Apple at WWDC just repeated again when discussing Privacy that Siri is processed on device. This would seem to imply a good degree of privacy when using the tool.
However, if you look in IOS Settings> Siri & Search - it clearly states:
Voice input is processed on iPhone, but transcripts of your requests are sent to Apple.
So how it that private? Are you happy with that?
I am curious to hear your response.
I think it is far better than sending the raw audio to them, so at least moving in the right direction.
Yes, Iâm fine with that!
The original audio is kept on your device, and the request you make, has to be processed on some way, so I think this is a good solution.
And BTW, if you donât want your secrets to be sent towards Apple, donât tell them SiriâŚ!
Yes. Currently Siri is third in the digital assistant race and losing ground fast. Anything that Apple can do to close the gap is fine with me.
+1. Cloud, device, a comobination; I donât care just make the damn thing work as well as Googleâs. It is so frustrating that simple requests that Siri has done over and over â like âcall Momâ â need to go to the cloud.
I used to be a big fan of Siri in the early days. Now I use it mainly to create tasks in Due.
Try asking Siri something like âWhen did Apple introduce the iPhone?â and you get âI think apple.com should be able to help you with thatâ. Sad.
Yeah. Sad.
I used to have an exec assistant who was always eager to help but not terribly savvy. She was always certain, whether she was right or wrong. Siri is like that. Clueless responses, delivered confidently and cheerfully.
This resonates.
Today, while driving (not âin my carâ, âdoing 30 miles per hour down the roadâ), I asked Siri to give me directions to get home. It started navigating with walking directions - to a place that was 20 miles away from my current location.
And several times over the last several days, Iâll tell Siri to call my girlfriend - and it seemingly goes out of its way to misunderstand the name. Like if the name was âJenny Smithâ, itâll say âI canât find Jenny Smitsâ. And no matter how much I enunciate, and how many times it returns the same, incorrect result (half a dozen or more!), it never seems to learn - or even consider that it might want to try suggesting somebody, since itâs clearly gotten the same wrong result half a dozen times. And this is random. One day, thereâs no way itâll dial her number. The next day, it might be perfectly fine.
Oh, and when itâs screwing up, it WILL NOT CANCEL. Or I donât know the magic incantation. One or the other. No matter what I say, Siri just lets me know that it doesnât understand, and asks, âwho would you like to call?â over and over again. I have to grab my phone and do things to shut down Siri manually.
I canât prove it, but it seems Siri was much better five years ago. I knew what worked reliably and what didnât and got excellent results from the features I used.
I did notice that when driving with a car bluetooth connection and maybe a mediocre built-in car mic - that Siri can get really bad.
In cases like that I might just dump the bluetooth connection and talk to the iPhone speaker and Siri improves.
Yeah, the issue with the âwalking directionsâ was while I was driving - but the other issue with it not understanding me was indoors, using the Bluetooth headset I always use. So it mystifies me.
Well just for the heck of it - next time you have a problem with the headset - you might try turning bluetooth off and say the same thing into the iPhone and just see if that improves the response.
As an aside - some people I talk to over the years have some kind of bluetooth mic and they are unaware until I tell them that their voice audio is TERRIBLE! If they donât believe me - then I suggest I might record a bit of them as a test and when I send it back to them - they are very surprised.
You can test this yourself by recording a bit using voice memos app with bluetooth device and also without it. playback both test memos and see if there is much of a difference.
I tried this with AirPods 2 and was surprised to hear the lower quality of the audio mic versus iPhone direct mic.
Even sadder, Alexa knows the answer (June 29, 2007). But if Siri processes solely on device, I doubt it will ever be able to answer questions like this. Best to only ask it to do things on the device.
So does Google Assistant. I use a double tap on the back of my iPhone to summon it when I need answers.
Yes. At some point Apple may have to make a choice between staying on device and staying competitive in the digital assistant race. Right now Siri seems close to losing sight of the leaders.
Indeed, in racing parlance, Siri is about to âget lappedâ.
The thing is, itâs not even getting the on-device stuff right. From my example above:
If I give it the same name six times, it fails to find it, and then I dismiss Siri and manually call somebody with an exact first-name match and a similar last name, it could pop something up and say âis that who you were trying to call?â
Or rather than just telling me it canât find the person Iâm looking for, it could say âYouâre trying to call somebody named Jenny. Do you mean _______?â
Either option would be better than just constantly barraging the user with âI canât find that person. Who are you trying to call?â
This feels like low-hanging fruit for a device that has a built-in chip designed for machine learning.
Siriâs off-device stuff can be frustrating, but when they have everything they need right there on the device and still canât handle something simple - thatâs when itâs the most frustratingâŚat least to me.
YMMV. Siri can find my wife âJoan Almyâ in Contacts with no problem, but Alexa refuses to recognize the device âJoanâs Lampâ, saying there is no device named âJoanâs Lampâ. I had to name it âJohnâs Lampâ.
I just listened to episode 500 of the Vergecast on my walk this morning. They discussed the search button that brings up Spotlight in iOS 16 and one person said âThere was a time that would have been called Siriâ. I thought that was a interesting observation.
They talked about how Apple talks about âSearchâ and âSpotlightâ these days and how itâs like Siri is slowly being written out of the things you should be using. Now that I think about it that could explain why Siri hasnât gotten much love in the last few years.
IMO, itâs a good review of the WWDC Keynote from a âwe call it like we see itâ point of view. They even called every car manufacturer listed on the wall during the Apple CarPlay preview for their comment.
I used to complain about issues with Siri until I lived in my son and daughter-in-lawâs house for 11 days to babysit my grandson while they were on vacation. They use Alexa. I found Alexa to get confused easily as much as Siri for things that were pretty simple (e.g. turning lights on to 100% instead of turning them off, playing rap instead of classical, etc.). So, I am a little less hard on Siri these days. One thing i do noticed is that most problems I have with Siri at home occur when I am also having issues with one or more HPMs.