No - At 10 am this morning I asked Siri to set an alarm for 1:30 and instead of this afternoon it set it for 1:30 am. I ask to call Andrew and it calls Andre no matter how much I emphasis the “w”. I asked to “play any song by the band passion” and it says “playing songs by passion pit”… and then it doesn’t play anything…Alexa never fails me…
The super-easy answer is to stop making Siri shuttle data off to the cloud for parsing. Use the on-device dictation functionality (or maybe just us it if the cloud is unavailable?) and handle the basics.
I should be able to set a 90 minute timer without an Internet connection, pretty much instantly.
I should be able to add a basic appointment to my calendar (“Hey Siri, add ‘dentist’ to my calendar 5:30 December 23rd”), pretty much instantly, without an Internet connection.
Everything needed to do that is already on-device, with no privacy implications. No neural engine required. They just need to write some code and do it.
I mean…they could just text-to-speech your calendar request and shovel it off to Fantastical, and let Fantastical handle it.
If all that simple stuff worked better, and more of the transcription was on-device, then some of the other stuff would be much more forgivable.
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On-device dictation functionality requires the neural engine.
I think that Apple has already done so.
Does it? It existed on the 6s, which I don’t believe had the neural engine.
On-device dictation was added with iOS 14/iPadOS 14, right?
On iPhone 6s or later, and iPad, you can use dictation without being connected to the Internet. Earlier models of iPhone and iPad require an Internet connection.
I wonder if Apple will reconsider their privacy stance once they are forced to give governments access to our encrypted data? Multiple governments have been working together for some time to achieve this.
I should give Siri its due: its on-device voice recognition system is very good, at least in my experience. It’s the divining intent from the recognized words, and the delivering on that intent where it seem to fail so badly.
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Which seems to me is the core and necessary ability of a good digital assistant.
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In the technical sense, is on-device dictation part of Siri? Because if you say “hey Siri”, at least on my iPhone 11 it doesn’t use the fantastic on-device dictation. It uses the cloud processing stuff.
I’ve actually started to use Drafts to record appointments and add them to my calendar later because Siri’s recognition didn’t work as well as the on-device stuff. 
That’s a good question. I honestly just assumed that Siri and voice dictation both use the same recognition system. If that’s not the case then I’m afraid that I must retract even the tiny bit of praise that I gave poor Siri 
I completely agree. Apple has so far failed with Siri largely because they brand it as a digital assistant, which to a lot of people (I think) sets expectations of competence that far exceed what they can deliver on.
I just tried the experiment to confirm. On my iPhone 11, I shut off cellular and wi-fi. Went to do Siri, and Siri isn’t available.
Went in to Drafts, which uses the built-in iOS dictation. Pressed the microphone icon, and dictated a memo. Worked flawlessly.
So it seems that they’re different things, unless I’m missing something.
This is one of the main reasons why I get so frustrated with Siri. I can be in a complete RF dead zone and dictate “set a 90 minute timer” into Drafts. Flawless. It doesn’t set a timer, obviously, but the text that Siri would need to process the request is right there.
But in that same situation, Siri can’t take care of a timer for me without an Internet connection. The functionality it needs is, quite literally, right there - it just refuses to use it.
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I did the same experiment but then it occurred to me that it may not be telling us what we think it is: It’s quite possible for both services (Siri and voice dictation) to use the same on-device voice recognition system but for the phone to deny a Siri activation on the basis of being offline.
I would be surprised if Siri doesn’t use the on-device voice recognition system. I would also not be surprised
(As I’m typing this, it occurs to me that Siri is offered on devices that my not have the same level of on-device voice recognition as late model iPhones/iPads, so maybe it does make sense for it to not use it on any device.)
In which case we could say that the on-device voice recognition system is the part that gets your praise. Siri as a piece of software that uses the system is still…problematic.
And of course the fact that it requires the Internet connection whether or not you’re going to need the Internet-enabled features (if it can do stuff like timers on device) would be a potentially separate problem. 
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Oh, maybe the neural engine makes things much faster than before.
Regardless, I have some really good news!
Apple is actually going to rebuild Siri from the ground up!!! They revealed a bunch of ground breaking changes today!!!
If only that was remotely true… 
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/14/ios-14-3-siri-replicate-sounds/
At least they did something! Uh… right?
So, would you want Siri in charge of driving your car?
Here is your answer.
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How can we be so sure?
« Hey Siri, play Dune original soundtrack »
« Please specify which album you want to listen to »
« Dune original soundtrack »
« Please specify which album you want to listen to »
Seriously…
Every time I want to ask for something that is not generic (play jazz or play x playlist), it fails.
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Yes, it’s always been extra confused about soundtracks and scores for me.
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