Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, who has regularly assessed Siri's accuracy in terms of correctly interpreting and answering queries, has issued the latest version of his Siri report card, noting that Siri has continued to improve under iOS 7, particularly in terms of being able to properly interpret questions being asked.
The primary improvement between Siri in iOS 6 and iOS 7 came from its performance in noisier areas, where Siri was able to translate better through a noisy environment (94% vs. 83% correct in Aug iOS 6). Based on our testing, iOS 7 Siri's net ability to answer questions (factors in questions not correctly understood) improved to 79% from 77% in August with iOS 6.
The improvements in Siri's understanding come alongside but separate from Apple's continued efforts to reduce its reliance on Google, as evidenced by Siri's shift to emphasize Bing, Wikipedia, and WolframAlpha results. In Munster's most recent testing, only 4 percent of Siri's answers relied on Google, compared to 17 percent in August testing and 27 percent in December 2012.
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Munster also compares Siri to Google Now, finding that the two services are now essentially tied in effectiveness with a "C+" score after Siri held a substantial lead in the year-ago testing. In the latest testing, Google Now held small leads in content areas such as commerce and information, while Siri performed significantly better for operating system controls.
There is no way these charts are accurate. Even when I speak as clearly as possible and enunciate every syllable, Siri understands me about 40% of the time.
I get 90% accuracy, I don't know what's going on with you.
There is no way these charts are accurate. Even when I speak as clearly as possible and enunciate every syllable, Siri understands me about 40% of the time.
The one thing I will greatly defend Apple and Siri for is trying to understand people's voices. People either have a strong accent, speak with a lisp, speak too fast, speak too slow, speak with a low register voice, have an annoying voice, mumble their words, garble their words and most of all they try and use Siri in a noisy atmosphere along with any of the above.
No matter what, it's still an electronic device and people just have to learn to speak properly based on the source or just don't use as you've appeared to do. You say you have no need for voice control, it's not just about voice control. Many times I need to look up sports scores, it's much faster and easier just to ask Siri the game stats than typing them in or opening an app and searching.
Never defend a technology! Technology is meant to develop to serve the requirements/limitations of existing human behaviour; human behaviour shouldn't be expected to adapt to meet the requirements/limitations of technology.
I have had the opposite experience. After seeing steady improvement in Siri, it has recently gotten worse and become almost unusable for me.
Specifically, I use Siri a lot to play music in the car. I will say "Play Song X" or "Play Album Y". Siri used to be pretty good at hearing the name of the song and finding it in my music library. Now it frequently hear the names incorrectly. Even when it does hear the correct name, it will play a song with a completely different name or simply say "Sorry, I couldn't find that in your music". What do you mean you couldn't find David Bowie in my music??? It's right there!
This regression is quite infuriating. Also, Siri still often fails to respond ("Sorry, there's something wrong") or take 20+ seconds to respond with the wrong answer. I believe we need to give all of Apple's web services time to gather data and make iterative improvements, but I have very little tolerance when they actually get worse over time.
I don't know, that net percentage increase (4% better) year over year seems kind of low to me. Am I the only one who feels that way? Not my field of study, so I'm not entirely sure if this is supposed to be impressive.
We've seen a lot of teasers about the Beats Studio Buds over the past month since they first showed up in Apple's beta software updates, and today they're finally official. The Beats Studio Buds are available to order today in red, white, and black ahead of a June 24 ship date, and they're priced at $149.99.
The Studio Buds are the first Beats-branded earbuds to truly compete with AirPods...
Thursday February 4, 2021 1:58 am PST by Tim Hardwick
Serif today announced across-the-board updates for its popular suite of Affinity creative apps, including Affinity Photo, Affinity Designer, and the Apple award-winning Affinity Publisher for Mac, all of which were among the first professional creative suites to be optimized for Apple's new M1 chip.
"After another year which saw record numbers of people switching to Affinity, it's exciting to...
As is tradition, Apple executives Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak joined Daring Fireball's John Gruber in an episode of The Talk Show to discuss several announcements that Apple made over this weeks WWDC, including iPadOS 15, macOS Monterey, and a large focus around privacy.
Federighi kicks off the conversation discussing the common architecture, now thanks to Apple silicon, across all of...
The upcoming 14-inch MacBook Pro is set to be more expensive than the current 13-inch MacBook Pro and both the 14 and 16-inch models will offer the same performance, according to the leaker known as "Dylandkt."
The leaker shared the information on Twitter, explaining that both of the upcoming MacBook Pro models, expected to come in 14 and 16-inch sizes, will feature the same performance due...
Wednesday February 3, 2021 3:09 pm PST by Juli Clover
YouTube is planning to stop supporting its YouTube app on the third-generation Apple TV models, where YouTube has long been available as a channel option.
A 9to5Mac reader received a message about the upcoming app discontinuation, which is set to take place in March.Starting early March, the YouTube app will no longer be available on Apple TV (3rd generation). You can still watch YouTube on...
Google and the three major U.S. carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, will all support a new communications protocol on Android smartphones starting in 2022, a move that puts pressure on Apple to adopt a new cross-platform messaging standard and may present a challenge to iMessage.
Verizon recently announced that it is planning to adopt Messages by Google as its default messaging...
Wednesday August 25, 2021 3:55 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Google has rolled out picture-in-picture support as an "experimental" feature for YouTube premium subscribers, allowing them to watch video in a small window when the app is closed.
If you're a premium YouTube subscriber looking to try out picture-in-picture, follow these steps: Launch a web browser and sign into your YouTube account at YouTube.com.
Navigate to www.youtube.com/new.
Scroll...
The iPhone 13 will feature low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication connectivity to allow users to make calls and send messages in areas without 4G or 5G coverage, according to the reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
In a note to investors, seen by MacRumors, Kuo explained that the iPhone 13 lineup will feature hardware that is able to connect to LEO satellites. If enabled with the relevant...
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Twitter today introduced Snapchat-style QR codes, which are designed to make it easier to find and follow friends on the social network. Each Twitter QR code is unique to an individual Twitter user, so when scanned, it'll bring up the person's account.
To access your Twitter QR code, you'll need the official Twitter app for iOS. In the app, go to your profile, tap on the gear icon, and select...
Apple today seeded the sixth developer beta of macOS Monterey, the newest version of the macOS operating system. The sixth beta comes three weeks after Apple released the fifth macOS Monterey beta.
Registered developers can download the beta through the Apple Developer Center and once the appropriate profile is installed, betas will be available through the Software Update mechanism in...
Updates for Safari, FaceTime, and many other apps, Universal Control to let a single mouse or trackpad control multiple devices, new Shortcuts app, machine-learning Live Text detection and Visual Lookup, and more.
Top Rated Comments
I get 90% accuracy, I don't know what's going on with you.
Never defend a technology! Technology is meant to develop to serve the requirements/limitations of existing human behaviour; human behaviour shouldn't be expected to adapt to meet the requirements/limitations of technology.
Specifically, I use Siri a lot to play music in the car. I will say "Play Song X" or "Play Album Y". Siri used to be pretty good at hearing the name of the song and finding it in my music library. Now it frequently hear the names incorrectly. Even when it does hear the correct name, it will play a song with a completely different name or simply say "Sorry, I couldn't find that in your music". What do you mean you couldn't find David Bowie in my music??? It's right there!
This regression is quite infuriating. Also, Siri still often fails to respond ("Sorry, there's something wrong") or take 20+ seconds to respond with the wrong answer. I believe we need to give all of Apple's web services time to gather data and make iterative improvements, but I have very little tolerance when they actually get worse over time.