Blackberry Gets raked over coals for outage, but SIRI flounders...

[sam_b77]

Didn't know where to post this but Apple's SIRI went down.
Siri Goes Down For a Day; Apple Says Network Outages Are Possible | PCWorld

Apple's fancy new voice assistant for the iPhone 4S, Siri, went down Wednesday morning and didn't come back up until the evening--and even then, only for some users.

iPhone 4S users across the country discovered that Siri was no longer able to connect to the network--even though they had 3G or Wi-Fi connections--starting around 11 a.m. PDT Wednesday. According to Venture Beat, contacting Apple customer service resulted in the typical, "Have you tried restarting your device?"

When restarting devices did not fix the problem, Apple suggested that it was "entirely possible" that there was a network outage. Note that Apple, as usual, was careful to avoid admitting there was a problem.

Some users started reporting Siri back online around 4 p.m. PDT, but not everyone. When I dropped by the Apple store in Westfield Valley Fair in Silicon Valley, none of the iPhone 4S's was able to connect to the network.

To Siri's credit, I did at least get a variety of "unable to connect to the network" responses, including "Sorry, I'm having trouble connecting to the network," and "Sorry, I don't have a network connection." So…for what it's worth, at least we know Siri maintains her "personality," even when the network's down.

The good news is that users are now reporting that Siri is back to normal. The bad news is that Apple is yet to make an official statement about the outage.

Though Siri is built into the iPhone 4S, it is not really voice recognition technology so much as an advanced search engine. So while Siri is capable of interacting with a few apps sans a data connection (for example, basic voice recognition tasks on your phone), it does need to be able to connect to the network in order to answer users' questions, such as "What's the weather like in Toronto," "How many teaspoons are in a cup," and "Where can I bury this body?"

UPDATE [1:15 p.m.]: A reader reports that even basic Siri tasks, such as voice-to-text, are unavailable when the network is down. That just makes the whole situation even worse.

This is not an Apple bashing post, but merely to discuss that when a company deploys their servers for mass users, outages can and WILL happen.
From the article, Apple didn't even make a statement and has admitted that this can and will happen again.
Everyone jumped on RIM, but people missed the statistic of RIM's server's uptime. Catering to 70 million people and RIM still has a negligible downtime, while the iOS5 was just launched and the user base for iOS5 would surely not be 70 million and SIRI goes down.
Anyone getting free Apps from Apple as an apology??

[industrial revolution]

Not Apple's fault. All of you Siri users are just holding it wrong.

[pdelong]

Or maybe, just maybe, having a voice assistant app go down isn't as detrimental to the iPhone as having the data services go down for the BlackBerrys? Talk about grasping at straws.

[trelawrence]

The problem is that you are equating the two outages. What would you rather lose... a beta service or most of your device functionality?

The Siri outage is a dismal occurrence, but should not be the "See, they suck too" moment for BB users.

[IceHawk333]

What Phil said +1.

I mean Siri is a "nice to have" but I can tell you when the whole point of a "smartphone" is the ability to get your data where or when you want it is offline that's kind of hitting core features.

[industrial revolution]

Originally Posted by Phil DeLong

Or maybe, just maybe, having a voice assistant app go down isn't as detrimental to the iPhone as having the data services go down for the BlackBerrys? Talk about grasping at straws.

But how will iphone users know whether to take an umbrella with them? Or if a lion is faster than a tiger? or how to make a martini?

[blackmoe]

Apples and oranges. Really - comparing data services loss to an app being down. Unbelievable.

[trelawrence]

Originally Posted by industrial revolution

But how will iphone users know whether to take an umbrella with them? Or if a lion is faster than a tiger? or how to make a martini?

Technically, they could use Vlingo, since they would still have data to download that.

[quik4life]

Originally Posted by blackmoe

Apples and oranges. Really - comparing data services loss to an app being down. Unbelievable.

For Siri to be completely functional, it requires a data/network connection, hence the comparison.

[tfp]

Hold on a second people, RIM did not suffer a Data Services outage that was detrimental to the phone. What RIM suffered was a loss of BBM and PUSH email. I could still access the internet and email via my browser. You wanna compare apples to oranges, make sure you're comparing oranges and not tangerines. My BlackBerry 9800 worked just fine ie. I could still make and receive phone calls, I could still make and receive text messages and I could still access my emails via their website. The only true loss during the outage was BBM but as I stated above, my text messages still worked so I could still communicate with those contacts.

What the OP is saying is that Apple and its fanbase is just beginning to get a taste of network outages after a month of the network being available to the general public even though Apple is denying there was ever a problem to begin with. If something as basic as the Siri network goes down, which from what I understand is only available in the USA right now, what will happen in the future? What will happen when Siri becomes available to the rest of the world? When the rest of the world upgrades to iPhone 4s and or iOS 5 and the iCloud? Right now its a small number of users and the network had an outage, what about when its a larger number of users? They already had issues when they released iOS 5 and everyone eligible tried downloading it at the same time, what next?

[robtanz]

It is certainly a bias in the media. Although I don't think you can really equate the Siri problem with the BB outage. The media is good "telling" people how outraged they should feel. I mean think of the headlines today if RIM put out a product that had a antenna that meant you had to hold the phone a certain way for fear of dropping calls, or a phone with a battery bug that discharged the phone overnight. They would get skewered and the headlines would persist. Remember when RIM recalled 1000 Playbooks? 1000.

I find it fascinating.

[sam_b77]

What?? SIRI is biggest sell point of iOS 5.
My point here is not how important the service is...SIRI is a service which needs to connect to Apple's server. Apple couldn't handle the traffic.
If all Apple users are saying that SIRI is irrelevant and a pointless tool, then what's the big thing about SIRI in the first place?
The point I'm trying to make however is not about SIRI or e-mail, but the ability to handle traffic.
If SIRI went down, then iMessage can go down too. Now if someone tells me "So what iMessage went down", I would simply have to say "So what BBM went down".
Thing is Servers go down, its that simple. It doesn't matter if its Apple, RIM etc. What matters is the "uptime". And RIM has a massive uptime.

[izzachar]

Originally Posted by industrial revolution

Not Apple's fault. All of you Siri users are just holding it wrong.

I think they just ticked Siri off and she refused to speak to them.

[Dapper37]

Massive double standard. But I guess when your paid to advertise apple products like their the news you tend to forget the negatives. That makes the news worthless. Like we need more proff that theres a double standard in reporting news between apple and RIM. I watch bloomberg news every day due to being oversees and having very few english channels to watch. They hit ever negative topic about RIM as far so much you wonder if they make it up as they go sometimes. On the flip side apple is the shineing light and according to bloomberg can do no wrong. Never doing a negative story. The Suri outage is prime example, such low standards in journalism equality!!

[Dapper37]

Originally Posted by kellyjdrummer

Even though I am a BB owner, I DID feel a disturbance in the force when SIRI went down. My three cats went postal.

I had to take a knee reading that... lmao!