I live just down the street from the home of both the Boston Celtics and the Boston Bruins, TD Garden. Games, concerts, and other shows at this arena can impact me greatly, so I frequently want to know “What’s happening at the Garden tonight?”. For several years, answering this question has involved skimming through the TD Garden schedule. That does do the trick, but it’s more work than I’d like.

After updating my iPhone to iOS 18.1 and activating the much-hyped Apple Intelligence, I thought I’d give Siri yet another shot. With its new brain, I thought perhaps it might now be able to handle the task of finding and reading a calendar for me. Guess how that went!

First, I asked Siri “Who’s playing at TD Garden tonight?”. Rather than a direct answer, it kicked back a series of Google search results:

To be fair, this reply does contain the desired information within its results. However, that requires parsing through them. It’s not the simple and definitive answer I’m after.

So, I tried again. In this particular case, I actually knew it was the Celtics home opener, so I asked “Do the Celtics play tonight?”:

Here, I did get the type of single specific response I was after. And yet, even this was lacking in critical details. The home team is usually on the right in displays such as this, but there’s nothing that confirms that hunch. It could say “Knicks @ Celtics”, or detail where the game is taking place, but it does not.

Siri does in fact know the game’s location, as seen when I asked “Where do the Celtics play tonight?”:

Siri knew the exact expected answer to this query, and thus it ought to have known the answer to my original query as well. And yet there I was, three questions in before finally getting the desired information.

Perhaps you’re wondering how ChatGPT would handle “Who’s playing at TD Garden tonight?”. The answer is “with aplomb”:

Yes, it got it in one, and even tossed in details about the Celtics championship celebration. That’s the kind of answer I want from a personal assistant. It’s also the kind of answer Siri has simply never been consistent about providing. Over 12 years ago, I noted just how much Apple was over-promising and under-delivering when it came to Siri. Alas, if my experience is anything to go by, too little has changed.

When I first took up serious distance running in 2001, I also began a log of each of my runs. I first measured my routes ahead of time by driving them with a car, and later with tools like MilerMeter (formerly GMap-Pedometer). Much more recently, the Apple Watch’s GPS has made it especially easy to know how far I’ve run, with no manual measuring required. At some point in the past few years, I also created an ongoing tally of my lifetime distance run.¹

Obviously, I’m a nerd for running data. So I was amused when I learned about the distinctly non-metric measurement called the “kilomile”. A kilomile is simply a thousand miles, and while I’ve run almost seven of those in my adult life, friend-of-the-site Kelan C. managed an entire kilomile in just the year of 2018 alone.

Reviewing my running logs, which of course include annual totals, I saw that I had just missed a kilomile in the year 2017. That year I ran 980.4 miles, and if I’d known how close I was, I’d certainly have gotten off my ass a few more times in December. In 2019, I decided I’d conquer this goofy goal.

Once I began this effort, I soon found myself repeatedly checking my progress. To do that, I just need to know what number day of the year it is, then multiple that by the ~2.74 miles² I need to average each day. That tells me what my total distance so far should be. For example, if I’ve run at least 27.4 miles by January 10th, I’m on or ahead of pace. Simple.

But why keep things simple, when one can instead make an overly-involved spreadsheet? I wanted to see more exact numbers, and also avoid repeating the same calculations constantly. Here’s a quick look at what I came up with:

I’m slightly behind schedule, but I remain confident.

The biggest issue with this is that we don’t generally know what number day of the year it is. Thankfully, that’s where computers can help. Calendar math is the foundation of lots of computer code, and it’s simple for machines to do. A Google search will get you to a site like EpochConverter which tells you that May 10th is the 130th day of the year. And surely my helpful virtual assistant Siri can tell me as well, right?

Long-time readers likely already know the answer to the above question. Some of the most popular posts on this site have covered the failings of Apple’s virtual assistant. From callousness, to over-promising and under-delivering, to outright sexism, Siri has had its issues.³

And yet, for some reason, I continue to try to make Siri work for me. It has improved over time, and because it’s always being updated, hope springs eternal. Maybe it shouldn’t though. Please enjoy this a story of futility in three images.

A Story of Futility in Three Images

First I asked Siri “What day of the year is it?”:

OK, that’s accurate enough, even if it’s not what I was after.

Next, I tried to get what I was after by some basic math, by asking “How many days are left in this year?”:

I…uh…what?! This answer could only make sense in very early January, yet it seems to be the standard response to this question, no matter when it’s asked. Try it yourself.

Finally, I tried asking a very specific question: “How many days until 2020?”:

Can’t, or won’t, Siri?

Compared to some of the previous failings I’ve noted, this one is somewhat obscure. Still, that second answer really got to me. Siri ought to be able to do this basic calendar math, but if it can’t, it certainly shouldn’t provide that kind of nonsense.

Update (May 15th, 2019): Don’t miss the follow-up post, “More on Siri and Numerical Days of the Year”.

Footnotes:

1. 6,954.61 miles and counting! ↩︎

2. That’s 1000 miles / 365 days, to get exactly 2.739726027 miles per day. I’m comfortable rounding up, because 0.000273973 miles is about a foot and a half.↩︎

3. Early on I referred to Siri using feminine pronouns, as it had just one voice, which happened to be female. More recently, I’ve taken to calling Siri “it”, both because it has male and female voices, and because it of course doesn’t actually have a gender. ↩︎