7 Things Siri Desperately Needs to Survive

Apple has a Siri problem. Compared to the digital assistant’s rivals in the voice space, Apple’s virtual pocket companion isn’t nearly as capable or as intuitive to use. But Apple could fix that. Whether or not it overhauls Siri in an upcoming “SiriOS” platform or it just implements new capabilities incrementally, Siri is in dire need of change. What kind of change? Continue reading to browse seven things Apple need to add to its digital assistant.

Skills

In recent years, Siri is starting to “play nice” with third-party platforms. In fact, Apple and Spotify recently reached an agreement to add voice support for the latter firm’s app. That comes after Apple opened up SiriKit implementation to music apps.

But there’s a lot more that can be done. Just look at the leader in this sphere: Alexa. There are more than 30,000 third-party “skills” available for the Amazon voice assistant. Apple isn’t likely to give up its walled garden, but allowing third parties to create abilities for Siri could go a long way toward increasing its usefulness.

Conversations with Siri

For the most part, invoking Siri and giving it a command is a one-step process. Compare that to Google Assistant’s continued conversations or Amazon Alexa’s “follow up mode.”

Siri could become much more powerful, intuitive and usable if it supported a multi-response, conversational command mode. Imagine asking Siri what the commute time is to a specific location. Then, without needing to activate the assistant or reexplain your destination, just simply being able to say “give me directions there.”

Correction Options

Apple Maps has long had a “Report an Issue” button that allows users to issue feedback for incorrect labels or directions. Why isn’t there something similar for Siri? Alexa even has an option in its app that allows users to offer feedback on the accuracy of its responses.

This would go a long way toward making Siri better — and it might be better than Apple’s past privacy practices in this area. If Apple added a “Report Inaccuracy” button or allowed Siri to learn if you pointed out something was incorrect, the company may not even need to send its voice recordings to human contractors.

Multi-Request Commands

This would be similar to conversational-style interactions with Siri, but would allow for better granular control of HomeKit accessories or information requests. Imagine being able to say “Hey Siri, turn on the thermostat, set it to 75 degrees, and turn it off in an hour.”

Even simpler requests appear to be beyond Siri’s grasp at the moment. Something as easy as “what’s the time and temperature in New York City right now” doesn’t get a proper response. Multi-request commands would bring a lot more functionality to the Siri platform.

Whisper Mode & Intelligent Volume

There’s a lot of room for improvement when it comes to how Siri responds to requests — specifically in the volume area. While Apple is apparently working on a “whisper mode” for those times when you don’t want to wake up your sleeping neighbors, it has yet to implement it.

But it could go a lot further than that. Siri could, for example, detect how far you are from your device or how loud the ambient environment is and set its response volume based on those factors. The iPhone already has the ability to pick up this ambient data. It’s just a matter of implementing it into the Siri platform.

Less ‘Bulky’ UI

While iOS is pretty clean and intuitive, there are certain aspects of its user interface that are undoubtedly clunky. Just think of the volume HUD prior to iOS 13. Or the fact that both phone calls and Siri commands take up the entirety of the display. Apple should fix this.

Siri responses could appear, just as an example, in a notification-style banner at the top of the screen. You could glance at it and flick it away if Siri’s voice response answered you question. If not, you could drag the pane down for a full-screen view of information.

‘One More Thing’

These are all just examples of fairly simple fixes that Apple could add to Siri or SiriOS. But given Apple’s goal of surprising and delighting, the company should be innovating. Compared to other digital assistants, Siri just doesn’t feel like a priority at Apple anymore.

Just consider the Google Duplex feature that allows Assistant to call businesses for you. Not saying that Apple should rip off that feature for Siri, but it was an innovative (if not slightly creepy) idea. Apple has the research and development funding to turn Siri into a top-tier assistant. It just has to actually do so.