I hate to be one of those guys that shows up in a forum only to complain. But here I am. I love Apple products - and I have all of them. And by “all of them” I mean all of them. A few years ago I bought my 90 year old mother an iPad. She lives in another state so I made a couple of short YouTube videos to help her get started. That small act turned into a legit side hustle. I now make simple videos on how to use your iPad and iPhone for seniors.
I’ve been asked in many comments to make videos on the Apple Watch and I’ve made a couple. But as much as I try to like my watch, it’s become the old Windows PC of Apple products. Windows PCs always broke down at the worst possible moment. Or began updating software in the middle of a presentation. Or you’d trigger the BSOD by hitting the enter key. It was always something.
And so it is with my cellular Apple Watch. Especially when using Siri, the world’s worst digital assistant. My use case must be common - listening to podcasts while walking. Surely, someone at Apple said “There are probably people who’d like to pop in their Airpods and listen to a podcast from the Apple Watch while walking.” Surely.
But you’d not know that by my experience. Today, while walking, I was listening to a podcast that fired up just fine. When the podcast finished, I asked Siri to play Mac Power Users podcast. The world’s worst digital assistant said “Apple Cash is not currently available.” What? I asked again thinking some random noise made it into the mic. The world’s worst digital assent then said “You’ll need to approve the terms of service to listen to podcasts on Apple Podcasts.” What? So I then just stopped walking, scrolled to MPU on the watch and hit the play button and enjoyed the latest episode.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Syncing issues, can’t connect to iPhone, can’t connect to cellular, dynamic complications that don’t update and so much more. It’s great as a time piece. But I don’t need to spend a hunk of cash to get a watch that keeps accurate time.
So Apple - please spend some time on these issues. Fix them. The Apple Watch holds so much promise. But as is, at least for me, it’s a bit of a dumpster fire. Well, maybe not a dumpster fire, but it is a mess. Especially with Siri.
I guess this is why I have never owned an Apple Watch. And maybe also because when I got my iPhone I said to myself, “I never have to wear a watch again!”
I don’t know if Siri is the world’s worst digital assistant, but it has frustrated me when it can’t do something while I’m driving – like find and play music downloaded ON MY iPHONE. It keeps trying (apparently) to find it in Apple Music to which I am not subscribed. 
I primarily use my watch for incoming data - notifications, etc. I also manually trigger sleep and activity stats and weather (mainly current temp). It’s usefulness is one reason we upgraded from Series 3 to SE recently.
I gave up on Siri for almost all tasks a long time ago, on any device. It is now relegated to merely a source of humor when it inevitably thinks it has been summoned and throws out a non-sensical out-of-context question or statement. A blemish on Apple’s product line.
My watch is a fitness tracker and notification device. That’s it. I don’t try to use it for anything else because I don’t want to be disappointed.
So do I. That is the main reason I wear an AW.
Siri isn’t a digital assistant. Siri is your supervisor’s kid that isn’t qualified for the job, that you were forced to hire, and are not permitted to fire.
A digital assistant that responds to a verbal command/request with text on a screen is a joke. And one that requires me to unlock my phone while driving is worthless.
The issue is always related to expectations. And the gap between actual performance and expectations regarding performance is the rub.
Apple products have almost always exceeded my expectations. Especially in comparison to my experiences over the decades with various PCs. I take great delight in using my Mac(s) and iPad(s). But this dang watch thing with a dash of Siri is a real mess. If Tim Apple walks the beautiful Cupertino campus and listens to podcasts he’s surely run into the same issues I have. My particular issue has survived through various generations of Apple Watches - not just the Ultra I’m packing now. @MacSparky often asks his guests if they could run Apple what would he or she do. I’d make sure Podcasts always play on the Apple Watch as the user expects. Oh, and if I ask Siri what the wind chill is on a cold, dark early morning walk, I’d have her respond in my Airpods rather than on my watch face underneath my big glove and shirt sleeve. But that’s just me.
I just consider my Apple Watch as an accessory to my iPhone. I don’t really expect to do anything on it.
I see what the problem is here.
When comparing Apple products, it is the Mac that is most like a PC.
(I do not own an Apple watch, as with @karlnyhus I stopped wearing a watch when I got my first iPhone.)
as did I, from 2008-2018 when I got my Series 3.
Yeah, I mean, if Santa left an Ultra under the tree I’d be very happy.
ButI just can’t see me buying one.
(My company gives out bonuses in March, so check back then …)
This is where it’s at for me as well. When I started wearing AW (about a month after release) I was hoping for something that would emulate the best features of my iPhone. But over time, it’s more or less a data relay for all the things happening on my iPhone that I care to see with a flick of the wrist.
I got my first Apple Watch with the hope that it would let me look at my phone less – do I really need to answer that text right away?
It has done that. And I’m pleasantly surprised that it lets me do a few other useful things without getting my phone out too: see the weather at a glance, check my calendar when I don’t have my phone on me, track steps/exercise…
But yeah, I don’t do a lot of input on it.
I like my Apple Watch, and I’m soon byuing a new one (Ultra or series 9).
Every time I don’t have it on me, I miss it.
I dropped my Series 0 onto the concrete locker room floor when I was getting dressed. Smashed the front completely.
I went home and immediately bought another Series 0.
It’s a fitness device, but in addition I use it daily for timers and notifications. When I’m biking, it’s easier to answer a phone call on the watch than it is to dig my phone out of my pocket. The same is true for dictating into Drafts when I’m outdoors: the watch beats using the phone.
The use cases where it shines are different than a computer, phone, or tablet but they’re there.
Ok, this made me laugh out loud. And you aren’t wrong!!! I know they are moving toward more on-device Siri processing which is key. And I’m really hoping using a LLM will help. Because….oof.
Maybe, maybe not.
Just today I was driving and my phone was giving me directions. I told Siri to cancel navigation. It replied that it was canceling navigation. Two minutes later, it gives me the next step in the directions. I once again asked to cancel navigation. It replied, once again, that it was canceling navigation. And then a couple minutes later, it gave me more directions.
I had to cancel manually on my phone. Which is kind of ridiculous. It heard me, it processed it, it acknowledged what I had asked to do, and still – somehow – failed to do it.
In the last two months, I have also had Siri start giving me directions, stop mid sentence, apologize, and then say something that indicated it knew it had stopped mid sentence and a repeat what it was just telling me. I wasn’t making any weird turns or anything either – I was just driving straight down the street.
I have therefore come to the conclusion that even the on-device stuff is not that reliable. 
Mark Gurman reported in July that Apple is “revamping Siri in a way that will deeply implement” (AI) and that:
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“Apple Inc. is quietly working on artificial intelligence tools that could challenge those of OpenAI Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google and others, but the company has yet to devise a clear strategy for releasing the technology to consumers.”
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The group is exploring new features for Apple Music, including auto-generated playlists . . . and “is examining how generative AI can be used to help people write in apps like Pages or auto-create slide decks in Keynote. Again, this is similar to what Microsoft has already launched for its Word and PowerPoint apps.”
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One debate going on internally is how to deploy generative AI: as a completely on-device experience, a cloud-based setup or something in between. An on-device approach would work faster and help safeguard privacy, but deploying Apple’s LLMs via the cloud would allow for more advanced operations.
Personally I have no need for AI additions to Pages, Apple Music, or any of Apple’s default apps. I do want/need a reliable, capable, digital assistant and if someone comes up with an online version . . .
And…we’re back to Siri being the world’s worst digital assistant…
To be fair, Siri works most of the time, just not enough to meet my expectations.
This. Exactly this. (20 chars)
I think it’s probably true that Siri works well in a large percentage of use cases a large percentage of the time for a large percentage of users.
The challenge is twofold.
The first is that the large percentage is smaller than other options.
The second is that it seems certain people have use cases that almost cater to Siri’s weaknesses.
For example, I use Siri to control Apple Maps all the time in a major city, and it consistently misses certain requests. This is one of my primary use cases, so when it falls down at that job it is falling down at a large percentage of what I need to do.
To put this in Internet terms, it feels like Siri is not designed around the “long tail”. It does a few things well, and has a lot of edge cases that don’t work nearly so well.
I am hoping that Apple’s ML and such improves this significantly. As an example of potential low-hanging fruit, there are words that I probably say hundreds of times per week that it never gets right, autocorrecting them to words I never use. I fix the spelling of the word every single time, so it should have material to learn from. I am hoping that sort of thing gets fixed.