Siri stupidities and absurdities especially back-to-back Siri

Say just 'Siri' and Siri activating when not summoned

This one is not such a big deal because Apple allowed users to disable this. Yet it cannot be denied how utterly stupid this is: Apple clearly did not think this through one bit. It's so blatantly obvious it's hard to believe it would pass anyone.

So what is the problem? It's simple: if one only has to say 'Siri' to activate Siri how the hell can anyone even talk ABOUT Siri without activating Siri? You can't! I tried it just to prove a point and I said something like:

Siri's an idiot.

And she said something like 'that's not nice'. But I proved my point to myself: not that I needed any proof in the matter. It is blatantly obvious how stupid it is. And it's not like Siri isn't activated when she's not summoned already. So often on phone calls I have had her suddenly activate when NOTHING of the sort of 'Hey Siri' was said. I have been on calls where it happened on the other end: very often. So why the hell would I now want yet more reason for her to activate when she's not been called? Fortunately this one is something that can be disabled. The other things, though, cannot be...

Back to back Siri

This one cannot be disabled and it is also utterly stupid and INCREDIBLY BUGGY. It's a joke. It boggles my mind that Apple could not see these things ahead of time and did not think that maybe, just maybe, it would annoy people. Do they really think it's so hard to say again 'Hey Siri'?

But here's the best part of that. If they're going to do this why not keep context? They don't: you can't have a conversation with Siri. So what is the point? It's not done properly. But of course it is a stupid idea anyway. Okay I can kind of see the appeal but for me I'm not so lazy or incapable enough to not be able to say 'Hey Siri' again. But even if I was with the amount of bugs I would certainly disable it if Apple actually allowed it. At this time, 13 October 2023, that is not yet possible. I hope they change it but if they do I certainly won't be updating this or removing this. No, Siri has so many problems that they should be called out.

Because I have better things to do, though, I am just going to give a list of some of the bugs I have encountered. Unfortunately there are more bugs in iOS 17 (and macOS Sonoma) that are even worse like in Photos app and also more in Siri that I might or might not bring up another time. So here are the problems so far, from memory (there have been so many and I have so much going on that it's hard to keep it all in mind), that I have encountered with back to back Siri:

  • Siri stops talking mid sentence and sometimes in the middle of a word to listen, probably because she thinks that I'm speaking. An example is when I ask her to set a reminder, reminders being another sore point with Siri.
  • Siri HAS REPLIED TO HERSELF! I mean how is that even possible?
  • Siri HAS REPLIED TO MUSIC! Again I ask how is that even possible?
  • Siri has turned the music volume WAY DOWN so she can listen despite the fact I asked her to play music. WHY IN THE ABSOLUTE HELL WOULD I WANT TO SAY SOMETHING MORE WHEN I JUST ASKED HER TO PLAY MUSIC? She does it more than one time per activation!

Other ridiculous Siri things of iOS 17

There are far too many things to list when it comes to Siri bugs. Some are hilarious albeit very stupid but there are two of iOS 17/iPadOS 17 that are driving me crazy.

  • Now I have to say almost the entire album name for her to play it. I used to be able to say just the city (live concert) even when there's only one album of this, but now I have to either create a playlist OR say most of the album name which is the date and location. Why? It makes no sense and it's harder to do as I have to remember all the names of my albums, many of which have dates in them. Even worse is that sometimes she recognises one date format and not the other and that's complicated by the fact that although I have my devices to British English if it's an American concert the date is in the American English date format (imagine that).
  • The other day I had asked her to set a reminder for 'Remind mum about ...' and instead of setting it to 'remind mum about ...' she just set it to '...'. That's not nearly as useful. If I say someone in a reminder there's a bloody good reason for it! It's called 'context': you might have heard of it. It changes everything. There are also other bugs to do with setting reminders with her but those are older and I don't feel like writing about them now.

In summary: Apple should be really embarrassed about iOS 17 / iPadOS 17 Siri. It's the worst yet and I have yet to see an update to Siri that's actually good. It just gets worse and worse. There was no functional improvement in Siri: they should have left Siri clear the hell alone as the only changes are stupid and buggy as hell. Any programmer can see that immediately as I did immediately. The only thing is the back-to-back Siri is far, far, far worse than I even imagined!