“Some owners of Apple’s new iPhone 4S are having problems connecting to Siri, the voice-activated personal assistant,” Tom Loftus blogs for The Wall Street Journal.
“Exclusive to the new iPhone, the voice recognition software allows users to place phone calls, check the weather, order car services or even find out the location of the nearest Thai restaurant,” Loftus reports. “But for many people, the assistant is taking some unapproved time off.”
Loftus, “The software requires the use of a Wi-Fi or 3G network to access the Apple servers that power the app’s answers… CNet reported that one theory for the software’s failure could be that Apple’s servers are simply too swamped. Over four million new iPhones have been sold since its launch last week.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: A little birdie tell us: “Thank you for your patience. It’ll all work out soon.” 4 million excited iPhone 4S owners asking Siri a bunch of inanities all of a sudden can tire a gal out.
Earlier today on our iPhone 4S units, Siri was having issues for a little bit (see screenshot below), but her connection problems seem to have cleared up now.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Aha. I knew I wasn’t crazy! Thanks for making this public, MDN.
Oh, and of course Tom Loftus as well. 🙂
If you’re looking for something to be made public in a timely way, don’t look to MDN… The problems with Siri have been happening since Friday and have been posted everywhere on the ol’ inter-webs since. And for those of you who will claim that I’m a Apple-hating troll: Just because I don’t drink the koolaid and then stick my head up my butt doesn’t mean I’m not a religious Apple user and fan. It just means that I can think critically and recognize when Apple is screwing up. I’ll bet that I own more Apple products than all of you combined. And to anyone here who will say that all the problems with the iCloud rollout and Siri aren’t Apple’s fault, I say, “I rest my case.”
A little over sensitive are we? Parents beat you when you were young didn’t they? That would explain your pre-emptive attacks in adult hood. Congratulations on owning more Apple products than all of us combined. Go to junior high often? Relax a little. We don’t think you’re a troll. Trolls are dicks with no brains. We’d rather think of you as a pussy with really big titties. Take it as a compliment.
“… don’t drink the koolaid and then stick my head up my butt …”
I would imagine you were born with your head up your ass and you’ve never come up for air. Lack of oxygen can cause stupid comments like yours.
I have had my 4S since 9:40 am Friday and have been able to connect with Siri perhaps 25% of the time. Yes, other sites have been on this since Friday. So far I’m not impressed with Siri but that may improve with time. Voice quality while on the phone seems to be worse than on my 3GS. And that wasn’t great! So I don’t know what’s up with that but I’m not happy. Maybe it’s AT&T? But I don’t know why the voice quality would be worse on a newer phone? Waiting for the 5.
I have run into some service issues over the weekend as well. Siri is awesome, and I’m sure they will work out the bugs.
I’d be really curious to know how many queries were completed over the weekend? I’d ask Siri, but it won’t connect…ugh.
I’m sorry. It was me. I caused it to slow down this morning. I kept asking Siri to open the pod bay doors and each answer was funnier than the last.
Has anyone asked Siri about Steve Jobs?
Siri seems to be back and from what I can see it seems faster than ever actually spoke this into Siri.
I just knew Monday morning demos at every office across the US would grind it to a halt. Too bad they weren’t ready for this kind of bandwidth. It makes sense now why they call it beta and haven’t rolled SIRI out to iPads, or Macs just yet. I’m sure the SIRI team was not as enthused as everyone else to see the record number of 4S users coming on line all at once.
it’s just too bad all these office demos and live on the air demos will look bad.
Funny note. After a bunch of repeated “I’m sorry” messages Siri responded “I feel my mind slipping Dave…. I can feel it”. Hehehe. At least it made me laugh.
Hope you took a screenshot of that
Finally! A worthy article.
Siri sucks, if you haven’t read my commments on it yet.
I doesn’t work. It simply doesn’t work. That screen shot above is 90 % of my Siri experience.
The commercial of the guy jogging, scheduling over a previous engagement is NOT POSSIBLE.
It’s complete BS.
It doesn’t suck. It’s beta. I’ve had it be down a few times but it’s more like up 90% and only 10% down. Give them a chance to bring it out of beta before you say it sucks.
When I’ve used it, it’s been awesome. I’ve scheduled more then meeting and responded to several texts now.
It does work,as I’ve used it all weekend. It’s totally possible.
You have posted this on almost all of the articles with SIRI in the title. We get it. You think it sucks. You can move along now.
It’s not that I think it sucks. It’s that it honestly does not work. Literally. No exaggeration. It only worked 10 % of the time all weekend. Apparently, it has improved in the last 24 hours.
I think these posts are useful to communicate. The rudeness toward fellow human beings is distasteful. I expect more from all of you. This isn’t nfl.com where such comments are part of the fun and experience.
Whatever. Siri didn’t work. It’s better now. I’ll stop commenting.
Could it be that the cell phone carrier signal sucks where you are trying to use it? Some places and carriers are worse that others.
Now that the initial hiccup seems to be over, how does it work with a fast WiFi?
Why not just say it hasn’t worked for YOU. My experience, on the other hand has been about 80/20 (positive/negative). For a beta version, that’s awesome!
Don’t worry Fool, no one reads your comments.
So it has to go to the mind hive to get it’s answers… there will be a new meaning to the term sheeple. You know like if Siri says it, it must be true.
Scary.
It has to connect just to use the timer. Sheeple for sure. Big brother database, I guess :/
Are the NC data centers even up and running?
Because this weekend was shit service from Apple. This is why huge rollouts suck. They should have released ios 5 and i4S and then spaced out the iCloud rollout with iTunes match service…when it’s ready. It looks kind of crappy for Apple to have this great new feature called Siri so prominent and OOPS! Im sorry it’s down.
Hey Dave check out my new i4S.
Siri?
Siri?
Hello Siri?
Sorry Dave I’ll email you some info from my iCloud acct.
iCloud?
iCloud?
Looks like I’m in a blackhole not a cloud.
Fool, you suck. See my comments.
It doesn’t work. You are in denial. It doesn’t work. Nothing you have said has made Siri work on my iPhone. It does not work.
Maybe Siri just hates you, I can’t imagine why…
@4Dfool. Go into settings, then General and Disable Siri. Wait 5 seconds, then reenable Siri. I got 4 iPhone 4Ss last Friday and I had to do this to two of them to get Siri working.
Thank you
Hugh you’re the biggest dumb fuck I know in this forum.
months form now we won’t even remember when it didn’t work. years from now the blogs will all be complaining about idiots walking through airports blabbing away bossing their phones around.
I must admit Siri is amazing. It’s totally changed how I text message now. Now all I do is tell it to text. No typing at all.
Siri is revolutionary.
@4d fool.
Words can’t describe how closed your mind is.
I recommend you get rid of this new tech and go back to floppy disk drives, serial ports and fax machines.
Why stop at floppy disks? Maybe he’d be more comfortable with wet clay and a reed stylus.
It’s still beta; give it time.
Stop whining! Siri is a Beta after all. It’ll all work out in the end,
So at the end, the siri part takes place at the servers and not in the iphone itself. They, I think they should be able to release it for the ipad and the 4G soon.
Siri is amazing. It is faster using it than tapping out certain commands. “Set timer for 45 minutes” or “Set alarm for 9am.” “How to I get home from here on the bus?” “who was 7th us president”, etc
Ya, over the weekend I experienced a couple of failures to connect, but I was using it a TON and it worked waaaay better than I expected. Even when it couldn’t connect, I would try again and it then it would. Also, the connection errors may have been due to driving around in dead zones.
And speaking of driving, Siri worked in my convertible with the top down, even driving 80 mph on the freeway or next to loud trucks. It also worked in my bedroom while watching the tv at normal volume.
I’m sure Apple had experienced some real world load balancing issues with 4 million iPhone’s coming online at once and users trying the system out.
That’s to be expected. It should be fine moving forward.
News Flash…. Thousands of Internet users are having problems connecting to the Internet. The Internet doesn’t work.!! News Flash!
Are you related to 4DFool?
The issue is NOT the Apple Data Centers. The network problems that people are experiencing is the result of the TELCOs and your local ISPs that are not able to handle the load of SIRI and all the other iPhone data requests that is really causing the network failures.
Beat me to it.
Had a problem loading iOS 5 until I switched over to another ISP. Obviously, the first was overloaded and/or as it turned out was running slower as well.
Is there a way to disable or quiet the “ding, ding” sound for Siri?
I can imagine that sound echoing throughout movie theaters and other places where people gather. 😉
Hopfully most people won’t be talking to Siri during movies.
4 million is a tiny number compared to the number of Siri-equipped devices that will be in use in the upcoming weeks, months and years. Apple needs to seriously beef things up.
You mean to tell me that MY Siri has relationships with millions of others? I though Siri was just mine, all mine. My heart is broken….
Maybe if everyone would stop asking “do i need an umbrella today?” the servers could cool down
LOL!
Or whats the weather like in a country or place they will never ever visit!
rofl.
Four million new iPhones? What happens when they get 20 million iPhone 4s’? Occasional hiccups are to be expected. I’m assuming Apple is staying on top of it.
Now we know what that server farm is for. (and that empty space next to that building will be for)
Tell Siri ” I want a blow job” and watch what happens!!! Every guy friend was amazed and wants Siri!!
I apologize if I offended any one
Does it call your mom?
My mom is a saint!! Lol. No, but it does give you a list of escorts in your area Lom