Siri-ously Flawed

A New York man filed a class action lawsuit against Apple because the Siri program on his iPhone didn't respond to him the way the product was advertised on television. Oh, what a shock! A product doesn't perform or look as advertised.

For those unfamiliar with Siri, it is a speech-recognition computer application built into Apple's iPhone 4s that responds to your questions or commands. I am not qualified to analyze the technical operation of the application's programming, so in short...you speak to Siri, and Siri speaks back. Albeit, not always flawlessly. According to reports, the plaintiff "realized that Siri was not performing as advertised" shortly after he purchased it. An example stated when Siri was asked for "directions to a certain place, or to locate a store, Siri either did not understand what Plaintiff was asking, or, after a very long wait time, responded with the wrong answer." Guys, feel free to insert your wife/girlfriend comment or joke now. Ladies,...yeah, pay no attention to us.

In my opinion, I don't think the man has a case. Apple tells customers right up front Siri is a Beta program, meaning it's still in development, that there may be bugs to be worked out. Even if it was close to being whatever comes after Beta, there's no way Siri is going to be spot-on accurate. It's not going to catch every word coming out of every mouth right off the bat. Linguists estimate there are something like 25-50 dialects of English spoken in the U.S., and I'd bet half of them come just from the east coast alone. I worked for 6 months with a guy from Boston. It took me five to ten minutes listening to him speak every day so I could reasonably understand him the other eight to ten hours we were together, so I can see a computer having issues. The other reason I don't think the guy has a case is because he believed what he saw in a commercial, and the commercial had a disclaimer.

Disclaimers are the "I-told-you-so" defense that companies use to get around false or misleading advertisements. They need these because commercials are bullshit. The fundamental nature of advertising is to get you to want what they're selling. Companies have roughly 30 seconds to make you believe their product is great. If I asked you to tell me how great you are in 30 seconds, I bet half of what you tell me would be bullshit, too. So to make the most of their time, advertisers embellish. And you can't spell embellish without the letters L-I-E. Advertisers have to cram as much puffy, fluffy, feel-good crap into such a short span of time that there's no way all of it can be true. But there are some people out there, and apparently some of them living in New York, who get all upset and want to sue because they felt they were misled by a commercial. And it's because of them that you can't just watch a commercial, you also have to read along.

Car commercials are a perfect example of this. Watch a company sell a car on T.V. Every time the announcer makes a statement, a disclaimer flashes on the bottom of the screen. "Your actual mileage may vary." "Based on J.D. Power blah, blah, blah." "0% interest for qualified lessees." There's so much reading involved it gets confusing. They ought to just write "Nah, not really" for everything that comes out of their mouths to make it easier for us to keep up. Otherwise, we'll end up going to the dealer to buy a car and they'll say something like, "Sorry, sir, that price was only good for midget transvestites born on February 29." Then the salesman will show us the commercial and we'll scratch our heads and wonder, "Shit, how did I miss that?"

Or there's the hot car zipping across a dry lake bed, rear wheels kicking up the dust as it cuts tracks in the scorched earth. The driver starts making a sweeping turn that becomes a drifting slide. There's the slow motion scene during the overhead helicopter fly-by and you can almost count the tire rotations. On the bottom of the television picture are the words, "Professional driver on closed course." And why do we need this? Because there are people out in fantasy land who don't understand that delivering pizza in your car does not make you a professional driver, nor does the empty Walmart parking lot at two in the morning qualify as a closed course. But even that's not good enough any more. The ad people have included "Do not attempt" because when Johnny wraps his hot car around a light pole the automaker can say, "We warned you not to do it," then settles out of court for less.

When I was a little kid there was one disclaimer and only one: "Batteries not included." That's it. I think every commercial I saw for any toy or game that Milton-Bradley sold, the commercial ended with "...a Milton-Bradley company" and the last thing you heard was "batteries not included." And it was quick, almost an afterthought, but we knew. Even when the commercial was cut short. Sometimes they didn't even get to the "T" in "not" before cutting back to the show. We still knew. So did our parents. We could tell they were paying attention when we found a pack of batteries in our Christmas stockings. That's when us kids got all excited because it meant we were eventually going to open something to put them in.

One of the deleted sequences from the "Rock God" commercial.

Apple included a disclaimer for their commercial stating the sequences in the Siri ad were shortened. Good enough for me. That's them telling me that if I buy their cool phone with this awesome feature it may or may not work the way they're showing it to me. If I buy it and it doesn't work, I'll go back to the store and tell them it doesn't work. I'm tech-tarded, so there's always the possibility that I'm the problem. I would argue that when our plaintiff bought the phone and discovered Siri didn't work "as advertised" he should have taken it back and either asked for assistance to see if he's using it properly, or asked for a refund. If he doesn't get one or the other, then sue. But to come right off the checkout line and go straight to a con man with a bar card...man's only fucking it up for the rest of us because the only thing we're going to get out of this is more shit to read. The guy wasn't traumatized. He's suing for an inconvenience. I think a person with a stutter would have a better case for getting a reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act against voice recognition products than this guy does for false advertising.

We're out of control. We sue for everything, including our own ignorance. How's that work? "Your Honor, I'm suing because I'm stupid, but the Defendant should have known I'm stupid." I would think a person wouldn't want a transcribed court document existing that legally identifies them as being stupid. Or fat. Or short. Or...whatever. But it'll never end. Then again, who knows? Maybe it's a good thing if it doesn't. Maybe we need people dropping writs or injunctions or whatever for the dumb shit so the rest of us can stay focused on the important, day-to-day survival of the species issues. Maybe we need more disclaimers, more definition in our lives. Maybe we need the line between fact and fiction drawn for us with a heavier crayon. Or...maybe we just need an all-encompassing disclaimer that could apply to anything. Just take the best ones out there and put 'em together. Here's the one I'm working on:

Grainiums disclaimer: The opinions expressed by the author are not those of the blog provider or any persons or companies associated with the blog provider. Unauthorized reproduction or retransmission of this blog, in whole or in part, without the expressed written consent of the author is strictly prohibited. Past performance is not an indication of future results. Use only as directed. If you experience an erection lasting longer than four hours, consult a physician.

(*batteries not included)