I have a lot of issues with dictation as well which I feel has gotten much worse as it gets "smarter." It used to take literal dictation & I could say "comma" "period" etc. to insert punctuation. Now it tries to guess when commas or full stops should be added and it's horrible. If I pause to take a breath it puts a comma or period, sometimes entirely changing the meaning of the sentence.

Recently I said "I ran into this too earlier on the project" and it wrote "I run into this tube earlier on the project." So now I'm running into a tube... because this makes more sense than "too"? And it can never write the names of immediately family members I text about every single day, and it has 5th grade vocabulary so if I said I demurred or that something was germane or any other word beyond the 500 most common words it butchers it.

What I want: 1. let me handle the punctuation manually 2. assume a broader vocabulary 3. let me specify how people's names are pronounced!! How are we this many years in and it still misinterprets my wife's name on a daily basis?

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itopaloglu83 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Here's a recent conversation I had with Siri.

Me: Hey Siri, set the living room lights to 100%.

Siri: 100% = 1

This has been working for 6-7 years without any issues, and suddenly Siri is giving me math lessons. What the hell is happening in this company?

	▲	amluto 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Me: Hey Siri, turn on the [such and such] light Siri: Shows the literal text “Hey Siri, turn on the [such and such] light” on the screen and does absolutely nothing. It’s an edit box. Pressing enter has no effect.
	▲	dd8601fn an hour ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Siri is about old enough to be getting a drivers license now, and I swear it's going through the same brain development woes.
	▲	trca 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Same thing has happened to me with Siri. It's absolutely garbage. For years, I've said "Hey Siri, turn on Bright" because I have a "Bright" Home scene configured. About 2 months ago, the HomePod updated and now responds consistently with "Pause in the bedroom?" Nothing is playing in the Bedroom. Nothing CAN play in the bedroom, there's just lights in the Bedroom. No speakers. What the heck is it even _trying_ to pause. It's infuriating.

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pradn 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's extremely painful that there's are free, OSS dictation tools that can run on-device, that are so much better than Apple's dictation, and yet it's quite difficult to use them on the iPhone. I'm referring to Whispr. Microphone access is a pain for custom keyboards -- for good reason, but still.

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dkga 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Same frustration here. It’s somewhat painful for me to type but using dictation on the iphone is so terrible I prefer the physical pain.

As for names, I an also baffled. Most people in my family have either a Brazilian Portuguese or German name, but my work life is in English, so guess what, no getting anyone’s name right!

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jama211 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I still use spoken punctuation and it works ok so long as you don’t pause. E.g. “ hey siri text my wife I’m not sure when I’ll be home comma but I’ll text you when I’m leaving” if I say that without pausing, it puts the comma in the right place

	▲	anonymars 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think the point is the opposite. Heaven forbid you might need to take a moment to think: now you get a comma or period

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citiguy 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I struggled with family member names too until I realized I can create shortcuts for them (usually just their initials). Now I just type the shortcut and it always works. Joy!