Posts tagged with "Siri"

I think, in part, I regret upgrading any of my Apple devices to the 27 line of operating systems. While my experience as a whole has been pretty favourable, the one thing I was looking forward to is not just disappointing, but is a huge step backwards.

I don't use Siri for many things, but I do use it a lot for a small number of core things. On any given day I'll lift my watch up and speak to it to set a timer or a reminder. Occasionally I'll ask other things, but they're the main uses. Thanks to the fairly recent addition of on-device voice handling, these requests have been near-instant.

With the new Siri that comes with iOS 27, etc., if I'm really lucky the reply will be super slow (getting on for 20 seconds or so to do the job), but more often than not it just doesn't work at all. Either it tells me that my main device isn't available right now¹ (which I take to mean my iPhone, which is wild given it's always in my pocket at the time), or it just busy spins for ages and then simply times out and does nothing.

If I try to use Siri on the iPhone itself, it either just busy waits for ages without getting anything done, or it finally tells me it isn't working.

I was one of the people who upgraded to the 16 Pro because of the promise of "Apple Intelligence". I was, unsurprisingly, kind of annoyed that they didn't deliver. But it was fine, the phone is a good one and it's still serving me well. Also, if I'm honest, I was comfortable with the idea that they chose to not really implement anything² rather than implement something bad.

Sadly though, based on my experience so far, they've implemented something bad. Since upgrading, on the Watch and iPhone, I've found that it's either horrifically slow or it just doesn't work. On top of that, I've lost all the benefit of the on-device voice handling of my watches.

This seems to have started with iOS 17, and I can't narrow down the how and the when of it happening, but over the last week or so I've found that every couple of days Siri seems to lose their voice. By this I mean the high quality voice that's used when they speak seems to disappear. I notice this when I ask my phone or headphones a question or to do something, and I get a really low-quality voice that speaks back to me.

The voice itself seems to be a version of the voice I normally use, but like it's using an on-device much-cut-down version. If I go into the settings to check what voice is selected, it's the one I normally use, but it wants to download it again.

Sure enough, once the download is complete all is good again. I've not kept track of when it happens -- and I think I should from now on -- but it feels like it happens every couple of days; I almost always notice it first thing in the morning, the first time I ask the phone or the headphones something.

I hope it is some sort of iOS 17 weirdness and is gone when 17.1 turns up.