Mossberg: Why does Siri seem so dumb?


The Verge:

So why does Siri seem so dumb? Why are its talents so limited? Why does it stumble so often? When was the last time Siri delighted you with a satisfying and surprising answer or action?

For me at least, and for many people I know, it's been years. Siri's huge promise has been shrunk to just making voice calls and sending messages to contacts, and maybe getting the weather, using voice commands. Some users find it a reliable way to set timers, alarms, notes and reminders, or to find restaurants. But many of these tasks could be done with the crude, pre-Siri voice command features on the iPhone and other phones, albeit in a more clumsy way.

Mossberg says that Apple told him their priority is the types of queries Siri gets in large volumes, and not the more complicated contextual questions. That makes sense, but the competition is working well in this area while Siri is not. I think Siri does work better at somethings, particularly dictation. Just asking every day stuff I find the most frustrating.

I only used it once in macOS Sierra just to try it out because I don't think I see the point. On mobile it makes sense out of convenience, but I can drive a keyboard and cursor way faster than formulating a voice command Siri might understand only to hope for the best.