2024-10-29
Why Siri works for me
There's a bit of renewed interest in Siri as Apple starts to release Apple Intelligence. This morning I came across this post by Nick Heer who writes "I cannot think of any other application which comes preloaded with a new iPhone that so greatly underdelivers, and has for so long." He provides a series of examples of Siri fails. It's become a fairly common meme amongst Apple pundits.
And yet, I continue to find Siri really helpful and use it with success. Are they using it wrong? Why the stark difference in experience?
What I've noticed about many of the Siri fail posts is that they often seem to be a repetition of a very small subset of possible request types. Music-related requests are often at the top of the list of fails. Also, it seems the device in use is, more often than not, an iPhone. In contrast to this most of my Siri interactions happen via an iPad and I don't use Siri to request music.
Several years ago I made it a point to learn the boundaries of Siri, which is to say, I got in the habit of trying new requests that went beyond the usual. It's a reflection of how I use my computing devices, which is to learn and explore the details of how they are intended to work and then use them to their fullest. For years that was the Mac, then the iPad. But regardless of the device, the OS or the app, it's usually the case that there are many layers of features to explore and often there are multiple ways to accomplish the same task. I enjoy looking for and using all of the variations.
A simple request of Siri this morning is such an example. There's nothing complicated here, but there are subtle changes in wording that demonstrate Siri improvements. But I did have to make at least a minimal effort to test and notice the improvements. It's an easy habit that results in a gradually improved experience for me.
I began with the common, easy request: "Siri, add apples to my shopping list." But while the iPad was still listening in Siri mode, I proceeded to say "add onions" and then, after a brief pause, "add flour.” Siri continued to add new items to my list. A few minutes later, remembering three other items I needed, I said "Siri, add soy milk and windmill cookies potatoes to my shopping list." In the past, this seemingly simple series of requests would not have worked with Siri.
Here are the improvements:
- For the past year or two it's been possible to just say Siri rather than Hey Siri. It's a small thing but if you use Siri many times a day the one word activation is a noticeable improvement.
- I was able to add new items in a single Siri session without specifying additional instructions. In the past I would have had to wait and start a new Siri request for each item and say each time "Siri, add item to my shopping list." The new work flow is much easier, much faster.
- I was able to request that Siri "Add soy milk and windmill cookies potatoes to my shopping list" and Siri added each as separate items. It even knew to separate out potatoes as a third item. In the past the three items would have been added as a single item called "soy milk and windmill cookies potatoes". A small improvement but an improvement.
I can't know what pundits or other bloggers do when they're using Siri. I don't know their intent or process. I've made it a point to test and re-test the limits of how Siri works and what it can or cannot handle. My goal is never a gotcha blog post or video, but rather, to learn how to better use the feature. In the above linked post from May 2024 I shared a detailed list of the many ways that Siri continues to work well for me as well as the areas where it remains limited. It's the sort of list that I almost never see in reporting on Siri which is unfortunate because it likely leaves a gap in users' understanding of what's possible.
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