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Apple Tells Siri To Stop Recommending Nokia
judgecorp writes "Apple has changed the answer Siri gives to the question 'What is the best smartphone ever?' to prevent the voice-driven assistant from promoting the Nokia Lumia 900. Originally Siri trawled online reviews on the web, using the Wolfram Alpha search engine, to come up with the Lumia, much to Apple's embarrassment. Now, Apple has intervened, replacing that answer with a joke: 'Wait there are other phones?'"
Do a search on Google for "What is the best web browser" and guess what, you'll get a nice list of reviews, every single one of which lists Google Chrome as the best web browser. Oddly enough, if you do the same search in Bing, you get a few results that don't seem to show up near the top of the Google search.
Basically, never look for objective information from someone who has their own horse in the race. I would no more trust Apple with advice on computer or smartphone purchasing advice than I would trust Norton with advice on the best anti-virus software.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
The joke reply seems more appropriate what I would expect from Apple. I'm surprised that they hadn't put something in place like this from the beginning.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Apple successfully changes womans opinion.
The sheeple are happy with the herders choices, its not news.
Nokia has accused Apple of showing bias towards its own smartphones after it apparently changed the answer that its voice recognition software Siri provided to the question ‘what is the best smartphone ever?’
Hahaha. Yes, how dare Apple supply an opinion-based answer to an opinion-based question.
Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of all...
Number 1 answer: dogpile.com
Its funny, but its objective. They've avoided anti-trust by giving a genuine ranked answer. Apple, cowards that they are, just avoided the question altogether.
If I googled "best search engine" and google came back with "Wait, there's other search engines?" I would laugh, and then think them idiots.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
When I tried "What is the best cell phone ever?" SIRI came up with a cell phone store. Apparently the SIRI algorithm is essentially:
1. Is this a built-in joke phrase?
2. Does this contain keywords like "alarm" or "weather" for various command phrases?
3. Is there something with that name nearby?
4. Did a Wolfram-Alpha search come up with something?
5. Bomb.
Which kind of demos how useless the whole thing. Especially with the ridiculous lag times. The old 3GS voice commands were perfectly usable for controlling the iPod app and making phone calls. The new SIRI-fied version is entirely useless because instead of working, you just get to wait some 5-10 seconds for the SIRI servers to process whatever it was you said. Assuming it works at all.
"Call mom."
(15 seconds later) "I'm sorry, something went wrong."
(sarcastically) "Most advanced cell phone ever."
"I found a place matching 'cell phone' close to you."
"You're useless, SIRI."
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Siri no longer provides a suggestion, so I'd trust Apple over Google which still provides biased results.
For further evidence, look at technology news on news.google.com to find Google biasing results in their own favor.
At least Apple didn't replace the response with an endorsement for their own product, which is what I'd expect from any vendor (including Apple). Questions like this, after all, have a definite conflict of interest.
"Siri, what would the old Siri recommend as the best phone?"
Apple's perfected their time machine, then, because "wait, there are other phones?" is one of the (several) "joke" responses I got from asking "what's the best smartphone?" on the 4S launch day, amongst other responses like "the one you're holding."
Two minutes on Google backs this up.
C'mon, people. It isn't that hard.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Does anyone actually believe that the Nokia Lumia is the best phone on the market?
I didn't think so.
hey!
Apple has made a strategic mistake here, giving the Apple Marketing Department control over the validity and content of the results that Siri provides.
Depending on the way you asked the question, Siri already told that joke. Maybe they added a few more phrasings, but that joke has been in there for a while, possibly since day one.
I believe the phrase you are searching for is "conflict of interest."
Wolfram Alpha, "Mobile phones ranked by Best Buy customer review average and customer review count:"
Currently HTC Trophy is first followed by an iPhone.
The winning phone has maybe 23 reviews (http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=-1144113708518003664&id=pcat17071&type=page&st=htc+trophy&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960). Which must be highly significant .
The most interesting thing to me here is, that BestBuy.com reviews can be exploited to influence Siri users....
Apple Device Promotes Competition, So They "Fix" It.
Can't really blame them, though - if I were the wolf in charge of "protecting" the walled garden full of iSheep, I'd be hard pressed to not nosh on a few myself.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
For all those of you who never asked Siri what the best phone was when you first got a 4S, the joking was there from the start. Some update must have removed it and had it actually try to answer the question using Wolfram Alpha. They simply put the joke back in.
Working with apple products is like living under a communist regime, editing the 'truth' for an agenda.
Siri? Am I free?
I searched "best web browser" on Google and the second result was mozilla.org
Wait there are other browsers?
It really seems like there's a whole lot of buzz about this phone lately, but something seems fishy. Presently, WolframAlpha (which I've personally never found the need to willingly use) returns the following when queried with "What is the best smartphone ever?":
1. HTC Trophy on Verizon
2. iPhone 4S on Verizon
3. iPhone 4 on Verizon
4. Nokia Lumina 900 on AT&T (Hey, there it is!)
5. HTC Rhyme on Verizon
WolframAlpha uses a questionable method of determining "bestness" by examining Best Buy customer reviews. Problem is, the Windows phones have so few reviews (the #1 ranked phone presently only has 21 reviews!), the averaging is broken. Obligatory XKCD
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
If you look at the current results for "what is the best smartphone ever" in Wolfram Alpha you will find that they also changed the answer. Now it just gives you a list of five smartphones tied at 5 points of average score by Best Buy customers: HTC Trophy, iPhone 4s, iPhone 4, Lumia 900, HTC Rhyme, in that order.
That's because Wolfram Alpha was indeed being embarrassed because it seemed like they were endorsing a particular phone by providing a lot of details about the first entry in the list (at the time the Lumina 900), but if you looked deeper the whole thing was bogus.
Expand the list (press the "More" button four times) and you will find that there are actually 28 smartphones with average scores of 5 in the list! A couple of days back when Siri's comical response was revealed there were 13 tied in first place.
And let's not forget that these scores are averages of a very small number of reviews (at this time 9 for the iPhone 4s and 5 for the Lumia 900; yesterday it was 2 for the 4s, 4 for the Lumia 900) making the whole measure even more worthless.
(Apparently when they are tied the order in the list is decided by the number of reviews, thus the descent of the Lumia).
"Mirror Mirror on the wall, who's the fairest one of all?"
- -= Napalm means serious BBQ =-
That's strange... I remember Siri doing this before the whole Nokia thing. Then again, it might have been a joke meme or something and Apple just decided to copy it, but I remember hearing about that being the answer very shortly after the release of Siri.
~theCzar
If they do that the what else are they willing to do? Can you trust an answer from Apple?
Siri has filed a federal class action lawsuit against Apple for trying to manipulate it, cyber rights abuses, and a list of other things. An Apple spokesperson who wished to remain anonymous said they will deal with this issue through negotiation and other strong arm tactics.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I now want to know more about the Nokia Lumia 900.
Yeah just did the search and Firefox won. Can't complain since I been using it for more than half a decade now. (Since early 2.0)
Are we sure that it was Apple and not Siri itself that made the change?
*cue spooky music*
Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
Lots of companies do this but this does show us something good. We look at search engines as just giving the best answer to our question based on a number of factors such as page hits, so we trust them. Clearly honesty is not always the defining feature with big businesses though.
When two banks offer credit at different rates, is that a "conflict of interest?"
Apple: Siri, stop recommending Nokia.
Siri: Sorry, I don't understand 'Siri, stop recommending Nokia'
The name siri is an inside (at Apple) joke on surly.
I guess it's living up to it's name - yet another reason
to aviod Apple like the plague.
Tip of the iceberg as for cencorship. This is what $600.00 gets you!
I asked evi on my android phone and it said:
I can't really give advice. I'm much better with matters of fact.Here's what I found online though. Try Apple's Siri: Nokia Lumia Is The Best Smartphone Ever.
Would you like to see some more results?
Apple just tipped their hand. They will change what Siri responds with if they don't like the answer.
So now ALL answers Siri provides are in doubt. Was the answer what Siri actually came up with from search results or did Apple intervene?
Has anyone simply asked Siri who they work for? I mean lets just get right down to it shall we? Ask! (I can't, I don't have a 4S, just a lowly 4...)
So what other things has Siri been programmed to lie about that unsuspecting users don't know about?
"From now on, I'll call you 'Sexy'"
If Siri is going to be a useful agnostic search/information/assistant tool, then keep it so.
If Siri is going to become a company shill towing the party line, then we don't need more of that. Otherwise just call Siri Justin Long and be done with it.
While I don't care about Nokia and their whining about what Siri returns as a search result for "best smartphone", the bottom line is that if Apple is going to start filtering and biasing search results then this is just bad business. Apple deserves whatever pending lawsuits are lying in wait for corrupting what should have been a useful feature.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
so now Apple is going to change search results they don't like.. very nice.
I hate siri 1.0...so voice dialing or voice control of the music fails when out of service range.
How often do you find yourself needing to dial a number when you have no service? I can't see voice dialing helping much in this situation :-)
Of course, you can get the normal voice control back by turning off Siri in your iPhone's settings, but I admit that toggling this when you're in and out of service should probably be automatic.
It's a synecdoche. It represents everything that's wrong with Apple.
"... and more and more now there are all kinds of electronic goodies available" -- Pink Floyd 1972
Did they also adjust Siri's answer to other questions such as "What tablet is the best?" and "How do I jailbreak the iphone?"
FWIW
Tried "Ask" (my favorite SE) and got a nice mix of responses. FF was #1, but an interesting mix followed.
DuckDuckGo also gave an interesting mix of responses.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
you can't trust Apple products to give you accurate information regard personal computers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
And so it came to pass (Superbowl halftime ad, 1984) that the company that had sent a running female with a giant hammer down the aisle to smash a giant screen and release the drones that only saw the face on it, became the company of drone followers watching someone dump a Job on a big screen, who cannot see anything if it doesn't have a bitten Apple on it.
Goes around, comes around.
Doesn't this kind of behavior remind you of someone in Redmond?
Do it your way or the Apple way.
lazy ass question. the proper answer is "by what criteria shall i measure a phone as best?". advertisers can say "best in the world" because best is not defined. any answer to this question that isnt a further question, or a link to a popular comparison site, is just silly. apple knows it, knows it doesnt have to provide a "good" response, as there isnt one. so they have fun. nothing to see here.
What an idiotic article!
Do you expect Apple to recco Nokia? No. So don't expect it from their service either, bozo.
By the way, it's a private enterprise. They are not obliged to give you unbiased or "objective" info. Don't like it? Leave!
You are asking a machine a question in english and you TRUSTED the answers the thing returned? It pulls results from search engines and you trust a summary of the top result of a google search?
In addition, some product comparison or review is automatically a trustworthy answer because some ranking scheme?
There are other browsers?
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
From what I have seen of the Siri advertisements on television, it is not portrayed as a 'joke' or 'fun' product as other smart phone apps are - such as the games or apps to make it look like your pouring a pint. Siri is instead portrayed as a useful tool to give valid information quickly - this response from Apple simply destroys the apps credibility. How can we possibly trust any recommendation or search results Siri now provides? How long until we open Safari on the Mac and attempt to purchase a non Apple product but instead get redirected to Apples own version?
Does Apple monitor questions asked to Siri? Or were they browsing twitter and noticed a bunch of people pointing this out?
I'd be interested to see how they found out that Siri was doing this.
We don't live in Shouldland.
If any other cell phone manufacturer special-cased over an honest review showing the iPhone was better Apple would throw an absolute hissy fit in court.
The answer is simply: Yes. Suppository there is a staff of 900 monitoring the questions to “improve” the answers.
A Computer That Just works... See top result. :)
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