The only voice assistant that has impressed me recently is the new ChatGPT Voice Mode with background reasoning. It's miles ahead of the other assistants.
The only downside is that it lacks the OS integration of Gemini or Siri. I've been trying to figure out a way to trigger it with the button on my pixel earbuds, but no success - seems it only works with Gemini.
Grok's voice mode is surprisingly good. I find it better than ChatGPT voice. Sol is normally better than Grok 4.7 of course, but in voice mode Sol is much dumber, and Grok edges ahead. It is also integrated with Grok Bot for a Muse-like agent that you can have a phone call with, which works really well.
Yes, I know, for ONE DAY it identified as MechaHitler, but it genuinely is not the "Elon Nazi Bot" like people treat it. It regularly dunks on right-wingers all the damn time who summon it to try to back up their crazy assertions.
That was hardly a one-off. Just off the top of my head...
There was the massive amount of CSAM it produced for weeks that wasn't an oopsie, the company adamantly refused to do anything about it for a long time despite the outrage.
Plus there has been all of the monkeying with the system prompt to push random propaganda elon wants.
Also the weird fixations on white genocide, election lies, and other nonsense.
On top of all that any data or funding sent to this company directly supports the ongoing destruction of US democracy and state capacity.
The brigades are relentless and much bigger than any of the real comments we can make.
You're getting downvoted here (possibly flagged within the next few hours), but I see this happen on half the posts made here daily. Someone notices how fake the engagement has become and they get railroaded.
The whole thing is buggered. My latest, in car, on 26.6.2 with phone connected via bluetooth. I hold the voice button on my steering wheel down to activate Siri:
"Call Fred."
"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."
"Call Fred."
"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."
"Call Fred."
"OK, calling Fred."
Phone is locked in my pocket the entire time. Like, make your damn mind up.
And a completely baffling one recently, not even anonymizing names, also in car:
"Call George."
"OK adding L.S.D. by Hallucinogen to your Liked Songs playlist."
Huh interesting idea and quite easy to test by putting the phone in a blanket in the trunk. It's definitely using the car speakers, and when I do eventually get a call through I am heard clearly, but perhaps that initial interaction is using the phone mic.
If it’s misunderstanding the command and thinking it needs an unlock twice, but then finally gets it correctly and does it without an unlock.. that actually could be explained by the microphone
I've switched to Home Assistant and the same devices on the same network work instantly, as they should.
Apple is so terrible at this. They have nobody to blame: it's their system, their protocol (I have pre-Matter devices), their home hub, their certified devices.
Home Assistant with a pile of community-maintained python hacks runs circles around Apple.
> For reference, it used to turn off the lights as I complete my sentence and put my wrist down.
What probably happened is that it used to be one of the preset instructions it pattern-matched your request to, but now they inserted an LLM in between all of that, so you have to wait for it to return some tokens and then eventually call the internal method for triggering the scene.
Gemini in android auto just refuses to place calls for you now for "safety" but will also have an extended argument with you about that at the same time.
Siri IS bad at many things, but the Reddit post is not a particularly compelling example. I am continually astounded by the fact that Apple has had an on-device voice assistant for 15 years, on a vertical hardware/software stack that they own completely, and yet which cannot reliably perform even the most basic tasks.
Inconsistent capabilities: it can toggle do not disturb, but not "silence unknown callers". It can disable auto-brightness but not automatic screen lock.
Completely brain-dead responses even within things it is capable of affecting: "delete all alarms except for my 7:30 AM alarm" → "I deleted your 7:30 AM alarm"
And even with features that actually do work, subtle details of that feature inexplicably change over time, and they happen to be details I was relying on: asking Siri to set an alarm for a given time used to respect whatever ringtone I had last chosen (and which IS respected when I physically tap the + button to add a new alarm), but sometime over the past five or so years it switched to creating alarms with the default sound.
And so many more things that I can't recall the top of my head right now. Siri is an inexcusable failure by a company that supposedly prides itself on user experience and which has had every opportunity for a decade and a half to do better.
edit: One more I just remembered. For a decade, me saying "call [WIFE'S NAME]" would 100% of the time result in my wife being called. Back in the spring, Siri inexplicably decided to call the number of a woman I hadn't seen in the past decade, and whose name is pronounced the same but spelled differently. I had to delete that contact from my phone to be able to call my wife again using Siri.
Your edit made me laugh. I had to delete a sales rep contact I used to deal with but no longer because Siri would call her instead of my wife as they both have the same first name. It was embarrassing and then I thought started to look creepy. But she has a common name and would call the others with the same name. Siri is bent out of shape.
But aside from the accuracy, I’m finding requests take much longer to action. 15 seconds to add a reminder yesterday. Not sure if that’s just me or normal now?
I was optimistic when I updated MacOS, iOS, and got a new series 12 watch to replace my series 8. But... it's terrible. It doesn't seem to be able to do much of what I ask, and Siri on my watch is somehow less responsive than it was on my Series 8 watch. When I talk to Siri on my watch, the Siri icon thing spins around as if it does something, then it does nothing? I don't understand.
It's the exact wrong place for an LLM. It SEEMS like it should be the right place, but it isn't.
The old way of doing commands and voice was far superior and made far fewer mistakes.
Funnily, I saw a skyrim mod I believe here on HN that got this right. They did fast commands through more standard voice and language recognition and shunted off more complex conversations only when that failed. It enabled them to do really impressive things with their ingame dog.
While certainly drastically better than before, it still fails at so many of the basics. I use primarily in the car, when need to be hands free. My requests are almost always say, "Directions to Starbucks". Which Starbucks.. and proceeds to list multiple then have to remind it each and every time the one first one... the one closest to me.. the one always go to... etc. So then try to do Directions to Starbucks (Town Name) (that I'm currently in, and still asks did you mean this one or this one, or everyone in a while will say did you mean City (state I'm in), aka the one down the street or did you mean that city but in another state a hundred miles away that you have never gone to. Those types of things always happened with old Siri and persist with new Siri. But now almost always when asking for reminders etc, before it would handle fine, not it says did you mean "what I said), or swapping out word for another someone similar word, etc. The problem before was it had essentially no memory or ability to learn about me. With LLMS thought that would finally change, but it has not ing general. I can say call John. And it will say did you mean John (the one you call every day for the past decade) or do you mean the John, you have never called but is in your contacts from High School? ChatGPT is amazing, and knows me and never makes any of those mistakes but of course is less integrated than Siri can be. Here's for hoping with the new LLM foundation Siri will be able to grow more quickly, but right now, it is the dumbest of the bunch. I get they don't want it to be a full chat bot, and I'm ok with it being more limited, but if it's going to be limited to a certain domain, such as control the home, setting alarms, reminders, directions, it should be absolutely rock solid at that.
Why don't you just say which Starbucks you want to go to? Or even better if you go there all the time and it's the closest one to your home, just remember the way
Siri is the only thing in the whole universe which can make me rage. Not computers, not $dayjob, not my car, not getting lost while riding a rally in the desert, not people. Siri. Only Siri can do that.
Apple makes great products, and I am well vested in its ecosystem.
With that said - there are three areas of their products that are substandard.
- Siri, as discussed here
- autocorrect - which is insanely bad. I switched to Gboard a while back - and despite its occasional lagging (it depends too much on an internet connection) it’s such a relief. No more fighting autocorrect over words, especially after committing by hitting space.
- and… the whole way you register devices with Apple home - incredibly painful. Thinking they were trying to make it more secure, but they utterly failed at friction and usability. I suspect their ecosystem would be a lot bigger if they simplified how you interact with Home to register devices.
I still think they’re in denial that their “Home” product as a whole isn’t going anywhere and still wait for them to just drop it…
That being said - not adding any more examples of “Siri bad because” for my blood pressure staying on normal levels - one thing that also is one more example how hard Apple fail at basic things:
Ok, so there’s this feature that charges your phone until it presumes you’ll need it?
Why on earth does it arbitrarily decide to be finished at 04:00 when I did set an alarm to 06:30?
I don't see the purpose in this feature even if your alarm was at 4:00. Why wouldn't you keep charging until the user picked his phone off the charger?
One thing you might do is only charge to 80% or 90%, to improve battery lifetime, unless you detected the user is going on a long flight tomorrow and needs it at 100%. But I don't see any reason for the opposite behaviour.
> Optimized Battery Charging is designed to reduce the wear on your battery and improve its lifespan by reducing the time your iPhone spends fully charged. It is available when Charge Limit is set to 100 percent. When the feature is enabled, your iPhone will delay charging past 80 percent in certain situations.
The idea is that having the battery sit at 100% charge for an extended period of time is bad for the battery. So the phone charges to 80% immediately and then to 100% a little while before it expects to be unplugged.
Try turning off autocorrect. It seems like a non-option, but I found it made my mobile typing skill greatly improve over the following months, to the point I’m now just as fast while also fully removing that frustration from my life, and also not reliant on a particular phone. Retrospectively, it makes sense: autocorrect numbs feedback, removing the mechanism by which we learn to subconsciously and quickly do what works and avoid what doesn’t.
"Hey Siri, continue playing my audiobook" used to work, now it starts a random book from my library, even ones I've already listened to. "Hey Siri, play" used to continue playing whatever was last playing, now it starts random songs on Apple Music. Those are the only two things I use Siri for apart from controlling lights.
Really? Just send whoever a link to literally any of a dozen cross-platform video calling services. They don't even need to install anything. Hell, even Google Meet is just clicking a link.
It's unmitigated infantilism. Outside of the physically disabled, who would need such a feature? Is touching your phone to make a call less convenient than speaking to it? If touching your phone is so inconvenient, then why do most adults spend hours per day on their phones?
What most of these sorts of features do is not to add convenience; instead they remove the need to exercise impulse control. They reduce "friction," which means you do the action more often. But they don't improve convenience. Convenience is not needing to walk outside to the well to fetch a bucket of water. It's not someone making an app so automatic that you no longer need to use your executive function.
if people find a feature for the physically disabled useful they'll use it. should manufacturers ship disabled-only versions with those features enabled and disable them in the other devices?
There are lots of situations where touching the phone is not possible or not ideal. For instance, when you're working with your hands and they are dirty, you might not want to get your phone dirty as well. Or the other way around, you might not want to touch your contaminated phone while handling food.
I sometimes use Siri to set timers while cooking. Unfortunately, adding items to the shopping list doesn't work well enough, Classic Siri is not smart enough to place them in the food section.
Apple Intelligence broke the ability for Siri to run a shortcut that I use daily. I have a shortcut named, "What's for dinner?" I used to be able to activate Siri and says, "What's for dinner?" and it would set off to my personal mealie server, use an API key to fetch the information, then speak the result. Now, Siri looks through my messages and finds a dinner reservation from OpenTable from months ago and declares that to be fact.
> Now, Siri looks through my messages and finds a dinner reservation from OpenTable from months ago and declares that to be fact.
Settings > Siri > Apps > Messages > "Learn from this App"
Unfortunately Apple makes you toggle this off individually for every single app, seems like an intentional dark pattern that they don't let you toggle off all apps in one go.
Also, each iOS updates seems to re-enable Siri for every single app so it doesn't respect your previously disabled apps.
The bug that I think was actually fixed (or maybe I just haven't hit the spot on the roulette wheel again since the beta):
- Call Mom
- What app should I use? (only offers the default Phone app
Immense rage - The only freaking app I've ever used to call her. You didn't even give me a reasonable alternative. We don't talk on FB Messenger/WhatsApp/etc (nor do I use them at all).
New Siri is _very slightly_ better for some tasks and infinitely worse in others.
I'm not sure if it's Gemini's fault or Apple's, I lean heavily towards it being Apple's fault and at the end of the day it doesn't matter if the underlying model is blame, it's the model Apple picked so it's Apple's fault.
I had hopes that "New Siri" would help wash away the stain of WWDC 2024 and the incredibly embarrassing new (old) Siri launch. Instead they've doubled down to prove their complete incompetence.
It's telling that I sit here with AirPods on my desk, an Apple Watch on my wrist, an iPad sitting next to me, an iPhone on a stand in front of me, all while typing on a MBP, and I have zero interest in touching their "AI" with a 10-ft pole while I use millions-billions of tokens other models every month. My phone would be the ideal AI device if it actually worked worth a damn. Instead I do use AI on my phone all the time, through the Claude and ChatGPT apps which would both blow away Siri if they had the access to my phone's data. I recognize the dangers in that, I've even agreed with Apple's line in the past about how they are the only ones that can be trusted with that access but they are terrible stewards who clearly don't have a clue what they are doing.
I have better results remote connecting to a Claude Code session on my computer to do anything of value instead of reaching for Siri.
Agree - I've had almost all of these problems with Siri.
Another thing I've noticed is the horrible lag with updating the UI. An example: On Apple Watch I have the temperature complication bottom center. It sometimes shows the current temperature, sometimes it hasn't updated in minutes or hours (bug #1). For example right now, it shows 66 which I know is incorrect. I tap it to go to the Weather app, a different temperature will be shown (56) (bug #2) and then about 10 seconds later (bug #3) it finally updates to the actual temperature (72).
If I go back to the home screen, finally the complication shows the correct temperature (72).
These kind of async refresh bugs are not unique to WatchOS, it's endemic throughout the Apple ecosystem.
Why? Is this poorly coded JavaScript web view apps? Is this React? Some sort of other async framework that works fine when you are testing on the Apple campus but doesn't work in the real world?
Or you open the Weather app, it updates, you walk somewhere without cell phone reception, open the weather app again, and it shows the old temperature, and suddenly it shows --. Temperature gone. WHY?
Here's my tiny anecdote about Siri. It's so garbage I had to name my garage door "The garage door" because without the extra THE it would often refuse or tell me that device can't be opened.
Siri needs to be spoonfed the most basic things, and it's not getting any better. Google doesn't get any passes since my Google Home appears to be getting alzheimer's after the Gemini "upgrade".
Do a factory reset, then set it up again before doing the Gemini upgrade. This helped me a lot and it works way better now, even compared to the original non Gemini version.
I have a bunch of lights and speakers. I shouldn't have to factory reset and rebuild my whole life. I understand you're trying to help but that's just such a chore.
Hah! I learned this the hard way a few weeks ago... I updated my Wi-Fi password. Every-god-damn-"smart"-piece-of-crap in my house went offline (as expected).
Then I learned there was no way to give the new Wi-Fi password to any of these devices without manually re-pairing them in HomeKit and reconfiguring all scenes and everything else...
Like, that seems like basic functionality Apple should have included in the HomeKit design.
In the end, I gave up and just put the Wi-Fi password back.
84 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 17.7 ms ] threadThe only downside is that it lacks the OS integration of Gemini or Siri. I've been trying to figure out a way to trigger it with the button on my pixel earbuds, but no success - seems it only works with Gemini.
Yes, I know, for ONE DAY it identified as MechaHitler, but it genuinely is not the "Elon Nazi Bot" like people treat it. It regularly dunks on right-wingers all the damn time who summon it to try to back up their crazy assertions.
There was the massive amount of CSAM it produced for weeks that wasn't an oopsie, the company adamantly refused to do anything about it for a long time despite the outrage.
Plus there has been all of the monkeying with the system prompt to push random propaganda elon wants.
Also the weird fixations on white genocide, election lies, and other nonsense.
On top of all that any data or funding sent to this company directly supports the ongoing destruction of US democracy and state capacity.
You're getting downvoted here (possibly flagged within the next few hours), but I see this happen on half the posts made here daily. Someone notices how fake the engagement has become and they get railroaded.
Tried to set a timer via Siri
after a spinner for several seconds:
"Cannot set a timer because the Clock app is not installed on this device."
F to hell whoever is in charge of that crap at Apple.
"Call Fred."
"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."
"Call Fred."
"You'll need to unlock your phone for that."
"Call Fred."
"OK, calling Fred."
Phone is locked in my pocket the entire time. Like, make your damn mind up.
And a completely baffling one recently, not even anonymizing names, also in car:
"Call George."
"OK adding L.S.D. by Hallucinogen to your Liked Songs playlist."
WTAF.
But that wouldn't explain why it wants you to unlock it
Literal 10 seconds later.
“Setting the scene good night.”
Another 2-3 seconds later, the lights go off.
I don’t understand what it’s trying to do, simple tasks should be instant, what am I waiting for? The entire Siri became unusable and simply trash.
Edit: For reference, it used to turn off the lights as I complete my sentence and put my wrist down.
I've switched to Home Assistant and the same devices on the same network work instantly, as they should.
Apple is so terrible at this. They have nobody to blame: it's their system, their protocol (I have pre-Matter devices), their home hub, their certified devices.
Home Assistant with a pile of community-maintained python hacks runs circles around Apple.
What probably happened is that it used to be one of the preset instructions it pattern-matched your request to, but now they inserted an LLM in between all of that, so you have to wait for it to return some tokens and then eventually call the internal method for triggering the scene.
Last week:
Me: Hey Siri, turn off the bedroom lights. Siri: I’m sorry, I can’t change a scene. Me: Hey Siri, turn the bedroom lights off. Siri: OK!
This week:
Me: Hey Siri, turn the bedroom lights off. Siri: I’m sorry, I can only do one thing at a time. Me: Hey Siri, turn off the bedroom lights. Siri: OK!
Next week:
Me: Hey Siri —— Siri: The red zone has always been for loading and unloading of passengers. There's never stopping in a white zone.
Like, please just pick one and stick that in the integration tests. I promise I’ll learn the syntax if you choose an official one. Any official one.
It's the only way I can explain some of the totally bizarre Siri (and other iOS and macOS) bugs.
Uh, can anyone do that? Can pickpockets and government stooges do the same thing to get into my phone?
What a pile of garbage Siri is.
Inconsistent capabilities: it can toggle do not disturb, but not "silence unknown callers". It can disable auto-brightness but not automatic screen lock.
Completely brain-dead responses even within things it is capable of affecting: "delete all alarms except for my 7:30 AM alarm" → "I deleted your 7:30 AM alarm"
And even with features that actually do work, subtle details of that feature inexplicably change over time, and they happen to be details I was relying on: asking Siri to set an alarm for a given time used to respect whatever ringtone I had last chosen (and which IS respected when I physically tap the + button to add a new alarm), but sometime over the past five or so years it switched to creating alarms with the default sound.
And so many more things that I can't recall the top of my head right now. Siri is an inexcusable failure by a company that supposedly prides itself on user experience and which has had every opportunity for a decade and a half to do better.
edit: One more I just remembered. For a decade, me saying "call [WIFE'S NAME]" would 100% of the time result in my wife being called. Back in the spring, Siri inexplicably decided to call the number of a woman I hadn't seen in the past decade, and whose name is pronounced the same but spelled differently. I had to delete that contact from my phone to be able to call my wife again using Siri.
“Play Powerwolf on Apple Music.”
“Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.”
“Play PowerWOLF on Apple Music.”
“Okay, here is Power by Katy Perry.”
“Fine, just play Sabaton”
It got that right I guess :/
But aside from the accuracy, I’m finding requests take much longer to action. 15 seconds to add a reminder yesterday. Not sure if that’s just me or normal now?
The old way of doing commands and voice was far superior and made far fewer mistakes.
Funnily, I saw a skyrim mod I believe here on HN that got this right. They did fast commands through more standard voice and language recognition and shunted off more complex conversations only when that failed. It enabled them to do really impressive things with their ingame dog.
With that said - there are three areas of their products that are substandard.
- Siri, as discussed here
- autocorrect - which is insanely bad. I switched to Gboard a while back - and despite its occasional lagging (it depends too much on an internet connection) it’s such a relief. No more fighting autocorrect over words, especially after committing by hitting space.
- and… the whole way you register devices with Apple home - incredibly painful. Thinking they were trying to make it more secure, but they utterly failed at friction and usability. I suspect their ecosystem would be a lot bigger if they simplified how you interact with Home to register devices.
That being said - not adding any more examples of “Siri bad because” for my blood pressure staying on normal levels - one thing that also is one more example how hard Apple fail at basic things:
Ok, so there’s this feature that charges your phone until it presumes you’ll need it?
Why on earth does it arbitrarily decide to be finished at 04:00 when I did set an alarm to 06:30?
Why oh why…
One thing you might do is only charge to 80% or 90%, to improve battery lifetime, unless you detected the user is going on a long flight tomorrow and needs it at 100%. But I don't see any reason for the opposite behaviour.
> Optimized Battery Charging is designed to reduce the wear on your battery and improve its lifespan by reducing the time your iPhone spends fully charged. It is available when Charge Limit is set to 100 percent. When the feature is enabled, your iPhone will delay charging past 80 percent in certain situations.
Source: https://support.apple.com/en-us/108055
The idea is that having the battery sit at 100% charge for an extended period of time is bad for the battery. So the phone charges to 80% immediately and then to 100% a little while before it expects to be unplugged.
Is Apple acknowledging it? Do they have an explanation? What’s their narrative?
From what I can see the only thing that durably keeps me on iOS at this point is Facetime.
(Siri AI is bad. Lots of "Did you mean". I'm back on Siri Classic now.)
What most of these sorts of features do is not to add convenience; instead they remove the need to exercise impulse control. They reduce "friction," which means you do the action more often. But they don't improve convenience. Convenience is not needing to walk outside to the well to fetch a bucket of water. It's not someone making an app so automatic that you no longer need to use your executive function.
I sometimes use Siri to set timers while cooking. Unfortunately, adding items to the shopping list doesn't work well enough, Classic Siri is not smart enough to place them in the food section.
Settings > Siri > Apps > Messages > "Learn from this App"
Unfortunately Apple makes you toggle this off individually for every single app, seems like an intentional dark pattern that they don't let you toggle off all apps in one go. Also, each iOS updates seems to re-enable Siri for every single app so it doesn't respect your previously disabled apps.
- Call Mom
- What app should I use? (only offers the default Phone app
Immense rage - The only freaking app I've ever used to call her. You didn't even give me a reasonable alternative. We don't talk on FB Messenger/WhatsApp/etc (nor do I use them at all).
New Siri is _very slightly_ better for some tasks and infinitely worse in others.
I'm not sure if it's Gemini's fault or Apple's, I lean heavily towards it being Apple's fault and at the end of the day it doesn't matter if the underlying model is blame, it's the model Apple picked so it's Apple's fault.
I had hopes that "New Siri" would help wash away the stain of WWDC 2024 and the incredibly embarrassing new (old) Siri launch. Instead they've doubled down to prove their complete incompetence.
It's telling that I sit here with AirPods on my desk, an Apple Watch on my wrist, an iPad sitting next to me, an iPhone on a stand in front of me, all while typing on a MBP, and I have zero interest in touching their "AI" with a 10-ft pole while I use millions-billions of tokens other models every month. My phone would be the ideal AI device if it actually worked worth a damn. Instead I do use AI on my phone all the time, through the Claude and ChatGPT apps which would both blow away Siri if they had the access to my phone's data. I recognize the dangers in that, I've even agreed with Apple's line in the past about how they are the only ones that can be trusted with that access but they are terrible stewards who clearly don't have a clue what they are doing.
I have better results remote connecting to a Claude Code session on my computer to do anything of value instead of reaching for Siri.
Another thing I've noticed is the horrible lag with updating the UI. An example: On Apple Watch I have the temperature complication bottom center. It sometimes shows the current temperature, sometimes it hasn't updated in minutes or hours (bug #1). For example right now, it shows 66 which I know is incorrect. I tap it to go to the Weather app, a different temperature will be shown (56) (bug #2) and then about 10 seconds later (bug #3) it finally updates to the actual temperature (72).
If I go back to the home screen, finally the complication shows the correct temperature (72).
These kind of async refresh bugs are not unique to WatchOS, it's endemic throughout the Apple ecosystem.
Why? Is this poorly coded JavaScript web view apps? Is this React? Some sort of other async framework that works fine when you are testing on the Apple campus but doesn't work in the real world?
Siri needs to be spoonfed the most basic things, and it's not getting any better. Google doesn't get any passes since my Google Home appears to be getting alzheimer's after the Gemini "upgrade".
Then I learned there was no way to give the new Wi-Fi password to any of these devices without manually re-pairing them in HomeKit and reconfiguring all scenes and everything else...
Like, that seems like basic functionality Apple should have included in the HomeKit design.
In the end, I gave up and just put the Wi-Fi password back.