Walt Mossberg, writing for Recode, has written an article entitled Why does Siri seem so dumb? He points out all the things that Siri gets wrong, and points out that Apple is losing ground in this area:
It seems to me that Apple has wasted its lead with Siri. And now Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and others are on the march.
I pointed out similar problems in a Macworld article in August. For me, Siri is a waste of time.
What I found most interesting, however, was John Gruber’s comment on Daring Fireball. He says:
These sort of glaring inconsistencies are almost as bad as universal failures. The big problem Apple faces with Siri is that when people encounter these problems, they stop trying. It feels like you’re wasting your time, and makes you feel silly or even foolish for having tried. I worry that even if Apple improves Siri significantly, people will never know it because they won’t bother trying because they were burned so many times before.
That’s a very important point. I don’t bother to use Siri unless I want to do math; it is quicker than using the calculator, at least if Siri gets it right. But I’ve found that using a Google search in Safari for the same thing – a calculation that I dictate to my iPhone – works even better.
I really don’t see any point in using Siri. I have yet to find one frictionless example of how it makes me save time.