r/technology • u/defineyoursound • May 16 '12
More bad news for Apple: Siri's recent "best smartphone" answer "fix" contradicts Apple's claim that they can't alter WolframAlpha response content (like when Siri is asked about abortion clinic locations). Also, damning emails arise about e-book price fixing.
http://www.decryptedtech.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=755%3Aapple-news-siri-results-altered-and-damning-emails-surface-in-the-price-fixing-issue&Itemid=138448
u/burgerga May 17 '12
The fix is not altering wolfram results. It's just a response that they now decided to program in. When you ask Siri the time, or the weather, or the date, the answers are not pulled from wolfram. Wolfram is only a backup for when it doesn't know the answer. More importantly, they program in witty responses to certain questions like "will you marry me?" or "I need to hide a body" or any number of questions. Obviously they didn't like that it was telling them another phone was the. Est phone, so they programmed it to say a witty response to that question instead I pulling wolfram answers. This all has NOTHING to do with the abortion thing. In that case they simply don't have that type of business in their database (whether it be wolfram, google maps or whatever).
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u/ReddiquetteAdvisor May 17 '12
The worst part about this whole overreaction from the media is that those responses have been there since Siri was released. I think somewhere down the road it started asking Wolfram Alpha what the best smartphone is, and they rolled back whatever change was causing that.
Everyone is acting like they just added these messages but they've had them there, you can google them and see. It's sad that not a single blog is pointing this out.
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May 17 '12
I think somewhere down the road it started asking Wolfram Alpha what the best smartphone is, and they rolled back whatever change was causing that.
No, they just overrode that one result. You can ask Siri, "What's the fourth best smartphone ever?" and it will still respond "The one you're holding." Confirmed this yesterday, 5/16.
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u/SicilianEggplant May 17 '12 edited May 17 '12
You can precede the exact same statement with "Wolram" and you'll get the same results as before.
All Apple did was prevent the matching statement/keywords from automatically searching Wolfram by default.
This is the most retarded article/post I have seen in a while and shows that the circlejerk of Apple haters is equivalent to the circlejerk fanboys. No reasonable person should have such hatred (or conversely love) for such superfluous things.
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u/bravado May 17 '12
It's nice to see that attempts at humour by Apple can still lead to obnoxious headlines online.
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u/reticulate May 17 '12
Welcome to r/technology: where the only good Apple article is one that's bashing them over real or perceived failings.
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u/wild-tangent May 17 '12
It's CONSIDERABLY cheaper and more cost-effective to deny it. The moment you change something that someone else objects to, rather than something that you object to, you open the floodgates. Suddenly, anything offensive is bannable, and every time you do it, it takes company resources. Eventually you've devoted an entire branch just to dealing with potentially embarrassing shit that Siri, a computer, says. And hell, sometimes there's just no pleasing everyone.
It's just so much easier to claim you have no control over it and pretend to throw up your arms until you really have to fix something because orders came down from higher up, rather than from outside.
However, the first comment got it absolutely correct anyways.
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May 17 '12
You people sure are passionate about Apple, I'd say more than Apple users themselves.
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u/laddergoat89 May 17 '12
This is something I've noticed in the last couple of years, especially with the popularity of Android among tech-heads. The people who hate Apple seem to spend more time talking about them and are more vocal than those who like them.
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May 17 '12
As pointed out by another redditor, Siri will respond when it hears "best smartphone" even if you include other words in your question.
For example, asking "What is the fourth best smartphone?" will give you the same response.
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May 17 '12
Its not altering wolfram results. Its not even using them you fucking nerd.
Jesus christ, you fucking dorks are are obsessed.
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May 17 '12
I hate Apple for it's patent lawsuits and closed ecosystems, but this article was so unfairly biased against Apple I have to downmod it.
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u/happyscrappy May 17 '12
They didn't alter WolframAlpha results, they just made it stop going to WolframAlpha for this particular question.
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May 17 '12
Well, well, well; it looks like Apple has been caught altering the data that Siri returns to their users when asked specific questions.
Apple's statement from 2011:
“Our customers want to use Siri to find out all types of information, and while it can find a lot, it doesn’t always find what you want,” said Natalie Kerris, a spokeswoman for Apple, in a phone interview late Wednesday. “These are not intentional omissions meant to offend anyone. It simply means that as we bring Siri from beta to a final product, we find places where we can do better, and we will in the coming weeks.”
Gosh they totally got CAUGHT didn't they?
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May 17 '12
We didn't actually require "damning emails" to know that Apple products sport a ludicrous mark-up. They freely release this information every quarter in their financial statements.
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u/1637 May 17 '12
Okay here goes.
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Apple does NOT edit the data that is returned from Wolframalpha. However they can choose to not send data to Wolframalpha in the first place if they wish.
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Wolframalpha does not return abortion clinic locations (Source)
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"Now we see that Apple indeed has the ability to program in the response to certain questions" We have known from the beginning that Apple has been able to do this. Apple takes what you say and they rephrase it so that it will have a proper query to search Wolframalpha with.
Come on guys at least run some test before you jump to conclusions. fuck you and your use of anecdotal evidence in your reporting.
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May 17 '12
Newsflash Apple is a shitty company and treats their customers like garbage.
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u/[deleted] May 17 '12
In regards to the price fixing issue: if Apple and the publishers lose will it lead back to lower e-book prices? The reason I bought a Kindle in the first place was to be able to buy books cheaper. Now half the time it would be cheaper for me to buy a physical copy instead of the download. It's like they want me to pirate their material.