Siri’s accuracy has continued to improve under iOS 7

[RaduTyrsina]

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Analyst Gene Munster from Piper Jaffray regularly assesses Siri’s accuracy in terms of correctly interpreting and answering queries. Munster has recently issued the latest version of his Siri accuracy report card, observing that Siri has continued to improve under iOS 7. Here’s what he said:

The primary improvement between Siri in iOS 6 and iOS 7 came from its performance in noisier areas, where Siri was able to translate better through a noisy environment (94% vs. 83% correct in Aug iOS 6). Based on our testing, iOS 7 Siri’s net ability to answer questions (factors in questions not correctly understood) improved to 79% from 77% in August with iOS 6.

Apple is trying to reduce its reliance on Google, as Siri looks to fetch answer for questions from Bing, Wikipedia, and WolframAlpha databases more than it did before. According to Munster’s most recent testing, only 4 percent of Siri’s answers relied on Google, which is a big decrease when compared to 17 percent in August and 27 percent in December 2012.

The analyst has also compared Apple’s Siri to Google Now and found that the two virtual assistants have both obtained a “C+†score. This shows that Google has seriously improved their service, after Siri held a substantial lead in the previous year testing.

After upgrading your iPhone and iPad to iOS 7, have you found Siri to be more accurate and useful?

Source: iPhoneForums, MacRumors

 

[AQ_OC]

But isn't google the best search database? Why is apple always locking out its serious competitors? Seems unwise to me. At the same time, google is writing some of the best apps for iOS. This seems wise to me. Amazon does the same...it makes all its content available on iOS and shuns android. I think apple might be wise to try to work with some of its best competition and do more to ensure its long term viability.

I am happy to hear that Siri is getting better. Same for apple maps, though I still think that should have been left in google's wagon. Seems like there are lots of new places to play without playing come-from-behind games.

 

[n4uau]

But isn't google the best search database? Why is apple always locking out its serious competitors?

I find Google Search with voice is great to search the internet but I use Siri for other things. Example I can tell SIRI to 'send an email to my wife' she will ask which of her email addresses to use, then ask for the subject, and what I want to send and they will send it. No typing on my part at all. Google won't do that. I can ask her the odds that Team A will win a game and she will tell me. Google will show urls that might answer the question.

So for me they serve two different but sometimes overlapping purposes. I fund voice recognition programs to be very accurate.

 

[AQ_OC]

I find Google Search with voice is great to search the internet but I use Siri for other things. Example I can tell SIRI to 'send an email to my wife' she will ask which of her email addresses to use, then ask for the subject, and what I want to send and they will send it. No typing on my part at all. Google won't do that. I can ask her the odds that Team A will win a game and she will tell me. Google will show urls that might answer the question. So for me they serve two different but sometimes overlapping purposes. I fund voice recognition programs to be very accurate.

Yes, I realize this and do similar things. For example, I frequently ask Siri to set alarms and reminders and to turn Bluetooth in/off, etc. But here I was just referring to the search part. It seems like apple goes to the lesser search engines and avoids using google in cases where google would be best.