A few hours ago, the hiring of Samy Bengio by Apple has been confirmed, this being the umpteenth signing of the Cupertino company from Google. This is one more symptom that they continue to prepare improvements in Siri, although we still see a lot of continuity in the assistant. Beyond the usual Siri failures that can occur in specific circumstances, the truth is that there are several aspects in which the assistant does not exactly shine and that could well be a point of improvement in the future iOS 15.
This next software version will be presented on June 7 at WWDC 2021, an event that will once again be held online for the second consecutive year. This will present all the software news from the Californian company and although hardly any data about these new features has been leaked, it is expected that improvements will come to Siri. We do not know if one, several, all or none of those that we are going to comment will arrive, but surely they would be highly applauded for being the great claims of iPhone, iPad, Mac, HomePod users …
What is asked of Apple to improve Siri
At the time it was a pioneer in its sector and it is that smart assistants were not so fashionable in 2011 when, in the presentation of the iPhone 4s, Siri was presented in society. Now the Apple assistant has been relegated to the background with others such as Google Assistant or Alexa, but knowing the hiring that Apple is doing we can imagine that at some point a great improvement will come that finally meets the expectations of the users.
That has some continuity in the sentences
This is one of the points where Siri has improved the most in recent years, but it is still an incomplete improvement for many. The assistant sins of having little memory at times, since it is normal that if we are asking about a specific topic, after asking another question about the same topic, they know how to answer without having to rephrase everything again. For example, if you ask “How old is the Queen of England?” and then you say “And the King of Spain?”, Siri will not understand what you mean in the second question, since you will have to say “How old is he …?”.
Something similar to Alexa Skills
The Amazon assistant is one of the most valued in the market and among other things it is because of the well-known Skills. Although this is not exactly the case, it could be said that they are a kind of “applications” that allow you to add new functionalities to the assistant. Normally they are focused on having fun with games and others, but that is not a negative thing. If at the end of the day you add the possibility that attendees tell jokes, why can’t they also play with us?
That works without internet
No internet, no party. Siri depends 100% on having an internet connection and this is understandable for certain queries in which the wizard searches the net for its answer precisely. Now, it is absurd that for actions such as calling a contact or opening an app you need to have that connection. While this would require more information from Siri on the phone with a larger space occupied, it would be appreciated if at least the user was given the option.
Expand your database to be more “smart”
“Siri is stupid” is, unfortunately, one of the most repeated phrases after asking the assistant a query. Normally when you do not have programmed knowledge on a certain topic, the assistant pulls the internet and gives you a series of web pages where you can consult the data yourself. This is not practical at times, since in the end it is expected that Siri will solve the doubt. Expanding this database of the assistant would serve to end this problem.
Being able to choose which is our main Siri
If you have several Apple devices and all of them have the “Hey Siri” activated, it may be that invoking it will be a tremendous mess for you. Maybe you want to go to the Siri of the iPhone and the one of the iPad or the HomePod responds to you. For this reason, it would be interesting to add a setting that allows us to choose which of the devices we want to respond by default when we do this invocation by voice.
