My favorite is on the Apple TV, "search for [some video] on youtube" will actually open the app and search for it.
I think the big issue is that a lot of these aren't discoverable, and because Siri isn't very smart at natural language you won't discover them by asking for something similar like you could with Google Assistant. An LLM for parsing requests could be super interesting here.
Siri mostly runs on device. Having a LLM needs a much more powerful device or Apple would need to drastically scale up its cloud buys from AWS, GCP, and Azure (which would in turn make the service more expensive).
It's useless beyond manipulating iDevices, navigation tasks and simple questions. Even then, if you don't ask in the exact right way it often doesn't work.
Is this any different than Alexa or Google, though? I guess Google is probably better at looking up facts and Alexa at ordering stuff (if buying things without even seeing a picture is your thing), but neither is that useful. Is this not just a case of voice interfaces being much harder to do right than people originally hoped?
(I say this as someone who has a Google Home that I use regularly, but mostly as a kitchen timer and music player.)
I mentioned an example in another comment - basic manipulation of timers don’t work well - like, adding time to an existing timer. When I’m working in the kitchen this is really useful. There are also major performance issues - “working on it” and “sorry can you say that again” are probably two of it’s most common utterances. Random bus like “there’s nothing playing” and the wrong siri taking over the request from a million miles away and you just can’t even hear is extra annoying.
Google Home is pretty bad at adding time to existing timers too. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it creates a second timer with a difficult to access name.
Personally, I'm become convinced a good talking/listening clock is actually a useful thing, but Google isn't providing it, and it sounds like Apple isn't either.
At this point it will be a race see which virtual assistant can become universally useful first, and from what the article is implying Siri is not anywhere close to where they need it to be.
My favorite is “[Let’s] go home”, which is what I use to navigate back to my house via Apple Maps.
There’s also sending messages to people - you can send voice messages (“send a voice message to X”), which works decently well and avoids transcription failures.
"Turn off the Apple TV."
"Turn off low power mode."
"Stop navigating."
"Open [name of app I don't want to spend time finding in my iOS folders]"
"What song is this?" (Listens and usually is able to discover the name/artist of the song in the background.)
So when people say things like, "Siri is mostly useless," I think – wow, that is a very hyperbolic statement.