I want to say right out of the gate that Siri isn't finished. It's still being developed as part of iOS 18.1, which is currently in a developer beta. So what I'm about to tell you doesn't count as a review. It's merely my impressions of what's arguably the star feature of Apple Intelligence and where it stands now.
And so far, Siri is not on the best footing.
The good news is that Siri does live up to some of the promises Apple made during WWDC 2024. For one, Siri's voice does sound less robotic and more natural than before. Another plus is that the Siri design is better. When you invoke Apple's assistant, there's a light that glows around the iPhone screen, and you can now type to Siri just by double tapping the bottom of the screen.
I also like that I can interrupt Siri if I said something wrong or fumbled with my words initially and still get a correct answer.
For example, I asked Siri what the weather is going to be tomorrow and then mid-sentence said "Sorry, I mean Wednesday." Siri didn't miss a beat, changing the displayed forecast from Tuesday to Wednesday. Siri was also smart and fast enough to catch me changing the time of a timer I was asking for from 25 minutes to 15 minutes. I didn't need to cancel anything.
Siri can also understand and act on some contextual follow-up questions. I asked what Apple's stock price was today and then followed up by merely saying "How about Google?" I got Google's stock price without have to be more specific that I was talking about stocks. I got similar results when asking about the time of sunset today and "How about tomorrow."
But Siri fell down hard on other follow up questions. For instance, after asking for Apple's stock price and asking how that compares to last year I was told that Siri "can't get stock information for last year."
I had similar trouble getting some sports information. I asked who the Yankees played next and Siri correctly answered the Blue Jays but when I followed up and asked "Who is the starting pitcher?" I got a generic definition of a what a starting pitcher is. Strike!
Siri didn't do much better with my NFL question. I asked who the New York Giants play next and it correctly answered the Detroit Lions Thursday at 7 p.m. But when I asked if Daniel Jones was expected to start Siri just repeated that the initial answer.
Siri also couldn't tell me who the possible VP picks were for Kamala Harris, merely posting some links to articles, and it couldn't tell me who has the No. 1 song right now. Really? Your parent company owns Apple Music!
Looking for some inspiration, I asked Siri what I could ask. Among the items listed was "Is broccoli good for you?" I hate broccoli but I asked anyway and Siri displayed and talked me through the nutrition information. But when I said "How about steak?" I got a listing of local steakhouses instead. Doh.
Feeling hungry I pretended I visited one of those restaurants and asked for some help with the tip. So I asked what's 20% of $153 and I got an answer of $30.60. Then I asked "What would be the total of the bill if you included the tip?" and I just got links to some tip calculators. Yes, I could have easily added it myself but it's not a hard follow-up question.
To be fair, Apple Intelligence won't hit the iPhone until the fall and it will likely arrive after the iPhone 16 series is introduced. But even for a developer beta I was expecting Siri to be able to answer more questions and be smarter about contextual follow-ups. And perhaps ChatGPT will be able to fill in some of those gaps once it arrives on iOS 18.
