Marco Arment Software developer and podcaster, creator of the podcast app Overcast and the earlier read-later app Instapaper.

“Claude sponsored this episode, disclaimer, but if Claude or Gemini or ChatGPT, if any of them failed as often as Siri does, we would never use it again. But we tolerate this level of failure from Siri. I don't entirely know why, but I wish Apple would hold themselves to even higher standards for Siri, because while Siri AI can do amazing things and sometimes does amazing things, the failure rate is still so high on dumb stuff that should work.”

Accidental Tech Podcast · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026

Context

Marco had just listed a run of Siri AI requests, some that worked and some that failed, like walking directions that never came. He argues people tolerate from Siri a failure rate they would never accept from other AI assistants.

Listen to the episode → More from Marco Arment → More Tech Strategy & Big Tech quotes →

More from Accidental Tech Podcast

“The Vision Pro and the car were Tim Cook's two big swings. One of them shipped, one of them didn't. … AirPods changed the world a lot more than the Apple Car and the Vision Pro did. But no one was paying attention to that one. So I'm hoping Ternus is thinking we need to do more things like the AirPods. Not a big product. No one's going to put it on the cover of Time magazine. But actually, if it's successful, it'll be life-changing for a lot of people.” — John Siracusa, Accidental Tech Podcast

“Now, when you're doing a lot of agentic work, you are being held back by the build speed a lot. You're being held back by simulator speed a lot, and the simulators have gotten so slow. I have been waiting on my laptop so much these last few months as I've done more agentic coding, which is the opposite of what I would expect, but that's how it is. Because in the background, Claude's like cranking away, like testing out different things, building test suites, running test suites.” — Marco Arment, Accidental Tech Podcast