“You may not use Siri, Apple’s voice and digital assistant, but, like an eager-to-please deputy, Siri is paying attention to your habits and busily creating shortcuts in the background that it thinks could make your life easier, or at least a little more automated,” Lance Ulanoff reports for Medium.
“When Apple introduced Siri Shortcuts at its 2018 World Wide Developer Conference, it wasn’t exactly the Siri overhaul we were looking for,” Ulanoff reports. “More problematically, Apple introduced a confusing Shortcuts app that, at first blush, came across as a sort of erector set for more complex Siri Routines.”
“Coming at the home and life automation game through your phone and existing actions is virtually the opposite approach of how Amazon and Alexa passively wait for you to add in skills based on the hardware and routines you add to your home and life,” Ulanoff reports. “It’s Apple taking advantage of its dominant position (over Amazon and Google) in the smartphone space and, perhaps, is a path to success for Siri and Apple in the smart home and automated life game.”
Read more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Hey Siri, make an espresso.” And she does. (Read the full article!)
Don’t look now, but Siri really is waking up from a Van Winkle-esque period of dormancy and becoming much more useful and capable!
Fire up your Shortcuts app this weekend and make Siri do cool things for you! And see apps that support Siri Shortcuts here.
TGIF! Interns: TTK. Prost, everyone!
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s Siri Shortcuts help boost health and fitness routines – March 1, 2019
Apple uses Siri Shortcuts to catch up to Alexa, Google Assistant – February 28, 2019
Head of Apple’s Siri team apparently has been reassigned – February 4, 2019
AI guru John Giannandrea named to Apple’s executive team – December 20, 2018
Former Apple employees on Eddy Cue: Siri and Eddy were ‘a bad fit’ – September 5, 2018
Apple’s Siri improved by 11 percentage points in correct answers over the last 15 months – July 25, 2018
Apple combines machine learning and Siri teams under John Giannandrea – July 10, 2018
Apple’s ‘personal assistant activation’ patent application hints at improved Siri – May 10, 2018
iOS 11.4 will allow Siri to recognize AirPlay commands – May 3, 2018
iPhone X owners are extremely satisfied with basically everything except Siri – April 20, 2018
Apple’s Siri, HomePod and the voice assistant showdown – April 6, 2018
Apple’s A.I. efforts get shot of adrenaline with Giannandrea coup – April 6, 2018
A.I. defector gives Apple access to Google’s secrets – April 6, 2018
Gene Munster: Poaching AI chief John Giannandrea from Google a win for Apple – April 5, 2018
Apple hires Google’s A.I. chief to improve Siri – April 4, 2018
Shortcuts are very powerful automation tool that you can easily construct.
This guy does a great job of demoing how to create them.
Am I the only one that thinks shortcuts is fucking stupid?
Shouldn’t these mostly be things we can ask siri to do without having to program a gd shortcut? I guarantee that less than 0.1% of iOS users use shortcuts.
How does siri keep getting a pass for still being a piece of shit after 6+ years in development?
I. Me too. Designed horribly too!
I just looked in the shortcut app and one of the shortcuts is asking siri to take a picture.
How the fuck is siri not able to do this without a “shortcut.”
Pathetic, Apple.
“Siri, take a picture” without a shortcut brings up the camera app and waits for you to focus on what you want to image. Sorry that’s too f’ing complicated for you.
Interesting article. I wonder if Siri would receive and communicate to the user any errors that occur in fulfilling the request.. Taking the espresso example, would Siri tell the user that the coffee cannot be made if there is insufficient water, missing coffeegrinds/k-cup, no cup under the spout, etc.
would get siri strangled in some circles
It just works… if you build it yourself.
I hate shortcuts just because of all the pop ups nagging me to add a Siri shortcut.
There should be an option for Siri to learn these shortcuts from my behaviour in using the device. I have no interest in creating shortcuts manually with an app, it should be a seamless part of the OS, what’s the point in having machine learning otherwise?
Tell you what Siri short cuts can’t be more complex to decipher than Ulanoff’s use of the language.