Usual Apple reliance on their fans buying their devices no matter how bad the software is.
And while I'm ranting... the thing I hate most of about all of these services is they don't have a profanity mode. In the privacy of my own home I have AN EFFIN' HUGE POTTY MOUTH. I love to curse. I LOVE IT. The fact that I can't get one of these services to talk to me like a middle school student is extremely disappointing. I don't want to be politically correct when I'm talking to a virtual assistant in a private setting. I want to say "Hey goognizzle, are there any good mother f***ing movies opening near me this weekend?" and get Samuel L. Jackson style "Here's the mother f***ing movies opening on mother f***ing Friday at the 5 mother f***ing theaters closest to mother f***ing you."*
Edit: TIL how to faux curse on HN. To type display "f***ing", I need to type out "f\*\*\*ing".
The day Siri will work equal to/better than other competing systems, it will be used as a main reason for which you should buy an Apple device. The day before that, it will still be something that users actually don't want.
EDIT: and to be a bit more clear that I'm serious with this, it actually makes sense. If a feature doesn't work well, you find ways around it. And if you are used to an ecosystem, maybe you don't even know how well another ecosystem works. And finally, if that ecosystem works for you well enough - or that device - you probably really don't care about that missing feature.
Apple (and Amazon) get many things right, and actually seem to pay a tiny bit of attention to user needs. So it's really not worth playing with the google stuff because you end up in these weird nonsensical hells - everything is amazing, and then they just drop the ball in a key corner.
For example, my google work calendar is EASY to integrate with Alexa along with my personal calendar. Fantastic, what's my schedule today works great. Google - falls flat on its' face for this, despite being a paying customer of their Gsuite. Their approach is just full of excuses here, and ignores that this desired interaction works well on their COMPETITORS devices but not theirs.
Just one (of many) examples. They have some sort of eventually consistent backend more often for stuff so you also get weird states that you can't delete things, changes take longer to "flow through" etc.
My guess is that Apple management doesn't see voice assistants as the "next big thing" to differentiate themselves from the competition. I think VR/AR is where they are focusing and Siri is on life support.
> Siri is especially bad when compared to Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa, both of which are light years ahead.
Followed by a statement about the entire ecosystem, of which only a tiny amount is Siri.
> Usual Apple reliance on their fans buying their devices no matter how bad the software is.
Apple makes money selling devices to people.
Google makes money selling people to advertisers.
As a result Apple's maps and ML assistant aren't as good as Google's which harvests way more of people's data.
I'm perfectly fine with this trade off. Lots of things iPhones do are even presented at as the data never leaving your phone at keynotes/press releases, and ads. A bullet point notably missing from Android phones. I deliberately use Apple's admittedly worse maps application whenever possible because I know it's not telling Big Brother about me when I know Google maps is.
I would agree that Apple is significantly better on user privacy than Google or Facebook but that does not mean that the NSA isn’t sucking up all your data from Apple Maps.
Claiming that Apple isn’t “telling Big Brother about me” is at best naive and at worst dangerous misinformation that could put activists and whistleblowers at risk of having their location data harvested by the US war machine.
I’ve never used anything non-Apple nor have I used any non-phone voice assistant, so I’m not in a position to compare, but as long as it calls the people that I want, sets timers and alarms as needed, and routes me to my city of choice, why would I care?
>I’ve never used anything non-Apple nor have I used any non-phone voice assistant
You're coming at it without experience. If you try the google and/or amazon version, you may still find Siri acceptable but I can absolutely guarantee you will not be surprised anymore when people call Siri shitty, because companied to amazon and google, it is.
