*Siri*
I’ve been trying really hard to use Siri on my iPhone more often, especially with all of the improvements that came along with the new iOS 7. For those unfamiliar with a Siri, it is the voice controlled “personal assistant” that is suppose to do some nifty things like play music, read your tweets and launch apps, all with voice commands.
I just asked Siri to read me my appointments tomorrow. She started out good, reading my calendar up until lunch time. However, at lunch she paused and asked, “shall I continue?” I responded in the affirmative. And she started up again, but from the beginning of the day, reading me the appointments she had just told me about.
I went through this fun loop four times before I realized she just couldn’t get beyond lunch.
Earlier this evening, when using her voice to call out directions from Apple Maps, she developed a new trick: on two separate occasions on the NJ 17 freeway near Mahwah she had us exit the roadway, go to the end of the exit ramp, do a U-turn around the median and then head back up the ramp to resume right where we left off on NJ 17. The frustration level in the Jeep leaped exponentially and when I pulled over to see what she was drinking and to make sure we were headed the right way (we,were), she then had us weave across the NJ-NY state line a few times and go northeast when we should have been going southeast before she was dismissed and replaced by Google Maps, who took us the 1.7 miles to Earl’s hotel for the evening.
This prompted an outburst of my frustration on Twitter where I declared that Apple sucks, the whole “it just works” mantra is a fallacy and any sort of quality control from Apple died with Steve Jobs. Angry Apple fanboys bombarded me with messages and I gave them the finger.
Apple just ain’t cutting it anymore. I have to beg and plead with Siri every morning to give me the weather. She only takes requests about 40% of the time. I think it’s something to do with the networking, but our home is pure Apple and if Apple can’t get their devices to do what they’re suppose to do on their own hardware and under their own software, then all the gold Kardashian phones out there polluting up good sensibilities is nothing more than lipstick on a pig.
Right now I want to jump ship to something else but I can’t because Android is more schizophrenic than Congress with the varying devices and versions and the like. God knows what Microsoft is doing these days but I suspect they’re trying to affix a mouse to the side of a phone because that’s the opposite of what everyone else is doing.
The fact of the matter is that quality control in the tech world is dropping like a guy with cement shoes in the Hudson and I don’t see it coming up for air anytime soon.
I want something that works reliably. I want something that is production ready. I want something that is easy to use, uses technology in a smart way and is available to me without pleading, cajoling or having to give the damn thing a biscuit.
Maybe I’m too much of a perfectionist. I won’t apologize for that, though. I refuse to subscribe to mediocrity.
Someone tell me about their perfect mobile computing experience. Quick.
