{"id":319036,"date":"2025-10-20T16:58:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T16:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/319036\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T16:58:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T16:58:19","slug":"its-getting-harder-to-believe-apple-can-deliver-on-the-new-siri","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/319036\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s getting harder to believe Apple can deliver on the new Siri"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\"It's<\/p>\n

For a very long time, I urged patience with Apple\u2019s<\/a> efforts to turn Siri<\/a> into a truly intelligent assistant. Back in 2023, I argued that the stakes were higher<\/a> for Siri than for primarily text-based AI systems like ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also said that Apple\u2019s commitment to privacy<\/a> poses a far greater challenge for the company\u2019s AI efforts, and that the payoff would be worth it. But it\u2019s gotten harder and harder to maintain this position, and the latest report certainly doesn\u2019t help \u2026 <\/p>\n

The \u2018best, not first\u2019 argument<\/p>\n

Apple has very rarely tried to be first with anything. With the vast majority of new technologies, it has aimed to be the best rather than the first. It\u2019s been willing to sit back and watch others make mistakes, to learn from those, and to quietly beaver away in the background on its own version.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve long argued that we should allow Apple to do the same in the case of AI. That doesn\u2019t mean I\u2019ve given the company a free pass, or that I haven\u2019t been personally frustrated by just how dumb Siri has been for just so long: I\u2019ve been expressing my views about this for a very long time.<\/p>\n

Two and a half years ago<\/a>, I pointed to the fact that generative AI systems of that time were a lot dumber than they appeared to be, and that because Siri operated through spoken responses, Apple needed a more cautious approach.<\/p>\n

\n

When a Google search shows you conventional results next to a chat window answering the same question, it\u2019s very easy for the company to include prominent warnings that the chat answer may not be accurate.<\/p>\n

But Siri is designed to provide spoken answers to verbal questions. Even more annoying than Siri \u2018answering\u2019 a question with \u201cHere\u2019s what I found on the web,\u201d would be \u201cHere\u2019s a lengthy answer which you first have to listen to, then I\u2019ll note that it may not be correct, and recommend that you search the web.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

A year ago, I observed that AI progress is not linear<\/a>, and that if the company really was as far behind as it appeared to be at the time, that didn\u2019t mean it couldn\u2019t rapidly catch up. I also argued that privacy was something worth waiting for<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s increasingly hard to maintain this position<\/p>\n

By this year, however, it was getting harder and harder to retain patience<\/a> with Apple\u2019s glacial progress. <\/p>\n

\n

Apple\u00a0recently had to admit<\/a>\u00a0that plans for three new Siri features are \u201cgoing to take us longer than we thought\u201d \u2013 with no real explanation, and no new delivery date. As we noted at the time, these are the very features which promise to make Siri truly intelligent.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I offered a couple of suggestions<\/a> for ways in which Apple could mitigate the delays<\/a>, but noted that the only real way out of this mess is if conversational Siri turns out to be spectacularly good<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

That length of delay\u00a0dramatically\u00a0increases expectations of what 2027 Siri needs to be. Just think about what ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini and Llama and DeepSeek will be able to do by then!\u00a0Think about\u00a0Amazon\u2019s new conversational Alexa, and what\u00a0that\u00a0will be capable of with another two years of development, using all of the data the company has amassed about the requests people are making of it.<\/p>\n

Siri will no longer be judged against the capabilities of today\u2019s chatbots, it will be judged against the ones we\u2019ll have two years from now. That\u2019s going to be a phenomenally high bar, and Apple\u00a0really needs to reach it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Apple employees who\u2019ve seen the new Siri are concerned<\/p>\n

The latest report certainly doesn\u2019t help. Bloomberg claims that Apple employees who\u2019ve had the chance to test the new Siri are concerned about its performance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

There are concerns from people testing iOS 26.4 \u2014 the OS version slated to include the new Siri \u2014 about the voice assistant\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Far from being spectacularly better, as it now needs to be, it very much sounds like it doesn\u2019t even compare with today\u2019s competitors.<\/p>\n

When I asked you guys whether we should be able to choose a Siri alternative<\/a> on our Apple devices, the overwhelming majority of you said yes. It\u2019s honestly now feeling like this may be the only viable solution for Apple in the next year or two at least.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your take? Have you now run out of patience, or do you still believe that Apple can and will deliver? Please share your thoughts in the comments.<\/p>\n

Highlighted accessories<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\"Add
\n\t\t\t\"Add
\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a very long time, I urged patience with Apple\u2019s efforts to turn Siri into a truly intelligent…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":319037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,738,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-319036","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-technology","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115407559455067947","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}