---
title: Siri: Slow, unreliable, and maybe not a priority at Apple
date: 2012-02-17
topics: Siri,Apple,iOS
---

[Siri](http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/siri.html) had a lot of promise when
it was released as a feature of the new iPhone 4S. It wowed everyone at the
[WWDC keynote in October 2011](http://www.apple.com/apple-events/october-2011/).

I’ve had an iPhone 4S since November 2011, and I would describe Siri as
gimmicky, flaky, and useful only within a narrow subset of the things it was
promised for.

The biggest killers of my enthusiasm for using Siri are *laggy interaction* and
*flaky availability*. Interaction misses plus plain old network lag combine to
make Siri slow, slow, slow.

**There are five *possible* outcomes to each Siri interaction:**

1. Siri misunderstands what you said due to you speaking incorrectly, or
2. Siri misunderstands what you said because of a voice recognition error, or
3. Siri understands what you said but misunderstands what you *meant*, or
4. Siri is unable to connect to its servers, or
5. Siri connects and responds correctly

Four out of these five outcomes result in a failed interaction. While you can
get better at speaking correctly, there are few to no workarounds for the other
three error conditions.

Since Siri goes out over the internet in order to analyze each spoken
interaction, it can often take a good 5–10 seconds to offer a response to what
you’ve just said[^1]. In addition, at least every other day Siri’s servers seem
to go dark for a period of time, resulting in “really sorry, but I can’t take
any requests right now, please try again in a little while.”

Add this delay, and a random but sizeable chance of connection failure, in
between each incorrect response, and you soon get used to doing most things the
old way rather than gamble on an unreliable Siri.

Someone’s bound to respond that Siri is still officially beta software. I am
aware of that, and don’t expect it to be perfect[^2].

But it’s also worth noting that Apple, like most software companies, has
introduced many apps and features that they then failed to improve upon or even
abandoned[^3]. My gut feeling is that Siri is in danger of ending up as the next
Mobile Me, especially given that it has received almost no improvement or
attention since its release so far.

[^1]: Connection failures are especially common when you are on the outer edge
    of a known wifi network, such as when in the driveway or parking lot, or
    walking to/from your house. The iPhone seems to think it is connected via
    wifi for some time after you have left range, causing Siri to attempt using
    a nearly non-existent connection.

[^2]: Although I do expect beta software to be at least feature-complete, which
    I don’t believe Siri is.

[^3]: See the Calendar, Weather, Music and Stock apps, iTunes Genius, Ping, and
    of course Mobile Me.