Perché Siri è tanto inutile?

Walt Mossberg:

So why does Siri seem so dumb? Why are its talents so limited? Why does it stumble so often? When was the last time Siri delighted you with a satisfying and surprising answer or action?

For me, at least, and for many people I know, it’s been years. Siri’s huge promise has been shrunk to just making voice calls and sending messages to contacts, and maybe getting the weather, using voice commands. Some users find it a reliable way to set timers, alarms, notes and reminders, or to find restaurants. But many of these tasks could be done with the crude, pre-Siri voice-command features on the iPhone and other phones, albeit in a more clumsy way.

Julian Lepinski:

Apple doesn’t seem to be factoring in the cost of a failed query, which erodes a user’s confidence in the system (and makes them less likely to ask another complex question). Apple’s Siri homepage cites a wide range of questions you can ask Siri, from the weather to sports scores to when the sun sets in Paris. The overall effect is to imply that you can simply ask Siri a question and get an answer, but in practice that almost never works outside of a few narrow domains (sports, weather, math and unit conversions).

Il problema descritto da Julian è reale: anche se Siri fosse migliorata col tempo nel rispondere a certe domande, non lo saprei e non lo verrei a sapere, perché non essendo stata in grado di rispondermi in passato semplicemente certe cose ho rinunciato a chiedergliele.

Da quando si integra con applicazioni di terze parti ho ripreso ad utilizzarla, leggermente, un po’¹, altrimenti Siri è per me inesistente. Sia perché come scrive Julian oramai ho perso la speranza in molti ambiti e situazioni, sia per i problemi di connessione (continua ad essere lentissima).