After noticing that Siri was pronouncing her name wrong, superstar singer Barbra Streisand made one phone call to Apple CEO Tim Cook, and it was fixed. If only all Apple customer service calls were so simple.
Streisand has been making the rounds to promote her new autobiography, ‘My Name is Barbra’, out this month. During a chat with the BBC, she recalled a story where she was using Apple’s smart assistant, Siri, and it was pronouncing her name with a Z.
“It’s Strei-sand, like sand on the beach. I figured I’d call the head of Apple, Tim Cook,” Streisand said, “and he had Siri change the pronunciation of my name, to be correct. That’s one perk of fame!”
Many Siri users, including some here at iMore, are frustrated by the smart assistant’s limitations, alongside how slow it can be to respond to requests. Yet one error in pronunciation was fixed swiftly by Streisand’s star power. Perhaps another call could be made to fix its other limitations.
A perk of fame
Siri struggles to understand our How To Editor, John-Anthony — a constant bugbear that he’s spoken about on The iMore Show in the past. With a strong Scottish accent, Siri has a problem understanding what he’s asking, and this usually results in a wrong answer or no response from the assistant being returned.
However, the smart assistant is also limited in how it can perform basic tasks. Asking Siri to create multiple lists in Apple Notes is something it still can’t do for instance. It’s immensely frustrating, especially when Siri is accessible on a bunch of great devices, such as iPhone 15 Pro and M3 Macs.
However, the smart assistant is also limited in how it can perform basic tasks. Asking Siri to create multiple lists in Apple Notes is something it still can’t do for instance — let alone more complex contextual tasks like, say, suggesting a recipe for an omelet on demand. It’s immensely frustrating, especially when Siri is accessible on a bunch of great devices, such as iPhone 15 Pro Max and M3 Macs.
If you try ChatGPT on an iPhone though, you’ll get a set of concise instructions to make an omelet, ready to go. It’s competition like this that shows how much Siri is lagging behind.
Hopefully, Apple’s own AI efforts will arrive next year, and Siri will get the shot in the arm it sorely needs.
