does anyone buy a product for AI or Assistant features?
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Some people bought scam pins/portable assistant that is actually a butchered phone thing, so, yeah.
Tech bros and "influencers" don't count. We're talking about real people. All of those devices failed because no one other than those seeking to ride the bleeding edge of technology actually are interested. The most anyone want Siri or Google Assistant to do is set alarms, set appointments, and pick-up/hang-up the phone when you're on speaker. Sometimes it's nice to ask it to do a search but the original versions of these did that fine until they started "improving" them with "AI".
Marketing over promising and making it developments problem. A tale as old as time.
A) No executives anywhere are taking personal accountability for anything
B) I upgraded from the 12 to the 16 for Apple Intelligence and I have yet to see it offer value. A substantial portion of hey Siri voice requests return with “I’m sorry I didn’t get that” even when using the voice transcription feature gets the words right
Siri is so useless. All these years and I use her to basically set timers and reminders.
Sure, here's a station just for you.
SIRI CANCEL
I’ve added limes to the grocery list
Terrible voice assistant. I preferred Google assistant, but even that is becoming slow.
They neutered Google Assistant because it was costing too much money. Now it's ass.
They're likely also winding down development in favour of their new LLM, which certainly isn't going to help matters.
This whole thing is a textbook example of how bad shady marketing today and can really cause you a lot of pain tomorrow. If Apple had not been so quick to let PR write checks their ass was not ready to cash the conversation around Siri would still just be the casual jokes about it sucking, and not more serious public blackeyes.
- Take screenshot of screen
- Send screenshot to Claude 3.7 or any other decent chatbot. Even GPT-3 is light years smarter than current Siri, but I don’t know it if can analyze images
- Run Claude’s response through a text-to-Siri-speech layer
There, now Siri can see your screen. Why can’t Apple accomplish this? Why are megacorps so inept?
Spend 5 minutes creating a bash script
Spend 5 billion dollars on an overly complicated summarizer
Why the fuck would I wanna write bash
Yeah let's keep it POSIX
This is the most defensible point. Designing APIs to determine what content on your screen is ok to send to a third party (Apple offers ChatGPT integration) is a decent amount of work.
Ok… this is what it is I suppose, every business wants to be on the AI train, but, this seems like an opportunity to make the next iPhone, or at least a version of it, without AI as a selling point.
I’d be very happy indeed to have an option that was entirely devoid of, and incompatible with, any form of AI and I know I’m not alone in that. Sell it as prioritizing privacy or respecting consumers desire to opt out, whatever the marketing folks come up with. But that would be my next phone in a heartbeat.
I can run an LLM on a phone from before the AI craze, it would be slow but it would still run. You can't really make a phone that isn't compatible with AI.
No, I suppose not, but just like home brew software apple can put up walls.
I guess I just mean it would be nice to be able to opt out. If I want to run an AI app, I can always set up a docker or something and run it for myself. I think at this point, I’ve just got AI fatigue ¯_(ツ)_/¯
That is not going to happen.
Def not, but I’ll keep day dreaming :)
"Taking personal accountablility", but not a paycheck.
This is what happens when you get pressure to please shareholders instead of customers. Historically, Apple has been good about revealing and delivering at the same time. But caught with their pants down during the AI hype, they fell into the trap so many other tech companies do. (Tesla is the undisputed heavyweight champ here)
Now that they’ve been burned by all this, here’s hoping they learn from it and return to form.
Historically, Apple has been good about revealing and delivering at the same time.
I'm not so sure about that. MobileMe, iTunes Ping, Vision Pro, and AirPower (their wireless charging pad) come to mind.
"You're holding it wrong"
All of these things except the AirPad were released at about the same time they were announced. That’s what I was getting at.
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they should embrace it and be the anti AI tech giant
There stock would fall. I don't care but investors would fear Apple is missing out on the future.
Hell, if they genuinely do that, I might even consider switching sides.
The whole industry is a shit show right now with the "AI race"
I don't want to be a software developer anymore because it's become a permanent deathmarch toward the next buzzword.
We just had a town hall with our CEO and they came right out and said we need to simultaneously add AI and not add AI to our products, because customers are both excited and nervous about it. Our competitors are putting "AI" everywhere in their marketing, while we're just trucking along making a quality product.
Our software works in a very dangerous environment, where mistakes could cost millions in damage and potentially risk human lives. So the end user just sees "AI" as a liability. But the decision makers as to what product to use are removed from conditions on the ground and respond well to marketing BS.
We actually do use AI with some parts of the product (e.g. curve fitting on past data for better predictions), but we need to be very careful about how we advertise that.
It's dumb. Just pick the product based on what fits your operations best, don't pick based on buzzwords...
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Apple Intelligence hasn't been much better than old Siri on unsupported devices.
For a third of the time, she has a hard time recognizing the trigger word the first time (usually "Siri" rather than "Hey Siri"), and not perform my commands when all I want her to do is act as a voice-activated light switch.
What exactly is the trillion dollar company struggling with here?
Honestly I don’t really want a smart context-aware Siri, I just want something I can give simple, straightforward voice commands to, and get predictable, reliable results.
Interesting timing, where I’m seeing the opposite. All my Amazon devices suddenly can’t turn on a simple light switch, and one appears to have somehow factory reset.
However Siri works perfectly. I use a button rather than wake word, but then it dies actually turn on my light
It's been theorized that Amazon is progressively making all Alexa devices worse so they can sell you on a subscription based AI version.
Maybe, but they may lose more customers than they expect ….
There are privacy based devices for “always listening” voice assistants coming on strong
I already use Siri with a button for a lot. recently it seems able to recognize more of my smarthome devices and it will now prompt to forward more complex queries to ChatGPT
I’m really down to the intercom feature being the only reason to keep Alexa - I can’t control the devices my kids use at their mom’s house
‘It’s still in development’ doesn’t strike me as “dire.”
Dire as in, it was supposed to ship 6 months ago as the highlight of the iPhone 16 series.
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I don't fucking want AI in my phone, so take it out and be done with it.
You've had AI on your phone for ages. All your pictures are "AI" touched. And no you don't want the raw output cameras in phones are not that good.
I was just fine without voice assistants and such. I especially don't want LLMs being shoved down my throat at every turn.
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AI isn’t the answer. Plain and simple.
LLMs aren't the answer. *
LLMs are the question, "no" is the answer.
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