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Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by gmueckl on Monday June 09, 2025 @05:02PM (#44229434)
I was actually complaining about this the other day: there is no manual (or even a searchable database) of recognized commands/features. I often discover that something was possible with Google Assistant when the announcement comes that it's being removed.
Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by sixothree on Monday June 09, 2025 @05:28PM (#44229714)
When you start a timer with Siri, it often announces that you can also tell it to stop the timer by saying stop. This tells me that even the most rudimentary functions of starting and stopping timers is not yet learned by users. Every time I hear that message I think of how much of a failure this whole thing has been.
Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by tuetuopay on Monday June 09, 2025 @08:18PM (#44231134)
Oh timers, you mean the one thing I use daily for cooking where they changed the recognized phrase between iOS 17 and iOS 18? It used to understand "notify me in 15 minutes" meant to set a timer. Now it asks for what I want to be reminded about to add it to the calendar. I have to explicitly say "set a 15-minute timer".

So long for muscle memory (oh and for consiseness, it's worse in French).

Anyways, that's the prime reason there's no list: either they want to change the commands willy-nilly, or they don't know them because that's whatever the model's learned.

Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by Suppafly on Monday June 09, 2025 @10:30PM (#44231860)
It's not a huge deal, but on google devices, setting a timer is different from setting an alarm. the end result is more or less the same thing, but it uses different underlying functionality and I have to remember to say timer instead of alarm when I'm cooking.
Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by OccamsMirror on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @01:31AM (#44232887)
Yep this gets me all the time. The biggest difference is that a timer will be displayed whereas an alarm is in the background. The display is very handy when cooking.
Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by kaztal on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @02:28AM (#44233302)
Saying ”set an alarm in 15 minutes” vs ”set at timer for 15 minutes” to Siri also do different things
Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by prennert on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @07:02AM (#44235252)
Really? For me both commands set a timer for 15 minutes.
Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by lynx97 on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @04:55AM (#44245573)
iOS also differentiates between a timer and an alarm.
Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by NaOH on Monday June 09, 2025 @08:56PM (#44231349)
>I have to explicitly say "set a 15-minute timer".

Only saying "15 minutes" initiates a timer for that long.

Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by tuetuopay on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @05:42AM (#44234651)
OMG thanks, it also works in french!

This goes even deeper in the "undiscoverable commands" issue at hand.

"notify me in 15 minutes" feels natural and casual, and how I'd expect to interact with modern voice assistants. "set a 15 minutes timer" feels overly formal and redundant (it does not help that in French, a timer is "minuteur", so you repeat the "minutes" sound twice), and how I'd expect to interact with old voice assistants. This new one is just some hidden trial-and-error thing deep in Siri that's likely an engineer that likes cooking that added it as a shortcut.

Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by NaOH on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @01:54PM (#44239474)
>This new one is just some hidden trial-and-error thing deep in Siri that's likely an engineer that likes cooking that added it as a shortcut.

Among the many shortcomings of Siri is that it seems as if it's not good with verbs. I've learned to avoid them as much as possible. Put another way, it's better with nouns, so I focus on them. I guess that's why

"15-minute timer" and

"15 minutes"

work well. But similarly, I wanted to use the stopwatch the other day. Not something I ever really do. Just saying, "Stopwatch" got it open. And testing now on some non-Apple apps also worked (in case Siri has some built-in pro-Apple bias). One was WhatsApp. The other was an app for an insurance and banking company. That one, just saying its name opened the contact card I have for the company. That's fair. Trying again, and saying "company name app" opened the app.

Of course, sometimes the verbs are necessary. But I've had more success when I could avoid them. Do note that I say all this using a Siri-only phone that is too old for any of Apple Intelligence that may get mixed in with Siri.

Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by lynx97 on Wednesday June 11, 2025 @04:53AM (#44245556)
This is why I call these voice "commands" spells. They feel very much like a spell. You have to remember them, and if you don't remember 'em exactly, they don't do what you expect. Siri (and Alexa for that matter) is a big failure. After 12 years of having a voice "assistant" in my pocket, I still don't use it for anything important and/or useful.
Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by Gigachad on Monday June 09, 2025 @09:26PM (#44231534)
It’s a disconnect between the vision and the reality. Users shouldn’t have to learn Siri, it should just work every time no matter how you ask as long as it’s understandable to a person.

But the reality is it doesn’t work and users have to specifically learn the few things it can do.

Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by vladvasiliu on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @03:32AM (#44233762)
It's a disconnect because we have this vision that language (as commonly spoken, not legalese) is perfectly clear and precise. But the reality is that even two live people who seem to speak the same language will misunderstand each other, including for "basic" things. So how should a computer be able to read your mind, when it most likely doesn't even have the context of where you're from?

Regarding the "notify" vs "timer", I had a very similar experience with a friend. I went to a bakery, and she asked me to get her some kind of pastry. To me, she meant some kind of bread. Queue confused faces on both sides when she asked where her stuff was. Sure, it's still in the broad "baked goods" category, just like a reminder and a timer. This was in France, both living in major cities 200 km apart. It's not like some extreme variation of English from the other side of the world.

Re:Apple introduces a universal design across platforms by cubefox on Tuesday June 10, 2025 @09:58AM (#44236898)
Theoretically, large language models have enough common sense to understand all variations of natural language commands, and to ask for clarification if they think some request is ambiguous. It's probably not yet feasible to do Siri via an LLM, or not via a properly large one (that has the necessary intelligence).