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'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.
It used to be good for stuff that takes a bit of fussing to enter, like a timer or a calendar reminder and so on. Lately for whatever reason it has become even more useless than it already was... "Set 10 minute timer" and it searches the internet for that string...in any case it certainly isn't worth having it always listening for "Hey, Siri" akin to the creepy home listening devices.
In the past, Siri was pretty much equivalent to a speech-recognition interface to the Google search box. That, plus "hey Siri, set a timer for 35 minutes" on laundry day was about all I could get Siri to usefully do.
Still, yesterday she managed to handle this conversation in a useful manner:
Me: Hey Siri, what time does the nearest post office open tomorrow morning?
Siri: Do you mean this post office? (Show map with the nearest post office to my location indicated)
Me: Yes, that one.
Siri: The post office at (that address) is open from 9 am to 5 pm tomorrow
Me: Can you show me that address again on the map? (since the map was no longer being displayed, and I wanted to review it)
Sir: Here it is (shows map again)
Maybe Alexa and Cortana are light-years beyond this by now (I don't know, I've never used them), but I thought the above showed some progress on Siri's part -- in particular, Siri is starting to keep the context of the conversation in mind when interpreting follow-on requests, rather than treating each request as an independent/stand-alone query.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The issue isn't duration of data retention. It's who controls the data retention. Yes Google can potentially keep your voice search data for longer, but they let you review and delete it if you want. Amazon also lets you erase Alexa's recordings if you want.
Apple lets you erase your search history, but it's unclear if that also deletes the audio recordings they have of you.
Google and Amazon = YOU decide
Apple = They decide for you what's best
Look at how Steve and Cook handled mobileme and maps. They sucked at launch and they both took the blame. However Steve became more hands on, while Cook just told his team to fix it. Steve seemed more willing to throw something out and start over if it wasn't going the correct way. Cook seems to use profit to drive development. I think it comes down to this: Steve thought he was an artist that had to manage science people, while Cook thinks he's a businessman who needs to manage artists.