Why the new Siri is still maddening in so many ways

Apple says their voice recognition app Siri is improved. USA TODAY's Jefferson Graham puts Siri through a few tests to find out. Video by Robert Hanashiro

LOS ANGELES — Hey, Siri: if you can't find me an Indian restaurant just three miles from my office, what can you get right?

With the IOS 10 mobile operating system upgrade, Apple has promised us that its five-year-old personal digital assistant Siri would be better than ever, and would expand beyond the core Apple apps to also work with third-party apps like LinkedIn, Uber and Pinterest.

The results of my tests is that Siri is slightly improved, but only if you take the time to enunciate correctly and slowly, and teach the voice-activated assistant what you want.

But that doesn't always work, as we found out when I tried, over and over again to find that nearby Indian restaurant — and Siri sent me instead to a place in San Jose, Calif., a brisk six-hour drive away. When I comparison shopped with Google's way superior "OK Google," voice assistant on a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge, Google got it right on the first try.

After announcing the new Siri at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June, Apple senior vice-president Craig Federighi said that using Siri would now be "the quickest path to getting something done....we want to make that possible."

A lofty goal, but it's certainly not there yet.

On Apple's Siri webpage, the company touts many things Siri can do, so I decided to put it to the test, and tried each and every category. Here's a sampling:

--Movie listings: "What movies are playing today," is the suggested query. When I asked, the results were a cross-section of A-listers ("Snowden" and "Sully") and others like "Bridget Jones's Baby" and "Mr. Church," along with a roster of six movie theaters within the general area of the USA TODAY Los Angeles offices.

Then I tried to expand to showtimes at my local movie theater, asking for the showtimes for "Sully" at the Arclight Cinemas in El Segundo. "I don't see any movies matching "Sally," was Siri's response. I asked over and over again, but it just couldn't get Sully. (If interested, it's playing tonight at 7:15 and 9:50.) Score: C. 

--Photos: Apple touts how Siri can now find specific photos of people and places in the iPhone Photos app. With over 100 photos of my friends Michelle and Jennifer, both of whom are clearly labeled in Apple Photos on the iPhone, I asked Siri to pull them up. It located Michelle, but not Jennifer.

I also asked Siri to find "my" photos of my hometown, Manhattan Beach. Siri picked up a few, but not key ones you'd expect, like pictures of the Pier, ocean waves and such, but instead photos taken in my home.

The key to photo requests is inserting the word "my." Without "my" Siri responds with the dreaded, "Here are some photos I found on the Web," which of course wasn't what I was looking for. Score: C.

Hail a car: "Hey Siri, get me an Uber."  Here I truly was saved from having to unlock the iPhone home screen, locate the app and click my location. Siri asked me what kind of car service I wanted. Several choices were offered, and when I dictated "Uber X," she got it, and offered to have a car to me in 2 minutes. The feature did what it was supposed to do. Score: A. 

--Read your latest e-mail. I asked her to read my latest e-mail and Siri responded by reading it aloud. But what the assistant couldn't do is go further, to other recent "e-mails." Had I been driving, I would have wanted to hear all the new ones. For text messages Siri offered a wider selection. Score: B.

--Work with apps. You can now dictate a message on LinkedIn and send money onVenmo . Both worked, but it took a while to train Siri. I had to repeat people's names several times, and Siri always got them wrong. When I finally opened the apps, highlighted their names and then tried again, it got it. And continued to get it, consistently. Score: B+.

--Restaurants: The command follow this syntax:  "Find me a table for four in Chicago."  . When I tried it, using "Santa Monica," instead of Chicago, (my editors prefer I work local) it asked me for the time of the reservation, 7 p.m. I chose, and then it said none of the suggestions were taking reservations at this time. But Siri threw out a bunch of random restaurants to consider — Sushi, Mexican, American fare — which is fine, but that wasn't the idea. I wanted a reservation. When I tried to isolate the restaurant of my choice, and location, Siri said it was "afraid I can't book that right now," and suggested two other eateries. Maddening! Score: D. 

With the new tools for Siri, Apple is competing with Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon to provide state of the art voice search and assistant tools. Beyond the apps, Apple also has brought Siri to Macintosh computers, where it's now part of the MAC OS Sierra operating system upgrade. But, as my colleague Ed Baig points out, it's not faring much better there either.

Speaking of Ed, I asked Siri to call him, but Siri said I didn't have his contact information in the iPhone and thus couldn't make the call. Not true! I tried again, this time requesting "Ed....Baig" slowly instead of "EdBaig," and voila, the call went through.

So Siri, it's great when you finally get things right, but after five years of trying to assist us, really, you should be way more efficient by now. Google gets it right most of the time on Android phones, why can't you?

App developers I've spoken with over the past months told me they believed that with their involvement, they would come up with new ways and fixes for Siri that Apple never dreamed of.

Let's hope they're right. Hey Siri, we'll check back in with you in a few months for a status update.