is no way I’m investing any more in the Apple ecosystem and I’m saying this as a former Apple employee and fan.

I'm sure there will be someone to defend Apple here. "Maybe it's a privacy thing"

What a pile of garbage Siri is.

Gemini in android auto just refuses to place calls for you now for "safety" but will also have an extended argument with you about that at the same time.

First request after enabling Siri AI Beta:

“Play Powerwolf on Apple Music.”

“Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.”

“Play PowerWOLF on Apple Music.”

“Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.”

“Fine, just play Sabaton”

It got that right I guess :/

But aside from the accuracy, I’m finding requests take much longer to action. 15 seconds to add a reminder yesterday. Not sure if that’s just me or normal now?

Siri IS bad at many things, but the Reddit post is not a particularly compelling example. I am continually astounded by the fact that Apple has had an on-device voice assistant for 15 years, on a vertical hardware/software stack that they own completely, and yet which cannot reliably perform even the most basic tasks.

Inconsistent capabilities: it can toggle do not disturb, but not "silence unknown callers". It can disable auto-brightness but not automatic screen lock.

Completely brain-dead responses even within things it is capable of affecting: "delete all alarms except for my 7:30 AM alarm" → "I deleted your 7:30 AM alarm"

And even with features that actually do work, subtle details of that feature inexplicably change over time, and they happen to be details I was relying on: asking Siri to set an alarm for a given time used to respect whatever ringtone I had last chosen (and which IS respected when I physically tap the + button to add a new alarm), but sometime over the past five or so years it switched to creating alarms with the default sound.

And so many more things that I can't recall the top of my head right now. Siri is an inexcusable failure by a company that supposedly prides itself on user experience and which has had every opportunity for a decade and a half to do better.

edit: One more I just remembered. For a decade, me saying "call [WIFE'S NAME]" would 100% of the time result in my wife being called. Back in the spring, Siri inexplicably decided to call the number of a woman I hadn't seen in the past decade, and whose name is pronounced the same but spelled differently. I had to delete that contact from my phone to be able to call my wife again using Siri.

Sometimes I think I'm the only one on HN that doesn't use a digital assistant.

Like yeah, I'll use ChatGPT all the time at home, and Claude all the time at work. I'm not anti-AI.

But I'm an Android user and I barely use Gemini at all. I don't have a smart home and never will because it just seems pointless. I walk by the light switches on my way in/out of a room. It takes less effort to just reach up and hit the switch as I walk in/out than to say "okay google, shut off the office lights" and hope it answers.

On rare occasions, if I want to find out a quick factoid, I'll ask a question, but that's as far as my usage goes.

"Hey Siri, continue playing my audiobook" used to work, now it starts a random book from my library, even ones I've already listened to. "Hey Siri, play" used to continue playing whatever was last playing, now it starts random songs on Apple Music. Those are the only two things I use Siri for apart from controlling lights.

So it’s pretty obvious that Siri sucks.

Is Apple acknowledging it? Do they have an explanation? What’s their narrative?

I’ve heard a wide variety of excuses including privacy as the reason Siri sucks. Truth is, if you can’t get your assistant to add 5 minutes to a running timer, it’s a product failure. It has nothing to do with privacy or AI or LLM or MCP. It’s just a bad product. Either the product managers don’t know how their users use it or they do but the engineers can’t easily change the code to add functionality or the leaders don’t care enough to prioritize basic features.

This finally works in iOS 27. Something Alexa has been able to do for what 5 years? Probably longer.

It's the exact wrong place for an LLM. It SEEMS like it should be the right place, but it isn't.

The old way of doing commands and voice was far superior and made far fewer mistakes.

Funnily, I saw a skyrim mod I believe here on HN that got this right. They did fast commands through more standard voice and language recognition and shunted off more complex conversations only when that failed. It enabled them to do really impressive things with their ingame dog.

Interesting to see people are still having issues with and are hating on Siri after this newest update. So far I have not been having problems and it works better for me than before. I've even found a few new use cases that have worked wonderfully, like creating Reminders lists or calendar events based on what's on the screen. I still treat Siri like it's dumb though, so perhaps that's the difference.

I was optimistic when I updated MacOS, iOS, and got a new series 12 watch to replace my series 8. But... it's terrible. It doesn't seem to be able to do much of what I ask, and Siri on my watch is somehow less responsive than it was on my Series 8 watch. When I talk to Siri on my watch, the Siri icon thing spins around as if it does something, then it does nothing? I don't understand.

The bug that I think was actually fixed (or maybe I just haven't hit the spot on the roulette wheel again since the beta):

- Call Mom

- What app should I use? (only offers the default Phone app

Immense rage - The only freaking app I've ever used to call her. You didn't even give me a reasonable alternative. We don't talk on FB Messenger/WhatsApp/etc (nor do I use them at all).

New Siri is _very slightly_ better for some tasks and infinitely worse in others.

I'm not sure if it's Gemini's fault or Apple's, I lean heavily towards it being Apple's fault and at the end of the day it doesn't matter if the underlying model is blame, it's the model Apple picked so it's Apple's fault.

I had hopes that "New Siri" would help wash away the stain of WWDC 2024 and the incredibly embarrassing new (old) Siri launch. Instead they've doubled down to prove their complete incompetence.

It's telling that I sit here with AirPods on my desk, an Apple Watch on my wrist, an iPad sitting next to me, an iPhone on a stand in front of me, all while typing on a MBP, and I have zero interest in touching their "AI" with a 10-ft pole while I use millions-billions of tokens other models every month. My phone would be the ideal AI device if it actually worked worth a damn. Instead I do use AI on my phone all the time, through the Claude and ChatGPT apps which would both blow away Siri if they had the access to my phone's data. I recognize the dangers in that, I've even agreed with Apple's line in the past about how they are the only ones that can be trusted with that access but they are terrible stewards who clearly don't have a clue what they are doing.

I have better results remote connecting to a Claude Code session on my computer to do anything of value instead of reaching for Siri.

Apple makes great products, and I am well vested in its ecosystem.

With that said - there are three areas of their products that are substandard.

- Siri, as discussed here

- autocorrect - which is insanely bad. I switched to Gboard a while back - and despite its occasional lagging (it depends too much on an internet connection) it’s such a relief. No more fighting autocorrect over words, especially after committing by hitting space.

- and… the whole way you register devices with Apple home - incredibly painful. Thinking they were trying to make it more secure, but they utterly failed at friction and usability. I suspect their ecosystem would be a lot bigger if they simplified how you interact with Home to register devices.

At this point if people keep buying Apple products expecting Siri to get better, that's on them.

My fav is the siri search bar now withholds backup results like "Search the Web" and instead only gives me the siri results which are useless in my spotlight search on iPhone. So much for apple making their own search engine.

Is there any way to tap into Facetime from a non-Apple device?

From what I can see the only thing that durably keeps me on iOS at this point is Facetime.

(Siri AI is bad. Lots of "Did you mean". I'm back on Siri Classic now.)

People tempted to buy that new iHome thing should pause and think about how bad Siri has always been.

You might as well take an old iPod and stick it to the wall. (Yes I said iPOD, not iPad)

Well, everything but privacy and efficiency because it runs on your device and not on a remote server. This also explains why Siri still isn’t good.

The product managers and developers at Apple have a unique capability to gaslight an atrocious user/developer experience as excellent.

Folks who parrot the same are just a symptom of the underlying epidemic that permeates the ecosystem.

Some of their engineering deficiencies just happen to be masked by integration with better hardware.

For example, the iOS mmap limit is stupid and ridiculous. But it paved the way for us to work around the restriction by rebuilding Dip's architecture, resulting in a better, more simplified mental model along with increased performance and parallelism.

These benefits are applicable cross-platform and not just for Apple's OS. This subsequently also acted as an indirect but causal trigger to later build our own KV engine: Singularity.

Thus my experience with Apple has been bittersweet. The frustration with their ecosystem and their stupidity was beneficial in hindsight.

I am torn halfway between pitying and thanking them.

Couldn't they use something like Jev to make Siri really good and fast at processing the most frequent commands?

I wouldn’t mind it being useless if only I could remove it from my device. :(

While certainly drastically better than before, it still fails at so many of the basics. I use primarily in the car, when need to be hands free. My requests are almost always say, "Directions to Starbucks". Which Starbucks.. and proceeds to list multiple then have to remind it each and every time the one first one... the one closest to me.. the one always go to... etc. So then try to do Directions to Starbucks (Town Name) (that I'm currently in, and still asks did you mean this one or this one, or everyone in a while will say did you mean City (state I'm in), aka the one down the street or did you mean that city but in another state a hundred miles away that you have never gone to. Those types of things always happened with old Siri and persist with new Siri. But now almost always when asking for reminders etc, before it would handle fine, not it says did you mean "what I said), or swapping out word for another someone similar word, etc. The problem before was it had essentially no memory or ability to learn about me. With LLMS thought that would finally change, but it has not ing general. I can say call John. And it will say did you mean John (the one you call every day for the past decade) or do you mean the John, you have never called but is in your contacts from High School? ChatGPT is amazing, and knows me and never makes any of those mistakes but of course is less integrated than Siri can be. Here's for hoping with the new LLM foundation Siri will be able to grow more quickly, but right now, it is the dumbest of the bunch. I get they don't want it to be a full chat bot, and I'm ok with it being more limited, but if it's going to be limited to a certain domain, such as control the home, setting alarms, reminders, directions, it should be absolutely rock solid at that.

It's unmitigated infantilism. Outside of the physically disabled, who would need such a feature? Is touching your phone to make a call less convenient than speaking to it? If touching your phone is so inconvenient, then why do most adults spend hours per day on their phones?

What most of these sorts of features do is not to add convenience; instead they remove the need to exercise impulse control. They reduce "friction," which means you do the action more often. But they don't improve convenience. Convenience is not needing to walk outside to the well to fetch a bucket of water. It's not someone making an app so automatic that you no longer need to use your executive function.

Shortcuts automation is significantly better than Siri, they should just train a small model to work with it instead of whatever Siri is

Almost as if the non-deterministic matrix weight program doesn't take explicit instructions and produce the same answer each time. If only we had some sort of language we could use to "program" something to work that way.

How is a link to a reddit thread with 2 sentences on the front page? This place has gone WAY downhill.