by Only a few minutes with the iOS 7 version of Siri is enough to demonstrate that Apple’s voice command software has much improved with the latest release, and as MacRumors reports, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has some new information on why that’s the case.
According to his latest report card for the service, the “primary improvement between Siti in iOS 6 and iOS 7 came from its performance in noisier areas, where Siri was able to translate better through a noisy environment (94 percent vs. 83 percent correct in Aug. iOS 6). Based on our testing, iOS 7 Siri’s net ability to answer questions (factors in questions not correctly understood) improved to 79 percent from 77 percent in August with iOS 6.”
Key to these improvements, Munster believes, is Apple’s increasing distance from chief competitor Google. Many of Siri’s results these days come instead from other sources, including Bing, Wikipedia, and Wolfram Alpha, and indeed, Apple has almost completely booted Google from the picture. For the results in the graph above, only 4 percent of Siri’s answers sprang from Google, which marks a significant improvement over August’s 17 percent and the 27 percent rate from December of last year.
That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better than Google’s competing Google Now service; in fact, they seem as though they’re almost tied. Both services received a “C+” score from Munster, and the scoring’s noteworthy since Apple’s Siri was scored as far better than Google Now under previous testing. Under the Munster’s new rankings, Siri’s performs much better for controlling the actual operating system, while Google Now is inching ahead in the fields of commerce and general information.
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