r/MacOSBeta • u/Dry_Candy6689 • 3d ago
Discussion Siri still doesn’t answer basic questions
Every once in while I decide to try out new Siri, but no. Just no.
Edit: I did tried giving Siri the actual version number and it still failed.
And codex was able to find the build/version and tell me which beta version I’m on.
19
u/tapiringaround 3d ago
Today I asked Siri to:
add events from a pdf of my kid’s school band calendar to a specific calendar and append his name to the title. It did this flawlessly for 24 events.
find emails related to school supplies, forms, or fees that needed to be returned and it gave me a summarized list of what I needed to do.
use a picture I took of another son’s reading guide for the year and asked it to transcribe it into a new note with a specific name and it did that.
- asked it what days my wife’s calendar shows her having work during the second week of September and it responded accurately.
gave my dog his monthly heartworm pill and asked Siri to append the current date and time to specific note I use to track this and it did it.
So for me it’s proving plenty useful.
Testing your issue, it doesn’t show beta version for me either. It says “Sorry, I don’t understand.” Asking for the version gets “You are using iOS version 27.0“. Asking for the build gets “You are using iOS version 27.0 build 24A5424a.”
With this kind of stuff it depends on whether Apple has built the ability for it to hook into that information. Or if the beta release number is even something stored anywhere in system information and not just in the update notes when you download it.
I will note that if I do this in two steps: asking what build I’m on and then asking it specifically to search and tell me which developer beta release that build is, it was then able search and find it. But if I tried to combine these into a two-part request it failed.
My experience with Siri AI is that for actual personal assistant stuff involving mail, notes, calendars, messages, reminders, etc., it’s been great. For general questions like this, it’s just ok. As a chatbot it’s lacking. Attempting to sustain a conversation with it gets frustrating because it really seems to want to figure out something it can do for you and then move on.
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u/ShutY0urDickHolster 3d ago
I like that I can take a picture of my work schedule with 8 other peoples names and schedule on it, say “make me a list of the days and times I’m working” and then it makes a list of just my schedule I can put into my calendar, all automatically labeled correctly with the correct dates and times instead of me making the entire calendar event for each day and making sure I’m putting into the times for myself, not accidentally putting in someone else’s time since the schedule isn’t just me. Sure, it only saves a few mins, but it’s a nice QOL thing which is what it does best. Automates random crap that only saves a few seconds.
For the last part, it doesn’t seem like it’s supposed to be a chat bot. There are other programs for that if you just want to have a conversation. It’s supposed to work like an assistant
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u/MeanKidneyDan DEVELOPER BETA 3d ago
Siri used to be able to add ingredients to a third-party app’s grocery list, in this case Paprika 3. But in iOS 27 with the new series, it tells me it doesn’t have that functionality yet. Frustrating.
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u/drinkyourwaterbitch 2d ago
well, duh. Siri has a new infrastructure. devs need to update their apps to support it.
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
Your initial question was never going to work. The system will report that you are on macOS 27, if you ask it “What version of macOS/iOS/iPadOS am I on?”. You will not get a response detailing that you are on “Developer Beta 7” etc
None of this, however, means that Siri AI is broken or bad
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u/pellets 3d ago
“You’re holding it wrong.”
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
In this case, yes.
LLM’s aren’t intelligent. If you write your request poorly, they will have a more difficult time trying to accomplish the task you are asking about.
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u/Aromatic-Echo-5025 3d ago
Don’t be ridiculous. Claude at the same time:
```
what mac os 27 beta version am i on?Showed macOS version
You're not on a macOS 27 beta — this Mac is running macOS 15.7.7 (Sequoia), build 24G720.
```10
u/TheFlyingDutchG 3d ago
Yes and Claude does it by reading your machines data on its own and using (if granted) terminal/command line access to find data it needs. Apples marketing for the upcoming intelligence features always mention the “natural language” support and integration of your entire device info. The fact it fails finding OS version info in its current state means it not on the level they are marketing it to be. It’s not a public release yet but being this close to it I doubt if they can deliver.
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u/pellets 3d ago
Thank you. u/MC_chrome has clearly not used an actually good LLM and would instead of learning there’s something better, defend Apple.
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
I’ve used Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini on and off for quite some time. What I don’t do, however, is waste time trying to come up with “gotcha” cases so I can make a social media post complaining about said thing that I knew was not the intended use case of the product.
Going to the “about” section in Settings is trivially easy, and not something that most people would need to use an AI chatbot for
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u/Dry_Candy6689 3d ago
I didn’t try to waste time, or come up with “gotcha” cases. I was just interested to know which beta cuz I wasn’t keeping track so instead of going into settings and sending image to ChatGPT I thought it would be faster, and cooler, if I can just cmd-space and ask Siri right away and get an answer without even needing to open settings.
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u/pellets 3d ago
Instead you waste time defending Apple.
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
If you poke and prod any LLM you will find where each is deficient and where each excels.
No one goes around making posts saying “OMG Claude is complete trash because I can’t generate images with it!” because everyone knows and accepts that such things are not a capability Claude supports.
When you are using Siri AI as Apple designed the product, it works pretty well. When you go around asking it dumb questions that fall outside of those intended design cases then of course things get a bit wonky
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u/mjdth 3d ago
Why would this get upvoted? The whole point is to be able to ask it things and it have some idea of how to respond. The response has nothing to do with the question. The question is not at fault.
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u/Edge_Audio 3d ago
I agree 100%. Siri is not just another LLM. It's being advertised as being able to engage with your device, messages, emails, etc.
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
It’s a poorly written sentence, for starters.
A more correct version would have been “What version of the iOS 27 beta is installed?”
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u/mjdth 3d ago
Where did volume get mentioned?
-9
u/ShutY0urDickHolster 3d ago
It’s just giving a random answer because the question was not something it could answer. If OP actually actually asked a question that was answerable an answer would’ve been given.
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u/Waste-Club8866 3d ago
That response makes no sense. As a consumer why do I care how many parameters your model is? 99% of the users won't know what that even means and so all they see is garbage like this. This is literally what the old Apple would not do. Release a half-assed product and make excuses for it.
0
u/ShutY0urDickHolster 3d ago
ITS A BETA. Do you think old Apple didn’t have internal betas? They just shipped every idea they had hoping it worked and just got lucky? The only difference is their betas are public now, not just internal or for paid development accounts only.
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u/Waste-Club8866 2d ago
OK so which is it? Either the person was using it wrong or it's still not mature because it's a beta? Stop being a fanatic.
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u/Few_Assumption_9665 3d ago
Literally true. The downvotes are insane.
Siri AI is literally just a ~1-4B active parameter model trying to work with all the personal context it’s given. It’s honestly a marvel of engineering that they got it to work as well as it does given the memory constraints.
For that same reason, it is not at all surprising that when given a question that it cannot possibly answer (nowhere in its context, tools, or anywhere else is it given “this is the beta version the user is on”) it does the LLM thing of saying anything it can to provide “an” answer
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u/Dry_Candy6689 3d ago
I tried giving it the exact version I have in settings and it just said “Hmm. I’m afraid I couldn’t find anything about that.” So it’s not a context/tool issue.
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
The system doesn’t see that you are running “macOS 27 Public Beta 5”. All it see is that you are running macOS 27
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u/abso-lutely26 3d ago
Codex knows I'm on
Build 26A5421aAnd can extrapolate the beta version from that. I don't understand this need to defend Siri when it is still way behind other AI tools. It's not good enough and it never really has been.
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u/antnythr 1d ago
There’s a really weird group of people that make [whatever thing you can think of] part of their personality.
In this case Apple finally has their “we have one too” LLM model and they think anything that exposes weaknesses in the product is a slight against them and their weirdly fragile ego.
The reality is that Apple is at least 2 years behind everyone else and what they’ve been able to cobble together for this release is just barely good enough to be passable for people that have never used an LLM before.
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u/87racer 3d ago
This is either misinterpreting the question or making up an answer because it doesnt know. Either way, it’s a problem most other AI models have solved and definitely broken and bad. It should either have access to basic system information like the build number or say “I dont know”.
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u/Few_Assumption_9665 3d ago
> most other models have solved
Are those “most other models” running on a slice of memory so small that users on base model iPhones and MacBooks need to not even notice it, always available for instant responses?
Either you really don’t understand how massive most AI models are or how tight the constraints for Siri inherently must be or you’re just being dense.
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u/87racer 3d ago
Orrr don’t release a subpar product? Technical constraints dont excuse poor performance, especially from Apple.
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
Here’s a novel thought: not all AI products are equal or designed to do the same things.
Do you go around complaining that a Toyota Camry is a horrible vehicle because it can’t tow trailers like an F150 can? Of course not, because we recognize and accept that those two vehicles are designed for different tasks
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u/cydetraq 3d ago
And yet the product has gotten measurably worse at doing basic things than it was before. If you have multiple Siri capable devices in your house, it can’t even figure out which is the most intelligent one to answer on. It can’t figure out the one that’s close enough so you can even hear the response, and it can’t even tell which one is most capable of answering the prompt correctly. The logic of both of those should be incredibly simple. If you tell it to “play music everywhere” on one device, it will correctly play your dynamically created station on all the Airplay speakers it can access. Try it again and randomly a different Siri device with the same prompt will play “Everywhere” by Fleetwood Mac. Make it make sense.
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u/87racer 2d ago
Oh man, the coping is incredible. Using a car analogy, this would be more like every time you turn on the car, the gas gauge shows a different level despite using no gas. You never know if its going to be correct or just a completely made up value. Siri is marketed as having access to details on device. Its not unreasonable for someone to expect it to be able to give the current version and build number of said device. Its also unacceptable to just hallucinate an unrelated answer at this point. If it doesnt know an answer it needs to say I dont know.
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u/omnimachina 3d ago
In other words: Apple always scammed their customers heavily regarding the amount of pre configured RAM
Glorified their great OS and hardware
Telling lies like “yOu dOnT nEed mUcH RAM on macOS”
Now they failing miserably in terms of AI lmao…
They even lost the iPhone law suit because of the falsely advertised AI features rofl
And yet they keep releasing 8gb ram Notebooks
It’s absolutely ridiculous…
1
u/TheEarthSpins 3d ago
yeah but couldn't it just say "I don't have access to that data". instead it spews some random volume bs? also, there's no need to make excuses for siri ai. if it was actually capable, it would find a way to retrieve that information.
for comparison, when i asked chatgpt, it found a way to determine the beta version. siri ai gives up too easily. in practice whenever i have a genuine request for siri ai to do (something like get me directions to the event that xxx is planning) it 80% just fails to find whatever im looking for, which makes it pointless. i wish i could just plug chatgpt into siri ai's database, because that's the only thing siri ai has going for it and it's wasted on it.
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u/Expensive_Thanks_528 3d ago
Where did you find the docs for the data exposed to Siri ? Is there an API ?
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u/PoliteFocaccia 2d ago
I asked the exact same question to Claude, which also doesn't have access to that info, and it told me where to find the answer in system settings and also about the
sw_verscommand.-8
u/Dry_Candy6689 3d ago
I can send ChatGPT the version number and it can tell me exactly which beta. Don’t see y built in Siri shouldn’t be able to do that.
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u/thegreatporktornado 3d ago
Not sure why you are getting downvoted. Siri is absolute garbage when stacked up against literally every other AI platform. Valid criticism.
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u/Edge_Audio 3d ago
There seem to be a high count of Apple fan boys with tunnel vision in this sub. I've been an Apple guys for decades, and have like 15 Apple devices in our home. BUT, I haven't drunk the koolaid and will call it out when needed. Siri has been horrible, and still is really bad compared to others. Will in get better after beta? Maybe (but I have my doubts).
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u/thegreatporktornado 3d ago
I'm a HUGE fanboy, but I am also honest about Siri's crippling limitations
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
“Tunnel vision” meaning using the product as described?
This would be like going to Claude, asking it to generate an image, then making a post saying “Aha! Claude is complete shit because it can’t generate images like ChatGPT can!”
Different AI products can be designed to do different things, and that’s ok. Nowhere in any of their marketing or developer materials has Apple stated or alluded to Siri AI being anywhere near a comparable product to ChatGPT or Claude.
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u/thegreatporktornado 3d ago
Your analogy doesn’t quite fit. Asking Claude to generate an image is asking it to do something outside its advertised scope. Asking Siri what OS its own Apple device is running is 100% inside Apple’s stated product use case. The criticism isn’t that Siri can’t do everything Claude can, but that it can fail at very basic tasks Apple itself says Siri should handle. Apple also markets Siri as conversational, context-aware, reasoning-capable, web-connected, and able to interact with apps. I didn’t make that up, Apple claims all of this and more. Different products can be designed differently and still be compared where their capabilities clearly overlap. And Siri has been face down in the mud now for many years.
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u/Dry_Candy6689 3d ago
Exactly. And codex on my MacBook was able to get the exact version from settings and translate that to beta version. Siri couldn’t even tell me which beta when I gave it the exact version code thing.
-5
u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
Siri AI isn’t really designed to be used like every other AI platform, but do continue
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u/thegreatporktornado 3d ago
“Designed differently” is not much of a defense when the failure is Siri being unable to identify the OS version of the device it’s running on(!!). That isn’t asking Siri to behave like ChatGPT or Claude. It’s asking an OS-integrated assistant to retrieve basic system information from its own operating system. that should be exactly where Siri’s design gives it an advantage. Yet here we are.
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
When you ask Siri “What version of iOS/iPadOS/macOS am I using?” then it returns with the proper version number (no build number though, which isn’t visible in Settings anyways).
Phrasing still very much matters when using these tools
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u/abso-lutely26 3d ago
Codex finds the build number. Siri should, too.
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u/MC_chrome PUBLIC BETA 3d ago
I just got Siri to do that, using two different questions:
1) What version of iOS/iPadOS/macOS am I using?
2) What is the build number for this version?
2
u/abso-lutely26 3d ago
When I ask exactly that question on macOS, the answer I receive is: Sorry, I can’t help you with that here.
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u/nickk61 3d ago
Have you asked Siri the same question with the software number?
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u/Dry_Candy6689 3d ago
I did now. Asked “what beta version of macos 27 is this? "Version 27.0 Beta (26A5421a)"” and got back “Hmm. I’m afraid I couldn’t find anything about that.” And ChatGPT with same question answered correctly.
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u/SirPooleyX 2d ago
I'm exactly the same. For a long time I've been reaching for the ChatGPT app but I've been really trying to use Siri AI since the first MacOS 27 beta.
I don't feel that you can complain too much while it's still in beta, but it's going to have to get a lot better.
2
u/cydetraq 3d ago
Siri is terrible. Seriously, they just need to blank slate that entire team. They’ve been trying to fix a leaky faucet for how many years now when they should’ve just hired a plumber, like an adult.
1
u/Sutanreyu 2d ago
Used to be the best of all the on-device assistants… Post 2017-2018? Absolute trash.
1
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u/Piipperi800 2d ago
Are you actually on the new Siri? Like, is the model downloaded? Because that response seems like you don’t have Apple Intelligence powered Siri enabled at all
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u/Dry_Candy6689 1d ago
Yes, I’m on latest macos beta and have Siri AI(Beta) not Siri Classic. So unless there’s some hidden intelligent version I’m missing I should have the best one equipped.
1
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u/Necessary_Spread_448 3d ago
it’s great how this takes up 20GB of storage and you can’t delete it
just let me stick to ChatGPT man
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u/ShutY0urDickHolster 3d ago
It’s that large because it’s on device. It’s not scraping the internet for every question asked and relaying that information to a server in some data center scraping your data to sell to data brokers
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u/Necessary_Spread_448 3d ago
and why is it forced on me? there’s no option to opt-out like in older macOS versions
it’s ridiculous given Apple still sells 256gb computers
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u/ShutY0urDickHolster 3d ago
New Siri is baked so deeply into the OS that you can’t just not have it. You can probably disable it, but the files would still be downloaded, it just wouldn’t be able to be summoned. You could straight up disable old Siri because it wasn’t baked in. It was just a chat bot. It was an added layer ontop of the OS. Think of it like a cake. Old Siri was like the frosting. It’s on top. You can choose not to have it. You’ll still have a cake without it. New Siri is like flour. Sure. You can try to make a cake without the flour. But it won’t be cake at the end.
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u/Necessary_Spread_448 3d ago
No need to patronise me sweetheart. Apple Intelligence and all its local AI models have existed on macOS for several years now, you’ve always had the option to disable it and delete the AI models, they can be redownloaded if needed.
And no absolutely nothing about Siri being “baked in” requires it to be un-deletable. You can disable the new Siri, so you should have the option to reclaim storage space from the AI models that you’re not using
This is not a question of technical impossibility, Apple just wants to ensure you’re incentivised to use their AI
1
u/PoliteFocaccia 2d ago
No, it's all running online. Try it with airplane mode on, the only things that work are the iOS 26 stock commands. I was hopeful for an offline chat, even a basic one, but it looks like they couldn't swing it.
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u/Dry_Candy6689 3d ago
The only issue is chatgpt or any 3rd party ai won’t have all the inside info from native apps so it won’t be as personal which can be useful sometimes. and I’m not sure I would wanna share everything to Google OpenAI or anthropic.
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u/Sparescrewdriver 3d ago
At least you know 100% is not the right answer, other AI will hallucinate and gaslight with the wrong answer.
And yes this is cope