I hate Siri, can she win me back in iOS 9?

John Flud

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ugh! just now I asked siri when is daylight savings? it thought I said "rid of a night savings." trusty google got it right. I hope some apple personnel is reading this thread, maybe curious and doing research on consumer response to their products. LOL
 

RitchFactor

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I don't understand why so many people have issues with Siri. I almost never have issues with her understanding me.


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RitchFactor

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Possibly, my wife is from South America and Siri understands her Spanish accented English just fine. But there might be something to what you say.


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sau124

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I don't understand why so many people have issues with Siri. I almost never have issues with her understanding me.

Same here. I could say couple of the sentences above and Siri got it right. I have had very little problems with Siri, maybe I am not used to speaking to her.
 

Scatabrain

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I guess the speech recognition being server side not on my end, that makes sense. so as apple improves it, it will get better regardless of my updating. I may not have to wait for iOS 10, assuming apple is on this and fixing it.


I too would prefer siri. google won't pull up my albums and play them. google can't set my alarms. etc. so I wish I could use siri.


but when it even confuses "how far away is frontier city by walking with "read burnt your kitty by walking," it's utterly hopeless. how the hell does it confuse "how far is" with "read burnt your" they sound nothing alike. I can understand why it might confuse city with kitty, but read with how? WTF!



and I'd think I must have the worst speech impediment ever and not realize it, (maybe I do pronounce "read" and "how" the same way and don't realize it. well no because then google would be getting it wrong too but it's not.

apparently though there's lots of people that claim siri works great for them and apple even claims their more accurate than google?

well if it is, I'm jealous because for me it's turned out as useless as tits on a bull. and that makes me sad. I'm rooting for Siri and can't wait for the day I can actually use this feature. apple are you listening?

I'm from Boston and she got that sentence for me. Hopefully Siri isn't really burning any kitties.
 

scruffypig

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google has apparently in the past few months upped their speech recognition game and it almost always understand me now. I can open my google app and ask it questions and it verbally gives me answers. Siri still almost always misunderstands me and not just a little bit. completely off base. below is an example. look at the screenshots below. read the question in the google app. its what I asked. then look at what siri thought I said. now over all I like the iphone best and since I got the google app, I've no interest in switching platforms, in fact I'm getting the 6S plus, be up tonight to preorder it. so this isn't meant to bash apple.

my question: has anybody else had this issue and if so have any of you seen improvements in iOS 9 with regard to Siri?

View attachment 91158View attachment 91159

Can SHE win me back? My Siri has a US male voice.
 

sting7k

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I find that both Siri and Google understand me just fine. Google however returns results MUCH faster than Siri. If anything the main reason I don't use Siri is because I find it to be slow to activate and sometimes it hangs for many seconds before it even starts listening for me to speak.
 

swarlos

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ugh! just now I asked siri when is daylight savings? it thought I said "rid of a night savings." trusty google got it right. I hope some apple personnel is reading this thread, maybe curious and doing research on consumer response to their products. LOL

d51e14a72c507c7aebaa92a219852caa.jpg


Worked the first time for me.


The Lannisters send their regards.
 

swarlos

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Worked for me as well. Earlier today I asked her to do some metric to inches conversions and she got it right each time. Stuff like "what is 9.12 millimeters in inches"

I tried some of the phrases though and she failed miserably LOL.


The Lannisters send their regards.
 

NoleScream

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Yes, that's it. Siri is terrible with accents and Google made sure to get them right.

If anyone remembers Google 411, that's why they're so good at all of this. They gave away 411 info years ago, but got to sample hundreds of thousands of voices / accents and got really good at voice commands.
 

iN8ter

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I find Cortana, Google Now, and Siri are all fast and accurate with voice recognition. The guy in the video though, wow. That's a real test of technology cause I don't think I have the patience to ever converse with a person who speaks that way. Its nigh indecipherable.

I do think Proactive Siri is an embarrassing counterpunch to Google and Microsoft's solutions. really, its just bad compared to Cortana and Now. Its like they only finished a quarter of it and then pushed it out there in a rush.
 

John Flud

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I find Cortana, Google Now, and Siri are all fast and accurate with voice recognition. The guy in the video though, wow. That's a real test of technology cause I don't think I have the patience to ever converse with a person who speaks that way. Its nigh indecipherable.

I do think Proactive Siri is an embarrassing counterpunch to Google and Microsoft's solutions. really, its just bad compared to Cortana and Now. Its like they only finished a quarter of it and then pushed it out there in a rush.

that guy in the video is me. and you're in the minority. I work with customers daily and nobody ever struggles to understand me. nor does google. so yeah I'm blaming siri. that's not to say I don't have an accent combined with possibly a minor speech impediment I'm unaware of from being hearing impaired, but if that was the cause then google would struggle as well. and so would the many customers I serve.
 

iN8ter

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I'm aware you have an accent, clearly, and if you have a speech impediment (possible, given the characteristics of your speech), then how can you fault Google? Maybe learn to speek better, and then check?

When you said "When's Daylight Savings Time?" it's not out of the realm of possibility that other voice recognition services would interpret that as Wednesday Savings Time" It sounded quite a bit like that.

Additionally, you have a muffled quality to your voice that can trick some speech recognition services.

Apple does voice to text locally, IIRC, which means Siri is bound to have a much higher failure rate when interpreting speech compared to Google Now or Cortana - that's not to mention both Google and Microsoft simply have better tech and more experience at this than Apple.

Whether people where you're from understand you find doesn't matter:

1. Your manner of elocution is common in the area where you're from. Speech characteristics tend to vary by geography, and within a geographical region people tend to share certain characteristics. This makes it easier for them to understand other people in the area that have similar bad speech, since they're accustomed to it. What you hear from yourself, is not what we hear, and it's definitely not what Siri hears.

2. You're speaking to a computer that is hearing you through a microphone, not human ears. Additionally, certain characteristics of your voice - like the muffled quality of it - may or may not be exacerbated by your environment (i.e. noise, even small amounts) or the fact that it's being interpreted through a microphone. This is never going to be a 1:1 reproduction of your real voice, and resulting quality is almost never in your favor. There have bene phones that have put special emphasis on the quality of their Microphones, but those ran Windows hone 8.x (Lumia 920 and variants) and Android (Note 3); not iOS. Apple likes their profit margins. I think the iPhone 6[+] till only has a Mono Microphone?

The fact that you can communicate fine with people where you're from is not suprising - at all. There are people from Louisiana that you would laugh at if they spoke to you - some I can barely understand (I am not a foreigner to this). My roommate is from NH and people are drive thrus routinely need him to repeat himself - his accent isn't nearly as thick as your and his voice is clearer.

But half the people I know, I know for sure would have some serious issues understanding much of what you said in that video. Your Accent is incredibly thick, your manner of elocution would be foreign to them, and the muffled quality of your voice would throw them off as it tends to change the tone of certain vowels as and some consonant sounds to run into each other/blend - this tends to make words sound very different to other people (like a foreigner with a very thick accent trying to speak English).

I'm not really trying to be mean, just trying to explain what the "issue" is.

Microsoft and Google got huge head starts on Apple in harvesting voice data. Microsoft has been doing it in Windows Phone since 2010 and in Windows Mobile since years before then. Google did it with Google 411 and in Android, among other things. They collected all the voices. The flawless ones, the bad ones. Those lacking accents and those with a plethora of it. Almost every type of vocal quality, stutter, impediment, etc.

And they do the voice processing in the cloud a lot as well, which gives them a huge lead on Siri in Accuracy even when the input quality is not so good.
 
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John Flud

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I'm aware you have an accent, clearly, and if you have a speech impediment (possible, given the characteristics of your speech), then how can you fault Google? Maybe learn to speek better, and then check?
I'm not faulting google. just siri.

google understands me almost every time. siri almost never does. if it's just me, why does google work so well?

my guess is that the biggest issue I'm having is that google is ahead of siri in dealing with people with accents. simple as that.


and apple needs to address this.
 

iN8ter

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Clearly that was a typo. There is not much Apple can address. YOU need to use it more so the system adapts better to your accent and vocal/speech characteristics. Provided the mechanism for that exists. I don't use Siri so I am not sure how they handle voice data. Google and Microsoft do collect that data and use it to improve their systems - so that is the default "solution" for Cortana or Now.

Multiple people have told you why Google works much better for you, you just seem to want to bash Siri (who isn't that good and was never really that great to begin) for reasons unknown.

Speech Recognition is kind of like Mapping. The same reason Google's Maps are superior to Apple's is the same reason their speech recognition is superior to Apple. They have a ton more data in their centers to make it that way.

People bash Google for "spying" but without the type of data collection Microsoft and Google do you don't get Systems that good in 2015 that you can deliver for no dollars to that many people speaking that many languages... You get them years later - like Apple [likely] will.

Use it more, and wait, it will *eventually* fix itself. That's the solution.

This is the price you pay for "privacy" and that is why the argument isn't nearly as black and white as Apple would have you believe.

If Apple hurries up bringing Siri to OS X, that can significantly improve the amount of voice samples they get to Analyze and improve their speech recognition engine. Provided they're willing to do that. Otherwise, they'll likely have to do localized voice modeling to improve accuracy for their users, which is incredibly inefficient doesn't really do their customers any favors as that data can be easily scrubbed and anonymized, anyways. It would only be for their own personal PR win.
 
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