[hazyc]

Is anyone else an avid iPhone user, yet also someone who never uses Siri? I've used an iPhone exclusively for the past 8 years, and I can count on one hand the number of times I've used Siri. Interestingly, the one person I know who loves using Siri is my 70yr old dad.

[dilap]

Occasionally I ask her (it?) to set a timer or add a reminder, but mostly I don't. Siri is quite slow and frustratingly limited.

The other day in a hurry and driving somewhere, I ended up w/ both Apple Maps and Google Maps open, simultaneously giving me directions.

"Hey Siri, close Google Maps"

"To close an application, swipe up from the bottom of the phone..."

To paraphrase a quote from Steve Jobs, if your voice assistant asks you to touch the screen, you blew it.

[pftburger]

Seconded. I get way too many "Im sorry Dave, I just can't do that" moments

[ThePowerOfFuet]

> To paraphrase a quote from Steve Jobs, if your voice assistant asks you to touch the screen, you blew it.

Gold.

[BudaDude]

It makes no sense that Siri is so stunted in what she can do.

[Kye]

Siri's performance and quality seems to depend a lot on the on-board ML cores since it switched to on-device. It was basically unusable on my 6S Plus with its early ML cores, and now it's great on the 14 Pro Max I replaced it with. It seems like they ship a Siri to match the device capability.

[z9znz]

I use Siri to set a timer. That's it. And I do it by holding my power button to activate her.

My only other use of Siri usually involved phrases like "stop", "go away", "close", "fucking close!", "you stupid fcking * ** close the **** thing" when Siri would pop up out of nowhere and interrupt whatever I was actually doing. I had it turned off, but occasionally somehow it's back on, listening.

Other actual attempts at using it have been no better than 50% effective, so it wasn't worth the trouble. And I was speaking very clearly and articulately.

I've observed a friend (a Googler who had Google-fied his house) have frequent useless conversations with the Google assistant, so maybe 50% is the best you can hope for. No experience with Alexa, but I'd be too scared to even turn it on; I might end up with three refrigerators delivered the next day.

[jdwithit]

Same here. Even that simple task (setting a timer) only has about a 75% success rate for me. The other 25% it spins for 30 seconds then says "hmm something went wrong". Trying for anything more complex, even playing a song or album, is just asking for trouble. I honestly can't believe how bad Siri is despite years of development.

I do have an older iPhone 10 and maybe it's just not up to the task of running Siri? But if so they should disable it rather than put on this extremely amateur feeling show.

For what it's worth we have an Echo Dot in the house and I find it to be both orders of magnitude more responsive and more likely to actually do what I asked for. No unwanted refrigerators have arrived as of yet.

[ASalazarMX]

My only usage of it is as a push-button dictionary/translator, "define x", "how do you say x in Spanish". For every other use I've found it extremely limited, you have to ask the right questions, otherwise it defaults to a web search on my wife's phone, even if she's not in the room.

How, after all these years, is it still so stunted? There are Telegram bots with better interaction.

[dfee]

I use Siri all the time and am half your dads age.

“Get directions to the nearest gas station.”, “What’s the score of the Giant’s game?”, “Play Master of Puppets”, “What is 4’3” in centimeters?” And many, many more.

[Firmwarrior]

Man, I used to love using Siri, until I had a daughter and named her "Sarah"

big mistake. Turns out I say "Hey Sarah" a hundred times a day, and all my iDevices pipe up and simultaneously say "Yeah?" "WHAT'S UP" "HEY OVER HERE" "Hi it's me Siri what do you need?"

[tristor]

You are not alone. I've been using an iPhone for over a decade now. I've had Siri turned off the entire time. I have never turned it on. I do not now, or ever, want a "voice assistant" or any technology that listens to me and tries to understand what I want by listening to me. I want technology that does exactly what I tell it to do and nothing more.

Siri is a better option than the alternative "voice assistants" on the market, but they're all bad in my book, and I don't want any of them.

[Ntrails]

I disabled it all the day it came out.

I briefly enabled so I could text mum to say when I was nearly home. Avoids sneaking a traffic light text. Turns out it was waaaaaaaay more distracting and time consuming to get siri to text a single word, so back into the box it went

[knodi123]

I switched from Android a few years ago because my company gives out iphones as a perk. I used "ok google" extensively, and loved it. It was incredibly good at answering obscure questions and doing things like navigating or playing a song. It would do what I wanted almost every time, even if I was trying a new command for the first time.

I try to use Siri for the same things, but she suuuuuuucks. If I ask her to play a song, 9 out of 10 times it will do something idiotic- like I say "hey siri play tears in heaven on spotify", she might reply "now playing tears in heaven by a shitty kazoo cover band". If I say "navigate to the closest olive garden", it would say "navigating to olive garden corporate headquarters, estimated travel time 43 hours 12 minutes." But never mind, I can see the olive garden I was looking for, it's at the end of the street I'm on.

These are artificial examples because I can't remember specifics right now, but trust me - the real examples were just as dumb.

She's great at setting timers or alarms though! And I can reliably use her to pause, skip, or adjust volume when I'm showering or something.

[BudaDude]

I use Siri for setting timers and reminders. It's pretty good at parsing numbers. Other than that, It hasn't been very reliable for me. Apple really needs to overhaul Siri's intelligence.

[kitsunesoba]

My personal use as someone his 30s is mostly as a kitchen timer with a HomePod mini (not my phone), to turn on/off lights, and to occasionally toss things onto a to-do list.

My dad on the other hand loves his full size HomePod stereo pair and uses them frequently, almost entirely for playing music with voice commands. I think there are other things he might find it useful for but I haven't shown him those yet.

[zippergz]

Yes, I have had iPhones from the beginning and I never use Siri.

[dylan604]

I have never enabled Siri on any device. Precisely for fear of this kind of shit, or the ones where humans are listening to the recordings that are obviously being made, and all of the other logical conclusions one can reach on how this can be abused.

Just like HDD failures, it is not a question of if but when.

[dvzk]

I have never even setup Siri. Sometimes I've been tempted to enable it so I can say, "Siri, call 911!" if I'm assaulted or injured on the trail. I doubt it would help, but it's occasionally disconcerting when my phone isn't quickly accessible.

[madrox]

In my experiences working on voice OS, it's boom or bust depending on the user. Some people use it rarely if ever and some people live by it, and there's little in between. I think it makes sense in most cases to view voice commands as an accessibility feature.

[asadlionpk]

I just use it in text-mode ie. Double tap siri button, type the thing I want (wake me 7am). Done.

[nanidin]

Siri killer apps for me are asking for factoids via my watch, and opening my garage door as I approach while driving (my building uses an app that requires multiple taps + swipes to open the garage door, using Siri makes it palatable.)

[gleenn]

Are you using proprietary garage door software? Would live to have any better kind of integration there so any setup details that aren't crazy specific to some manufacturer would be interesting

[aparks517]

For sure. I stood in line for the original iPhone, owned every model (except the 5C) up through the 6, then an SE, X, and now an 11 Pro since it came out. I played around with Siri when it debuted, but didn't use it much. I turned it off at some point (I think it was when Apple was catching grief for keeping recordings or something like that) and haven't missed it. I'm not against it especially -- it just never really became part of my life.

[z9znz]

My colleagues and I had a moment of fun somewhere in remote Iceland, offroading on the way to a glacier. On an iPhone 3G, we were able to ask trivia questions and get pretty useful responses.

Aside from setting a timer, I've not seen Siri do anything more useful in 9 years. You haven't missed anything.

[joshstrange]

My trust of what Siri is capable of is laughably low but I do use it for reminders ("Remind me on X day...", "Remind me in X hours...", "Remind me when I get home...") and for timers. Occasionally I'll use it for unit conversions but I usually use Alexa for that since I'm in my kitchen often when I use that and it's just right there. Other than that I don't use it.

[corobo]

I only use it to set timers and it sucks at that half the time, not even going to bother with the faff of doing anything more complex. It's quicker to just do it myself as I'll probably have to unlock the screen anyway.

"Siri, timer, one hour thirty"

"Timers can't be set for a time of day, so I set your Timer alarm for 1:30"

Every damn time. Siri hates Brits.

[Aaronstotle]

I only enabled Siri because it was necessary for CarPlay, it's about a 50% success rate on getting anything right on the first try.

[SigmundA]

I was that way for a long time, but the Apple TV remote got me using it and I now occasionally do use it on my iPhone, mainly while driving to play music on reply to texts. Definitely has come a long way and is useful, one of my friends never types texts anymore and just dictates through Siri.

[parker_mountain]

I use it pretty frequently, mostly to set timers, alarms, or send quick texts without getting up.

[trap_goes_hot]

I use it for things like 'will it rain today' or sending quick texts when I am driving.

[TheFreim]

> I know who loves using Siri is my 70yr old dad.

My mother loves using Siri, she always uses it when she wants to look things up. It seems quite useful for people who aren't proficient at typing quickly, easier to ask Siri.

[lagrange77]

The first day i asked her for the weather, songs and alarms. The second day i turing tested her, asked it philosophical questions and insulted it the worst way. Yes, that was pretty much it.

[z9znz]

Ironically, she will complain if you cuss at her and call her names, but she won't turn herself off. And when she pops up without my request, and I want her to go off, it seems there's no verbal way to make her go away... even verbally abusing her.

[az_reth]

I use Siri exclusively to call my SO, because the way the British accent pronounces their contact name is just too funny.

[crazygringo]

When exercising and listening to a Spotify radio station, I use it to ask who the artist/song is.

That's literally the only thing.

[sbf501]

iPhone user since 2009. I used Siri for about a month when it first came out because I really liked hearing a British man's voice said "SSSSHedule" to me instead of "skedule", but then I learned it was sending all audio to the cloud and noped out.

[dcdc123]

The only reason I even have it enabled is because it is required for voicemail transcription.

[bdougherty]

I only ever use it in the car with CarPlay.