KeenaniOS 26 beta broke the only thing that Siri has ever been reliably good for.
“Set a timer for X minutes” now results in this, rather than a timer being set.
Wingdings are Incomprehensible@keenan ROFL Oh fun, it's surprising that Apple could break this basic function for Siri; especially when they are claiming to make Siri smarter. Hmm, I'm sure they'll fix this before launch, though. Gotta say, this would grind my gears into fine metal dust if I were actively testing the iOS 26 beta.
@WanderingInDigitalWorlds I knew what I was getting myself into, and even then I was absolutely blown away to discover this particular thing breaking.
@keenan Yeah, it seemed you went into this Beta with eyes wide open; as you knew that Betas were notoriously broken in weird ways. I am feeling blown away by this too, but, also kinda not shocked. Still, I'd get around it by making a Shortcuts toggle for common timers that I use until Apple fixed it.
Andy Norman@WanderingInDigitalWorlds @keenan it is exactly these simple things that I expect them to break while trying to make Siri more “clever”. People keep saying Apple should “just” make Siri use something like ChatGPT for more complex queries. But that leaves the problem of working out whether it is a simple query in the first place.
@WanderingInDigitalWorlds @keenan
This thread has well demonstrated people use a whole range of ways of asking for the same 5 minute timer. The process of reliably working out what the user wants and deciding how to respond (do the thing or hand the query off to a more complex model) AND doing that determination on device with limited hardware/model size is still an unsolved problem in the industry generally as far as I can see.
This thread has well demonstrated people use a whole range of ways of asking for the same 5 minute timer. The process of reliably working out what the user wants and deciding how to respond (do the thing or hand the query off to a more complex model) AND doing that determination on device with limited hardware/model size is still an unsolved problem in the industry generally as far as I can see.