John Gruber posted about a tweet from Nilay Patel, editor-in-chief of The Verge, in which his Apple Watch responds to the question, “What time is it in London?” by showing the time in…London, Ontario.
Gruber later found that his Watch and HomePod both gave different answers, which only underscores how fractured and broken the Siri experience is (if you didn’t click the first link, the HomePod gave the time for London, England.
While this is not the biggest error (or technically an error at all), it demonstrates how sort-of dumb Siri is. When people ask what time it is in London, they are almost certainly asking about London, England. People understand this because London, England is one of the most famous cities in the world (sorry, London, Ontario). But Siri seems to (sometimes, sometimes not) go by proximity and misses the obvious answer.
And is often slow in doing so.
And will sometimes report no connection when there is, in fact, a connection (the servers at Apple apparently lose connection from time to time and Siri will not answer even the most basic questions when it is down).
As a side note, I asked Siri on my watch what time it was in London and it gave the time for London, Ontario. But worse, it didn’t even list the province. It just said “London” because I guess I’m in Canada and should automatically know which London it’s referring to? Even though if I did, I probably wouldn’t be asking what the time was in the first place.
Oh Siri.