'I'm Not Sure I Understand' -- How Apple's Siri Lost Her Mojo (wsj.com)

Apple has struggled to make Siri as smart as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa because of disagreements among its staff and its decisions to limit how long it stores user data, former Apple employees told The Wall Street Journal. The company unveiled a new version of Siri during its WWDC keynote address on Monday but failed to show the world how it's much better than competing products from Google and Amazon (alternative source). There are a few areas where blame can be placed. The Journal said Apple keeps data for only six months while Google and Amazon continue to hold on to it, learning more and more about specific users as they continue to use the personal assistants. From a report: Some former executives, close observers and even devoted customers say Apple's innovative power appears to be waning, stymied by a lack of urgency and difficulty bringing ideas to fruition. In nearly six years under Chief Executive Tim Cook, Apple's stock has soared but the company has not delivered a breakthrough product on par with the string of hits under late founder Steve Jobs, which included the iPod, iPhone and iPad. "Siri is a textbook of leading on something in tech and then losing an edge despite having all the money and the talent and sitting in Silicon Valley," said Holger Mueller, a principal analyst Constellation Research, a technology research and advisory firm.

Comments

Never used it...

[__aaclcg7560]

I had Siri-enabled iPhones for several years but never used the feature. Probably because I'm a visual person and prefer text over speech. Having used Amazon Echo at a friend's place, I have no desire get that or an Apple HomePod.

Re:Never used it...

[Anubis IV]

it certainly isn't worth having it always listening for "Hey, Siri" akin to the creepy home listening devices.

While I agree, I think it's worth pointing out a key difference: Siri determines on-device whether you said "Hey, Siri", and only starts transmitting after that.

In contrast, after receiving an Echo Dot as a gift from my company last year, we found a section in the companion mobile app (which, suspiciously, no longer seems to be available) that gave you a list of every time Alexa thought you had talked to it. Creepily, it even provided the recordings themselves so that you could listen through them to evaluate its performance and let Amazon know if Alexa had messed up. After listening to a few dozen of the recordings, it became apparent that Alexa was always listening and always transmitting, even if you weren't talking to it, since the recordings frequently started before we ever talked to it, as well as containing comments we had made long after accidentally triggering it.

My wife, a "normal" non-nerd, was the one who was initially in favor of setting it up, and she's the only one who ever got any regular use out of it (as a voice-activated Pandora player), but even she's creeped out enough by it now that she asked if I'd be okay selling it on Craigslist.

That's a NEGATIVE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wiping user data after six months is a landmark for the industry!

It's all about Jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

When Apple lost Jobs in the '90s it almost failed. Only his return in 1997 saved Apple from the tech company trash heap. Every new innovation Apple ever pushed to success was championed by Jobs. Note I said championed, not developed. Jobs was an idea man. The only ideas Cook has are socio-political. It's dead, it just hasn't caught on yet. Eventually Apple will sell off its existing tech to try to exist a little longer. The days of its introducing new tech world changing innovation are gone.

WTF: "Failed to show its products were superior?"

[Actually, I do RTFA]

The summary says Apple failed to show its products were superior to its competitors. Two sentences later, it says Apple's users data is only retained for 6 months, unlike its competitors which retain it for longer. Does it not realize that answers the question conclusively about which is superior?