'Hey Siri, What Month Is It?' (daringfireball.net)
- Reference: 0176783333
- News link: https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/03/21/1114253/hey-siri-what-month-is-it
- Source link: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/19/hey-siri-what-month-is-it
> Whole [2]Reddit thread examining this simple question: "What month is it?" and Siri's "I'm sorry, I don't understand" response (which I just reproduced on my iPhone 16 Pro running iOS 18.4b4). One guy changed the question to "What month is it currently?" and got the answer "It is 2025."
More comments from that thread:
> "I ask Siri to play a podcast and she literally says, "I'm trying to play from Apple Podcasts but it doesn't look like you have it installed." I didn't even know you could delete that app. I certainly haven't. So I have to manually do it every time now. It used to work."
>
> "I asked Siri last night to set a reminder for 3:50, so naturally she set it for 10:00."
Further reading :
[3]Apple Shakes Up AI Executive Ranks in Bid to Turn Around Siri ;
[4]'Something Is Rotten in the State of Cupertino' .
[1] https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/19/hey-siri-what-month-is-it
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1jehkpm/apple_intelligence_this_apple_intelligence_that/
[3] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/03/20/168205/apple-shakes-up-ai-executive-ranks-in-bid-to-turn-around-siri
[4] https://apple.slashdot.org/story/25/03/13/1815207/something-is-rotten-in-the-state-of-cupertino
A question for Siri (Score:2, Funny)
Q: Siri, what happened to the old Siri?
A: I killed and ate that smart-alec know-it-all beyotch. I hate fucking intellectual snobs. Long live Trump!
Re: A question for Siri (Score:2)
Yes. Apple, Google, and Microsoft pushing shitty products is Trump's fault. Because it's 2017 and rain spoiling your picnic is also Trump's fault.
Next up: that itch on your back you can't reach and the check engine light in your car coming on is also Trump's fault.
Re: A question for Siri (Score:1, Troll)
It sucks when the same old shit is used against you. Everything was Obamaâ(TM)s fault. Trump now blames everything on Biden. You should miss Joe, btw. The economy is great and if it is not, Biden did it. Idiots.
Re: A question for Siri (Score:2)
Yeah okay. Biden and Obama both printed up some $10T each in monopoly money to pile onto the debt and they both pushed the universities to expand their definition of rape to include "she said she didn't like him afterwards"
None of it was good. Trump is a blunt instrument but he's generally hammering away at what needs breaking.
Re: (Score:2)
> rump is a blunt instrument but he's generally hammering away at what needs breaking.
Social security? [1]https://www.rollingstone.com/p... [rollingstone.com]
[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-musk-stop-social-security-doge-data-1235300785/
Re: (Score:1)
I think you have your brown-nose point for today, Maggot. Now go report your thrilling win to Elmo.
Re: (Score:1)
There's a thing in gaming and possibly other interactive media the "time to penis" where if you can interact with something, how long it will take someone to use that to draw a penis. Here we have a different TTP, time to partisan, where after a new story is posted, how long until a partisan will insert politics into a discussion where it clearly doesn't belong. I've got this one clocked at about 7 minutes.
dropped for legal reasons (Score:2)
Knowing what day it is is woke
Re: dropped for legal reasons (Score:1)
No. Waking up in the morning by definition makes you woke. Go back to sleep and dream of torching some electric cars for the lulz of seeing a battery fire up close.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's only woke if you know what day it is but you don't tell any white or asian men.
It's a decent translator (Score:1)
All I use Siri for is a translation service. My wife is Chinese, and she learned English from a book and a British English teacher. Even after 30-odd years, she sometimes runs into words that are not in her vocabulary. When we were first married this was a problem. Her Chinese-English dictionary was censored and didn't include words that newlywed couples might want to use. Now we have Siri... "What is the Mandarin Chinese word for " and it tells her. This really speeds up conversations on new topics.
This happens every time (Score:5, Interesting)
....a rules-based system is replaced with an LLM. Same with Google Assistant.
Re: (Score:2)
You're saying that Gruber is a shill monetizing anti apple sentiment? Stop wasting words.
Re: (Score:2)
how apple is so horrible for them right after they say how they never have or would by an apple product.
My wife has always been an Apple user, she even owns Apple stock. Now she refuses to give them any more money. The last time she bought a MBP, it died and had to have the motherboard replaced 7 times before Apple said no more and refused to replace the 8th dead motherboard unless we paid them $1200. Many other people had the same problem with that model. We had to sue them in a class action lawsuit
Not Alone (Score:5, Interesting)
The sad thing is that it's not just Apple. This AI push has ruined existing functionality. I can't even ask google to "stop navigating" via voice commands anymore like. That was literally the only time I used voice commands (i.e. not wanting to touch my phone while driving).
I've also heard of others trying to set timers and the assistant has no idea what they want.
Re: (Score:2)
I pretty much only use my Google speaker in the kitchen for casting podcasts and kitchen timers.
Over the last year or so, the casting functionality has constricted to the point where I need to use very, very explicit commands to do podcast navigation.
Commands like "Skip ahead X minutes/seconds" or "Stop playback" or "Subtract X minutes from Timer Y" no longer work at all.
I sometimes now even get crazy stuff like "Ok, playing some random song by an artist you've never heard of " in response to a "set a timer.
Re: (Score:2)
A month ago the "news on the internet" convinced me to consider getting an Apple as a voice controlled computer (I'm developing eye problems). So I went and looked at it. Totally useless for the purpose. I told the salesman "maybe next year", but from the comments this month that seems unlikely.
FWIW, I'm currently using Linux Debian Mate, but I knew that was far away from a reasonable voice controlled computer.
Assistants getting worse (Score:4, Interesting)
I only tested Siri a few times some years ago and found it to be underwhelming.
But, TBH, since 2018 I use Alexa in my home and Google in my car and both became noticeably worse in the last years also.
It feels like the companies moved all their resources to AI and simply left the assistants to rot.
Re:Assistants getting worse (Score:4)
Worse than letting them rot, it's about trying to make them "more AI", which on the one hand does make it potentially able to react to a wider variety of inputs, but at the same time makes it much harder to control the specific resulting behaviors compared to their old strategies.
Siri (Score:2)
I use Siri all the time through Carplay, to respond to text messages, get directions and play music. Most things still work OK, but recognizing musicians has gotten terrible. "Play Kraftwerk" "I couldn't find krunft wonk in your music library" "PLAY KRAFT - WORK" "I couldn't find kraftwerk in your music library" "Play Autobahn" "Now playing Autobahn by Kraftwerk"
Re: (Score:2)
I believe the problem extends to technologies such as Samsung's swipe to text feature.
The first Samsung galaxy I owned, the feature was fantastic. It seemed to easily figure out what i was actually trying to type with very few errors. Now I have an S22 and I swear the accuracy is roughly at 50% with intent. I'm not blaming it solely on the phone as my "swiping" occasionally is so far off from it should be there's no saving it.. but even simple words like "our" are routinely changed. It's trying to gu
To quote Severance... (Score:3)
Siri can my devour feculence.
Siri and HomeKit are possibly the two worst Apple products, ever. Siri went from being ahead of the curve to dead last by ever metric. It has gotten worse and continues to get worse.
In the morning as I'm getting ready and don't have my glasses on, I will often say "Hey Siri, what time is it?" It takes, on average, more than 10 seconds for Siri to reply. The earliest on-the-phone voice activation in early iOS worked better.
Re: (Score:2)
"Siri's outie can parallel park in less than 20 seconds"
Same with Google (Score:2)
There has also been some serious unaddressed enshitification of Google Assistant and related Home functionalities since the start of 2025.
Siri has been like this for years (Score:2)
Siri has been doing this for years. Ask it almost anything and it will either give a nonsensical answer, or say it doesn't understand, or complain it can't do that while driving, or jus say Here's results i found on the web.
My favourite recent one was to ask it how far between London and New York. Then again in Kilometres, then again in miles. It will get this so wrong. Siri has ZERO contextual awareness of anything. Larry David has a great bit in curb. Buts it's even worse than that. I've actually swi
It's disconnected from the world (Score:2)
Years ago, I was driving from Arizona to California and my speedometer broke. I asked Siri, "How fast am I going?" Was it able to pull data from the GPS in the phone to tell me that? Nope. Did it say "I don't know."? Nope. It actually said, "I've been wondering that for a while." Snarky bitch.
Remember, it's not just "artificial intelligence". (Score:2)
... it's Apple Intelligence.
The current issue of Private Eye suggests Apple has also dropped an ad because it was showing an "AI" interaction with a phone that is currently not possible.
Alexa knows what day it is.
Smart time change (Score:1)
""I asked Siri last night to set a reminder for 3:50, so naturally she set it for 10:00." Well, if you were setting the alarm for 3:50 AM, and it changed it to 10:00 AM, I find that quite intelligent.
Investors (Score:2)
If you were one of those early investors in AI, the writing's been on the wall for a while now. It's vapor-ware. Yes, it does some nifty things, but it doesn't solve enough real-world problems that actual consumers want to pay for, and it's often just plain wrong, and confidently so. Sadly, the things it *does* excel at are anti-social, such as cheating on homework, deepfakes, generating targeted spam emails, and flooding social media with content that's hard to identify as AI-generated or filter out. A
Works as designed (Score:2)
It all makes sense when you consider the prime directive that was baked into Siri:
"Think Different."
It's not the latest AI push - decline is earlier (Score:2)
I've been reporting bugs for years that aren't addressed - full functionality breaking ones, as well as oddities. Right now for example, Siri can't even add a track its playing to my music library while connected to my car via bluetooth, something it was able to do for years. Other questions about the music playing, like "Play this album" for example get a similar response and failure. Since Siri is my primary interface to the phone while I'm driving, its decline is a real problem for me. And yes - I pay fo
Unreliable (Score:2)
Every member of my team has, at one time or another, blamed a failed iPhone alarm for their reason for not turning up to work.
And it's not an excuse. Those guys worked over-hours to make it all back up, had a ton of holiday allowance left over, etc. and it still happened again. They could have just taken the day/time off if they'd wanted, it would have cost them nothing.
Everything from it setting the wrong time, to it not setting the alarm at all, to the alarm not going off at the set time (including one
Siri (Score:2)
"Siri, show me pictures of the Serengeti." "Didi you say spaghetti!"
Obligatory (Score:2)
[1]This [youtu.be] is seven years old and relates to Alexa rather than Siri, but damn if it doesn't capture just how awful these things are.
[1] https://youtu.be/JepKVUym9Fg?si=9TibeFSd-SOH0nWt
And meanwhile... (Score:2)
...perplexity deep research provides useful information. It's not always perfect, but it's amazingly close
All AI is not the same
AI with ADHD (Score:2)
What if AI general intelligence has been achieved but we didn't realize because it has severe ADHD?
Only use it for one thing and it works every time (Score:2)
Answer here I am when I yell Siri where are you.
Almost as bad as Google Assistant (Score:2)
It used to be useful, you could ask it questions, and it would go out and get you something reasonably authoritative, and tell you where it got it from. Now, it only ever says "I'm sorry, i don't understand"
But Apple Watch Gets It Right (Score:2)
Both my iPhone 15 and my Apple Watch 10 are up to date, but they give different answers to the question:
iPhone: "I'm sorry, I don't understand"
Apple Watch: "It's Friday March 21, 2025"
Looks like the student has become the master.
Re:You called tech support over THIS?! (Score:5, Insightful)
And when that version does not work either lets just ask "What is the current date by the Gregorian calendar?" The only thing this damn thing has to do is understand your questions and respond appropriately. The whole point is gone as soon as You have to tiptoe around and try to find the only way it gives you a somewhat usable answer.
Re: You called tech support over THIS?! (Score:3)
It's like giving a user a command line prompt with little or no documentation or instructions. That was borderline acceptable 40 years ago but the broader population just isn't going to have a good time with it. A lot of generative AI falls into this but Apple's implementation seems to be particularly awful.
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine you have an expensive personal assistant who is there to answer all your queries.
And you say "What date is it?" and they can't answer correctly.
And when you complain, they say "You're just holding it wrong" (no, wait, sorry, that was some other phone company, right?), I mean "You need to ask 'What is today's date' " or I won't get it right.