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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.
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.
Wiping user data after six months is a landmark for the industry!
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.
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 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?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
In other words, it's a wank control.
Because Google and Amazon know normal users will not bother with it. They give so many warnings about "losing your personal history" and other crap that most users simply don't bother (assuming they know they can even access the setting). Sure, maybe once in a while they come across an article saying to do it, and they do it then, but that's maybe once a year tops. Whereas Apple does it every 6 months, regardless and automatically. Unless you're a super tech privacy geek that sets an alarm to clear your history every day, that is.
Anyhow, the real issue is SIri's database is limited intentionally by Apple. Unlike Alphabet or Amazon, whose privacy policy allows sharing of data within themselves, Apple's privacy policy silos all the data. So while Google Assistant can access your YouTube history, your ad views (yes, Alphabet can share your history within itself, including all the ad networks they own), your emails and other data, Siri is very limited in handling the data it was allowed. So Siri cannot access your Uber history on iCloud, (but is allowed to ask the Uber app to schedule a car via SiriKit but is unable to retain that information - again, privacy)
And it's not just why Apple is on a privacy streak (even at WWDC they continue to poke at Google and others about you being the product), but also because by not having your data on their servers, it's less data they need to serve up to law enforcement. They can't provide what they never collect, and if the data stays local on the device (which for increasing amounts of data, it does), they cannot collect what they're not provided.
Yes, it makes their products less "integrated" because they're not communicating with the cloud constantly, but Apple feels that's the best way to operate in these current times.