Topic: My piece on Apple Siri

[Pugnate]

http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/8845/relax-and-let-siri-look-after-you/#comment-78327

[scottws]

It's Apple tech, therefore I hate it and everyone that is currently sucking Steve Jobs' corpse dick over it and anything else that has an Apple logo on it.

In all seriousness I think it's stupid tech for a cell phone, but I think it would be great for something like a TV.  I heard they might use it in their TV they are supposedly building.  That would beat using the damn cursor buttons to type out searches for shows and channels any day.

[idolminds]

My mom was watching some morning news show and the one woman was really excited about Siri and was attempting to show it off. She couldn't get it to do anything. It was pretty funny.

[sirean_syan]

Is Siri the thing on that commerical where people ask their phone to do things for them?

That come on last week and my response was to pick up Aimee's iPhone and tell it:

"iPhone. I am too stupid to run my own life. Please do it for me."

[Cools!]

I don't really care, but for some time I kept seeing posts about it on programming news sites about how it's supposedly pretty good at what it does.

Btw, it was originally just an iOS app but then the company got bought by Apple. Originally there were plans to have it on other platforms as well.

[PyroMenace]

That's a good article Pug, I liked it. I have a iPhone 4S, and its my first iPhone, but I have barely used Siri, just havent been in situations where I really need it. It does work for texting while driving though. Also now that you are an article writer for a news website, how do you take comments like this dude wrote?

It is flabbergasting to read such ill-researched articles on ANY news platform. This article is full of misrepresentations and one sided comments, that it is disgusting. The author is one of the show off ‘oh-look-APPLE!’ sort of people who believe anything the mainstream media feeds him. My question to you is: ‘which isolation capsule are YOU from?’. To make things easier to read, I will point out a few things:
Apple has been VERY good in terms of innovation and interactive features. But, until recently, their graph has been sliding. Apple seems to be a victim of the famous saying: ‘All great things come to an end’. They are so desperate, that they believe suing other companies will generate revenue for them. (Yes, I know the importance of patent protection etc.)
Due to the inherent complications of a close-ended software in the form of iOS 5, the company is limited by how much it can actually innovate. Does anyone remember the hassle it caused apple when they upgraded the 3GS screen to a retina display on the iPhone 4? Half their applications would not support the new screen, and countless man-hours were spent on trying to make apps compatible with the new retina display. As for the close-ended software, any dimwit with half a brain cell will understand how an open source is better for development vs. a close-ended software.
Siri, a voice activated gimmick, has been around in devices for over a decade. I was around when Android was still in the development phases and one of the first to get my hands on the HTC Dream, one of the first android phones in 2008. And what really took me by surprise was the accuracy at which the voice recognition put all my words into text. As time progressed, more and more voice activated functions were integrated into Android devices, specially in the GPS front. You can make calls, send texts etc. on the native ‘Navigation’, ‘Voice Command’ or ‘Voice Search’ applications found in Android devices. The accuracy is great (unless you sound like an illiterate trying to pronounce tomato as tamaaatarr). By the way, does Siri work when you are not online?
The only change that took place in the iPhone 4S was the induction of the A5 800 mHZ dual-core processor (Android devices had them a year ago, now they are almost twice that clocking at 1.5 gHz BEFORE overclocks) and Siri (which Android devices had 3 years ago). Oh, and did I tell you about the major battery drain issue of the iPhone 4S even after you turn of the auto-timezone and everything else off? Do you expect such issues to be there from a company as big as Apple who took more than 5 months than normal to release a device which doesn’t even work properly? HA!
On a closing note, I sincerely hope and pray that people spend time and research on things before they make any one sided reviews and talk out of their backside as if they are some expert.
P.S. Did you know the Samsung Galaxy S2 (Android) is still regarded as the best phone in the world by 85% of all tech gurus?

Or just dealing with critique, long winded, or trolling comments? I almost feel like I would be super dismissive, especially with that stupid comment, but I guess its apart of the job to read responses and engage in discussion with the readers.

[Pugnate]

I was really really pissed off. His comments don't even make sense. It was an article about Siri.

[PyroMenace]

I wrote a small response, let the battle begin!

[Cools!]

That guy is just bitching for the sake of bitching.

P.S. Did you know the Samsung Galaxy S2 (Android) is still regarded as the best phone in the world by 85% of all tech gurus?

lol, who gives a fuck.

Oh and nice article Pug. Keep it up!

[scottws]

Any time there is an article about Microsoft, Android, Apple, there are comments like that.  Every single story I've seen on Ars Technica or ZD Net is like that.  Honestly the fanboyism is worse than with consoles.

[Cobra951]

It goes a bit deeper than fanboyism.  I'm alarmed and dismayed at the throngs of people with cash in hand, eager to let Apple control their lives.  Speaking out against that can get heated, because conversations with the faithful are always going to get ugly.  I can see that dynamic affecting lots of other conversations.  I'm not a fanboy of any telephone.  I am only opposed to Apple's centrist, controlling agenda, across all device categories.

If that guy had a modicum of civility, if he hadn't made his post a personal insult, some of his points might have come across as valid.

[scottws]

Yeah, the cultism is strange and disturbing.  For instance my sister-in-law's birthday was last week.  She has an Android phone, but her boyfriend got her an iPad for her birthday.  Her ex-boyfriend and his current girlfriend came over and the girlfriend said "Oh cool you got an iPad!  Maybe now you'll become an Apple fan and get an iPhone!"  I was just like, "WTF is that about?  Why?"

Granted, these systems have ecosystems that lock you in, both Android and iOS.  If you own a bunch of apps on one, it doesn't really make much sense to move to the other ecosystem.  Same if you are heavily reliant on things like Gmail and Google calendar.

[Pugnate]

It goes a bit deeper than fanboyism.  I'm alarmed and dismayed at the throngs of people with cash in hand, eager to let Apple control their lives.  Speaking out against that can get heated, because conversations with the faithful are always going to get ugly.  I can see that dynamic affecting lots of other conversations.  I'm not a fanboy of any telephone.  I am only opposed to Apple's centrist, controlling agenda, across all device categories.

If that guy had a modicum of civility, if he hadn't made his post a personal insult, some of his points might have come across as valid.

I think none of his points had anything to do with the article. The article is about Siri, and Android's voice recognition software is pretty terrible. The rest of it is just some weird rant on stuff I didn't even touch.

[Pugnate]

That's a good article Pug, I liked it.

Thanks Pyro. I appreciate you reading my pieces.

[Cobra951]

I think none of his points had anything to do with the article. The article is about Siri, and Android's voice recognition software is pretty terrible. The rest of it is just some weird rant on stuff I didn't even touch.

I know, man.  I'm not defending the guy.  He acted horribly.

[scottws]

I disagree about Android's voice recognition being terrible.  I use it all the time.  I doesn't go to the extent that Siri does, but I think it is good for what it is designed to do.

[gpw11]

P.S. Did you know the Samsung Galaxy S2 (Android) is still regarded as the best phone in the world by 85% of all tech gurus?

Ahahaha.  WTF? Guy's a clown.  Seriously, if he did any research at all he would know that it's actually only 83% of all tech gurus.  But seriously:  The guy's a clown and I don't know why people always have to turn everything into some platform war, although Cobra does bring up valid points.

As for Siri, I've been impressed by what I've seen, but I actually couldn't get it to load on my mom's 4s. I think because she hadn't signed into iCloud yet, but I haven't really looked into it.  That said, I do see the value in it.  It's one of those features that seems useless until you actually get that moment where you're like "Oh fuck, that was way easier than typing that in".  And I've had mixed success with Android's built in voice recognition.  It's great for shit like "Navigate to Dave Simon's" and it load an address in your contact list to Maps but horrible for things like "Navigate to xxxx bar" and it has to actually do a web search.  At least in my experience anyways. Vlingo is another option for Android that's really popular but I haven't used much.

[scottws]

I do the "navigate to x" thing all the time and it works great for me.  That said, Google has a tendency to leave places in their database well after they have closed and Google Navigation doesn't warn you that you have asked for directions to a closed business, even though it uses the same database as Google Places and Google Maps, both of which do let you know a business is closed.

For instance when Borders went belly-up, I navigate to Borders and found a Walgreen's.  I checked Places as it showed the Borders as closed.  Reviews of the business showed that it had been closed for almost three years.  Why does Google keep those locations in its database for so long, especially if they aren't going to warn you regarding closed businesses in Navigation?

Again, aside from that complaint, which isn't even voice-related, it has been great for me.

[Cools!]

Don't worry Apple haters they can rebuild Jobs.

[gpw11]

Hahaha.  I laughed pretty hard at that.

Having played with Siri quite a bit more (info:  it's not enabled out of the box, you have to do so in settings), I'm actually really, really impressed.  I also looked into the google voice commands a bit more and found that it's a lot better than I had previously thought.  I don't know if I was trying to navigate somewhere weird or what before, but it pretty much hit every time (I suspect I was actually confused and thinking about trying to input addresses with the keyboard voice dictation...which is far less on spot).

But, even then, it really doesn't touch Siri. I mean, what impressed me was that you could really tell it to do anything and it would.  Stock values and it'd look it up, currency or unit conversion, the weather in some small town net week.   It's really good at what it does.

[K-man]

You partially talked me out of a 4s and into a Droid Razr with your article.

Thanks, the Razr is pretty awesome.

[Pugnate]

hahah ok....

[Xessive]

Man, I am behind on this thread. I just read the article and the commentary and that particular dude irks me. I picture him as a troll lurking under a bridge, piggy-backing on someone's WIFI and rampantly commenting on the topic wherever he finds it. Ungh, despicable.

Apparently someone has been able to hack an iPhone 4 and get Siri to work almost identically to the iPhone 4S, meaning that the iPhone 4S is really just a marketing ploy.

[scottws]

Having played with Siri quite a bit more (info:  it's not enabled out of the box, you have to do so in settings), I'm actually really, really impressed.  I also looked into the google voice commands a bit more and found that it's a lot better than I had previously thought.  I don't know if I was trying to navigate somewhere weird or what before, but it pretty much hit every time (I suspect I was actually confused and thinking about trying to input addresses with the keyboard voice dictation...which is far less on spot).

But, even then, it really doesn't touch Siri. I mean, what impressed me was that you could really tell it to do anything and it would.  Stock values and it'd look it up, currency or unit conversion, the weather in some small town net week.   It's really good at what it does.

Should it?  Google's voice system has been around far longer than Siri.  One would expect Siri to be an improvement, and it is.  That doesn't mean that Google's system is bad.  It's just less technically advanced as it is older.

This is like saying the P51 Mustang sucks because the F-22 Raptor is better.  Well that's a little extreme, but it gets the point across.

[PyroMenace]

Wait, what's your point? Are you saying that voice recognition-command software isn't worth improving?

[scottws]

No.  I'm just responding to gpw's comment that Google's voice recognition software doesn't touch Siri.  Of course it doesn't.  It is much older and Siri was developed as an improvement over existing voice recognition capabilities, including Google's.  It isn't fair to knock Google's software because it isn't as good as Siri.  If they were released around the same time or Google's tech was released after Siri, then that would be a valid situation to knock Google.

Hence my fighter plane analogy.  They were both good planes for their generations.  Just because the F-22 is better than the P51 today doesn't mean the P51 wasn't a good plane at one point in time.  Of course it isn't as good as a F-22, but you shouldn't expect to to be.

Basically I was just saying they shouldn't be compared directly in a black and white situation: "A sucks because B is better".  Again, it would be fine to do that if they were products of the same generation, but they aren't.

[Pugnate]

Ummmm it is natural to compare a product to the next best thing, regardless if it is from a competitor. How does fairness come into when you are spending your dollar? Doesn't make sense.

[Cools!]

Of course you can compare the products. You have two competing products out at the same time so it's only natural to compare them. Release date or generation has nothing to do with it because Google didn't just freeze the product since releasing the first version. You aren't comparing version one of Google voice; you are comparing the current iteration of it which has had years of improvement. If another product comes out that is better, so be it.

[gpw11]

No.  I'm just responding to gpw's comment that Google's voice recognition software doesn't touch Siri.  Of course it doesn't.  It is much older and Siri was developed as an improvement over existing voice recognition capabilities, including Google's.  It isn't fair to knock Google's software because it isn't as good as Siri.  If they were released around the same time or Google's tech was released after Siri, then that would be a valid situation to knock Google.

Hence my fighter plane analogy.  They were both good planes for their generations.  Just because the F-22 is better than the P51 today doesn't mean the P51 wasn't a good plane at one point in time.  Of course it isn't as good as a F-22, but you shouldn't expect to to be.

Basically I was just saying they shouldn't be compared directly in a black and white situation: "A sucks because B is better".  Again, it would be fine to do that if they were products of the same generation, but they aren't.

It's not like I'm comparing OSX Lion to Windows 98 here and there's nothing skewed about saying that Siri hands down does what it does better: I'm comparing two currently offered features.  Sure, Android had better voice control earlier (I assume?  I have no idea how Apple's previous system worked), but that doesn't really mean much: they no longer do.   If you're looking at that as a selling point then you'd be foolish not to go with Apple.

[scottws]

You are missing my point or I'm not being clear enough. I'm just saying of course Siri is better.  It is to be expected.  It's the next generation.  That doesn't make what Google has suddenly crap or devalue past accomplishments.

[gpw11]

Okay, I thought you were taking a harder stance than that.  Yet, I still think you can compare them directly.  I mean, they're both the currently available products on the market.  No, that doesn't mean what Google has is suddenly crap (although one may argue that it devalues what they have relatively speaking...because who cares about past accomplishments when you're looking at buying something), but you can certainly compare them.  The p-51/f22 analogy doesn't really hold water because they never went head to head in a contract bid or any other sphere.  These two technologies essentially are, regardless of the fact that one technology is older.

But yes, I do agree with your overall statement that it doesn't mean that Google's tech is bad.

[scottws]

You're right, P51/F-22 isn't really a great analogy.  What about F-15/F-22?

Anyway, sounds like we are sort of on the same page.

[gpw11]

HORRIBLE ANALOGY.  But only because I know shit all about fighter jets.  I'm Canadian, remember?  If we're going to be on the same page we're going to have to compare the Silent Igloo Stealth Beaver to the All Terrain Discreet Attack Otter.

[ren]

Haha, I was just thinking that too. Scott's analogies did a great job teaching me about fighter jets by comparing them with technologies I understand.

[scottws]

Sorry, I used to love reading about fighter aircraft.  Not just U.S. planes though, but also English, German, Japanese, and Soviet.

[gpw11]

Ha.  No need to apologize, but dude:  all we have are Intercepter Geese.

[scottws]

Yeah you guys need to keep those damned things up there.  We don't have any down here in Florida, but when I was in Ohio those damn Canadian geese were everywhere and shit on everything.

[Cools!]

We had the Avro Arrow...

[Cobra951]

Yeah you guys need to keep those damned things up there.  We don't have any down here in Florida, but when I was in Ohio those damn Canadian geese were everywhere and shit on everything.

They're a damn nuisance in Winton Woods.  The walking/biking loop gets filthy.  Why do they like shitting on a thin strip of blacktop so much?  It's like they're doing it on purpose to keep us out.

[scottws]

It's all over the grass too, just harder to notice.