Would you pay a subscription fee for a smarter Siri? A rumor is circulating that Apple, scrambling to catch up to rivals in AI, and after a decade-plus of blithely neglecting Short Bus Siri, plans to charge users a subscription fee for the privilege.
https://x.com/igeeksblog/status/1793595880819523919
Adam Juniper for Digital Camera World:
It certainly isn’t without precedent for Apple to charge subscriptions, though. Users of the best HomeKit cameras know, for example, that paying a fee to Apple opens storage and services. And of course Apple Music and the like are available as part of Apple One.
Personally, while I can see the logic the rumor-monger might have sought to illustrate, I doubt Apple would attempt to do it this way.
I imagine trying to divide Siri in half would be a marketing nightmare: while there are undoubtedly some Apple users keen to get access to more AI features – and others keen to avoid them – Siri+ makes it difficult to sell iPhones to either camp.
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MacDailyNews Take: Even though we likely would, because we’re desperate for a Siri that actually works, can correctly parse meaning from commands and questions, and deliver results in a timely fashion, we don’t see Apple bifurcating Siri into a subscription service.
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If there is an upgraded SIRI+ it should be included in the Apple One subscription. If so, I would pay for it because I’m already an Apple One subscriber. 🙃
I would not pay for something that Apple should have been able to develop and include in MacOS and iOS for free 10 damn years ago.
Not necessarily. The sophisticated LLM performance that we are expecting these days did not exist 10 years ago, but Siri certainly could have performed as well as Alexa or something. That’s for sure.
What’s in it for me?
It helps you to stop being a douche. Kinda win-win there.
Not likely. Alreay paying for 3 LLM subscriptions that have greatly increased my productivity. Siri with Apple’s probably content leash on it is just not that appealing.
Which ones are you subscribed to Thelonious?
No. That was a complete sentence. Modern Apple can bite me.
I tried it when it first came out & instantly shut it off & have never used it since. It’s almost as bad as Apple Music.
I love Apple Music.
So Apple is now at the point where they sell broken or partially working stuff and then charge a subscription to get the working version? Wow!
No. Hell no! Apple customers already pay premium prices for allegedly premium products. Apple’s profit margin on products is more than enough to offset any additional cost for making their products work – not just correctly but insanely great.
A freaking $1000 for a phone and they want us to pay more for software that works?
FU Timmy boy
No. But the “subscription” will be having to buy an iPhone 16 to get all of the functionality. F Apple for screwing over everyone who has put up with Siri since 2011(!!!) You didn’t need advanced AI to give us the ability to train Siri to do X,Y,Z consistently. We could have had a decently functional Siri for the past decade but instead we got pregnant man emojis and a vaporware Apple Car for $10 billion.
Personally, I am just tired of subscription – subscription – subscription! I personally would rather pay for “updates/upgrades” when I am ready. AND Subscription services that demand to have automatic renewal in order to participate – I don’t need.
Siri as subscription makes me think of when Apple was Apple! MS and Windows charged for every upgrade; Apple made their system upgrade free. That won a number of my windows friends over. If Apple starts charging for basic apps “upgrades” – sounds exactly like the MS and Windows.
NO!
Ok…..everyone calm down.
This is a R U M O U R. Initiated by the Android crowd because they actually are going to have a subscription for Alex…..a.
Totally agree, but it’s based on the precedent that for higher level AI Samsung will be paying Google for the cloud processing. This with the announcements that Apple too will most likely use Google’s AI services for similar heavy processing, and that Apple has very little history of absorbing costs lead to a high expectation that Apple will also make functions depending on cloud AI resources subscription based.
why pay?
You do not pay for Smartness in SmartPhones, Al SMARTNESS should be free too
Apple is expensive already, should not charge extra
If apple insists on charging ai fee, it’s for the privileged and should therefore as be included ni Apple ONE for al Services
Apple practically launched 2011-10-04 on iPhone 4S
(acquired 2010-04-28 from 2010-02 app by Adam Cheyer, b. 1966, 203 R&D funded by US Defense Dept., also co-founder of Change.org 2007-02-07 ;),
3 years before Alexa,
the ai world with Siri assistant but fell ASLEEP on its own invention
and was surpassed by Amazon Alexa 2014-11-06, then Go Assistant 2016-05-18,
Microsoft Cortana 2014-04-02, Microsoft Copilot AI 2023-02-07, so Apple does not deserve to charge, letting Apple fans down for 21 years now!!
Probably not, as Siri just hasn’t been particularly useful for my workflows.
The only thing that I really use Siri much for is “Siri, set an X minute timer”, because that’s been where it’s been reliable. I’ve tried for some other tasks but ran into enough frustrations that I’ve stopped trying.
One frustration example was making a Calendar appointment refereeing an existing entry in my ‘Contacts’ App – – it can get the time & date correct, but then gets “confused” in not correctly getting the existing Contact, so starts to be “helpful” in searching the Web rather than just limiting the search to the Contacts App, or just simply putting down only the words I said. Obviously, it must be because I’m holding it wrong. /s
Last I heard, Siri could only set one timer at a time. If so, Siri needs to at least catch up with Alexa which allows multiple timers to be set running simultaneously.
Apple has lost me with Siri at this point due to their lack of development on it. I have my workflow with all my Apple devices that has no reliance on it.
If Apple wanted to make it a premium add-on, I’m sure it would be included in Apple One. But I agree with TMac, others – start with a Siri that is smarter than a verbal command egg timer.
Nooooooooooooooooooooo
Definitely not!