MARCH 2020 MACWORLD 91and “performance.”
More than any new feature, making
sure that the first release of iOS 14 is fast,
fluid, and trouble-free for the hundreds of
millions of devices upon which it will run
should be priority number one.
And don’t promise features at WWDC
only to have them come weeks or months
after release (and in a shoddy state, at
that). It’s probably too much to expect all
the major iOS features to release at once,
but be honest about the staggered
release. Let us know which features are
coming in a future iOS point-release
update so we can manage expectations
(and so Apple’s developers aren’t rushing
to meet an unrealistic ship date).
- A SMARTER SIRI (AGAIN)
Apple improves Siri every year. In iOS 13, it
gave Siri a smoother and more natural-
sounding voice. It also added support for
music, podcast, and other audio apps to
the SiriKit framework. Both are nice
(especially that second one) but not nearly
what we have in mind when we wish every
year, fingers-crossed, for a dramatically
upgraded Siri.
Last year, I wrote this about Siri in
describing my hopes for iOS 13:
Siri still lags way behind Google
Assistant and Alexa in its ability to
answer general questions andgracefully perform actions with third-
party hardware and services. There are
so many obvious shortfalls; you can do
a Spotlight search for a flight number
and get detailed flight info, but ask Siri
and you just get a web search.
Siri needs better voice recognition,
faster response times, and more “fun”
activities like trivia and games. It needs
to give more accurate answers to a
much broader set of questions.All of that is still true. Siri still needs
more domains for things like Shopping,
and both Siri and HomeKit need better
support for more smart home gadgets and
types (why can’t I arm my alarm with Siri?).
More than anything else, I want AppleJust another example from the /r/SiriFails
subreddit, whose very existence should
embarrass Apple daily.