Apple's Siri gets another shot at getting it right

LOS ANGELES — “Siri, will you finally catch up to Amazon and Google this year?

We’d like to believe she might say, “Yes...Jefferson. I’ll have more accurate, chattier responses, and good news — I’ll be able to understand you much better, too.”

Will this actually happen?

Apple, which introduced the world to voice-activated computing in 2011 with the release of Siri, is feeling the heat.

The tech press has given raves to the superior results from Google’s Assistant, now available on the iPhone. It’s also been wowed by the constant drumbeat generated by Amazon for its Alexa assistant, coming to new speakers and other devices on an ongoing basis.

So on the eve of the Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple touts all the cool new things app makers get to do in 2017 with software updates, the company is expected to once again put the spotlight on a newer, improved Siri, one analysts expect to be more responsive and chattier.

At last year's WWDC, Apple brought Siri to Mac computers, and opened the platform up to developers, who could for the first time bring Siri to apps like Lyft, Uber and Shutterfly. Apple at the time said getting developers involved would greatly improve Siri, but in USA TODAY tests done in the fall when the new Siri was launched, the assistant didn't seem that different. Siri got some things right and a whole lot wrong.

The company really needs to finally get Siri up to par and “solve voice, or they become irrelevant,” says Peter Pham, president of Science, Inc., a Los Angeles based tech incubator.

Related:

Apple's Siri speaker to challenge Google, Amazon

Why the new Siri is still maddening in so many ways

Siri vs. Google Assistant on the iPhone: here's who's talking

Apple's early entry into voice assistants, and the prevalence of iPhone, still make it the most commonly used and liked voice-activated digital assistant.

According to a survey conducted by SurveyMonkey Audience for USA TODAY, of the 92% of respondents who are familiar with the top voice assistants, one third use Siri the most, compared to 19% for Google Assistant, 6% for Alexa and 4% for Cortana. When asked which assistant they can't live without, Siri wins by a long shot.

There's a big asterisk to these results: there are simply far more devices in circulation that have Siri built in than any other assistant. Siri has been on the iPhone since 2011, and in just one quarter alone, Apple can sell 50 million to 70 million iPhones. The Echo, in contrast, debuted in 2015, and Amazon has sold about 10 million of the smart speakers to date, Forrester Research estimates.

Google Assistant debuted in 2016, but it's only on a handful of recent Android phones and the Google Home smart speaker.

“I like Siri,” says Sabreyna Reese from Kansas City, Mo. who uses Siri to call people and text. “She does what I tell her to do."

But for Tobias Nasgarde, a college student from Stockholm, studying in Los Angeles, he's pretty much given up on Siri. “My iPhone is Swedish, and sometimes she thinks I’m back home in Stockholm.”

Christina Brown, also from Kansas City, is happy with the results, but doesn’t turn to Siri too often. “All she does is search, so why not just type it in myself?”

In our SurveyMonkey survey, among reasons users gave for for not using Siri, 13% said it was easier to just type, while 7% said she couldn’t translate the voice accurately. The majority — 56% — said they didn't have a device that used it.

Apple’s challenge is to prove to consumers that voice search is useful and time-saving.

Many consumers USA TODAY has spoken to say Alexa does a better job of understanding them. Creative Strategies president and Apple analyst Tim Bajarin chalks that up to hardware.

The Echo speakers have a better, larger built-in microphone than the internal iPhone mic, and most people give orders to her in a quiet room — their kitchen, as opposed to the phone, which is generally outside. They also use Alexa more often, because it’s in the kitchen, says Bajarin.

Apple could solve that with its answer to Alexa this year with a talking speaker, most likely sale in the last three months of the year, when it can accompany the 10th anniversary edition of the iPhone.

Gene Munster, who runs the Minneapolis-based Loup Ventures, believes consumers will be eager to buy.

“How people are interacting with machines is changing, from the mouse and keyboard to voice and gestures,” he says. The speaker is “an easier way to interact with a machine.”

And a bright, colorful speaker inside an Apple store that talks to you, “would be a home run if it’s priced accordingly, if it's between $150 to $200,” he adds.

Siri vs Google, Amazon 

In USA TODAY’s own A/B/C tests between Google, Amazon and Siri, Google far out-paced both Apple and Amazon, and is currently the best showcase of what’s possible with voice computing.

Want information about your day? Google will start you off with time, weather, calendar info and the latest news update. When you ask a question, it answers, instead of saying, “Here’s what I found on the web,” and asking you to read it.

Google is ahead here, because “Google has infinitely more data,” says Munster. All those Google searches over two decades have produced “more relevant results. Google has benefited from this.”

Amazon has done a yeoman’s job communicating the power of voice computing by getting Alexa into new products — like a recent Westinghouse TV and a router from Linkys, as well as continually introducing new extensions. Forrester expects Amazon to sell 20 million Echos by the end of this year.

The hardware is also carving out new territory. A Echo speaker with a video screen, the Show, will be out later this month, and there’s one coming with built-in cameras for fashion advice.

Most folks only use a few features of the voice assistants, like weather and news updates, setting alarms and the like. But over the next 10 years, that will change, says Forrester analyst James McQuivey.

“Once people get the idea I can talk to a virtual person and get my needs met, they start thinking about it in a different way than pulling out your phone,” he says.

Related:

Google Home wants to be your assistant, heating up the rivalry with Amazon Echo and soon, Apple

Pham believes phones themselves will be history within the next 20 years, and we’ll move onto the next technology.

“Apple has to get Siri right now, because of what’s coming.”

Siri — do you have an answer for that? We’re listening.

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