Apple has “officially” shared a statement with a blogger and told them that its upcoming personalized Siri is delayed and will be released in the coming year. This is clearly Siri’s MobileMe moment and it needs to put out to pasture.
It may sound harsh but it is common knowledge that Siri has not improved much ever since its original launch. Users are often redirected to web search rather than getting actions done, and it has continued to lag behind its competition such as Google Assistant and Alexa, both of which are already on their next-generation updates now in the form of Gemini and Alexa+, respectively. Whether you use it on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV or HomePod, Siri is simply not useful most of the times.
You may claim: Apple rolled out a bunch of improvements to Siri in iOS 18, most of which the company mentioned in its statement. None of them are really groundbreaking through. Here’s why:
- Type to Siri – this feature was already available as an accessibility option before and Apple just renamed, rebranded and polished it more.
- Product knowledge – this is just a glorified manual.
- Integration with ChatGPT – Every product nowadays has ChatGPT integration so this is not a standout feature anymore.
Instead of actually improving Siri, Apple has put in more effort to paint it with a fresh coat of paint. They were so proud of the new Siri design that they decided to gate keep it to the latest iPhones, for no logical reason whatsoever.
During this time, Apple kept fooling customers by showing that Personalized Siri is coming soon to iPhones. Here’s how Apple showed off the new “personalized Siri” in an iPhone 16 ad in September 2024:
Personalized Siri, along with Siri’s existing issues with being useless, would have put Apple ahead of its competitors, if they had been released or fixed on time. Apple has not only missed the boat, they’re sitting out the next few rounds with nothing to show off.
I strongly believe that Apple should get rid of Siri as a brand and as a product, and develop something new. Just like how they did with MobileMe, which had a disastrous rollout. Just reimagine Steve Jobs question to the MobileMe team, shortly after the product was launched to terrible review:
“Can anyone tell me what MobileMe is supposed to do?” Having received a satisfactory answer, he continued, “So why the fuck doesn’t it do that?”
Just put Siri in MobileMe’s place and you’ll see what I mean.
Siri basically deserves the same fate as MobileMe now. It should be replaced by a new product, like MobileMe was replaced with iCloud. There should be a better team in place as well as a better leader. But this is just wishful thinking.
It just seems that there is no internal pressure or obligation towards customers to really make Siri worth using, like it has been over the past decade. Apple has missed the boat on AI, and all they have to show for it is Genmoji and Playground,
I had shared in January that Apple Intelligence has yet to show any signs of what it claims to be, and so far, I have not been proven wrong.
