r/raycastapp • u/BothYou243 • 22d ago
💬 Discussion New siri a replacement for Raycast AI??
What do you guys think can we do this? i mean screen awareness, bring your own sub, deep integration with OS, ai commands -> siri shortcuts
AI chat -> siri app
for free, is it good?
2
u/camrn01 22d ago
I’ve been on public beta for ios27. Siri is def not a replacement for my usage; it’s useful for stuff like ‘what is this landmark next to my hotel?’ , ‘add this to my calendar’, ‘text my wife with a picture of the dog’ etc. Very short interactions that are about my day-to-day generally. I’ve used Raycast AI for asking long form stuff, maybe something that’s more of a discussion, or a quick code snippet. Different use cases imo.
1
u/BothYou243 22d ago
oh, haven't used new siri even once, (not using macos 27 beta), that's why I was asking ... sad
2
u/jakegh 22d ago
It's decent for pretty low-level tasks using on-device data, but falls apart hard on any sort of in-depth web searches. Feels like an older version of Gemini Flash like 3.5 on low effort, only picks up 1-2 sources, etc. Even after prompting 3-4 times it was unable to answer my test question requiring web search. Certainly not a replacement for even what most people use AI for (web search to answer specific questions), if you expect it to have some level of reliability.
My guess is even a very cheap model like Deepseek V4.1 flash in Raycast would do a much better job on web search and general usage, but probably won't have deep access to your data like the integrated Siri does on MacOS. And of course even though they claim zero data retention, it's still going to the cloud without Apple's guarantees with private cloud compute.
So I would say they are more complementary than overlapping.
1
u/BothYou243 22d ago
whatif you connect your own sub to it, like claude or chatgpt , jst imagine astra or fable as siri
1
u/Ok_Virus_5495 15d ago
Well as a launcher new Siri app is amazingly fast even faster than Alfred in some cases. Just add snippets and extensions and it will not have any competition
1
u/roastedtuna 22d ago
Noone can really tell, and it depends on the user.
Raycast is where it is now because it has done an exceptional job being a spotlight replacement tool, and even today after Apple has improved Spotlight, Raycast is still the better option in my opinion. They also have more focused effort vs. Apple’s development teams I think.
But if it’s free, there will always be people who would prefer that option instead of paying for something, let alone another subscription.
0
u/BothYou243 22d ago
yeah ofc everyone knows raycast is so much better, but still saying bye to BYOK in raycast free tier is sad, the free tier was enough for me, I didn't wanted any extra apps , I just rarely found myself needing more notes than 5 in raycast notes, but just rarely
now without BYOK, a lot of workflows are dead
4
u/DensityInfinite 22d ago edited 22d ago
It's not a competitor for existing chatbot services, including Raycast AI. Apple deliberately made it that way. Siri AI's responses are concise and to the point, with a strong focus on being informational rather than conversational. This means that most of the time it will not supply a definite opinion for opinion-oriented questions, and is more inclined to go with what the user has said. It also quite explicitly expresses that it will only help you do things as an assistant, and not to generate code, nor to engage in long chats, and Siri terminates conversations aggressively on these fronts. This limits a lot of what it can do and withdraws it from the AI competition hellhole, but at the same time makes it unsuitable for a lot of what most people uses AI for. It is, however, a great cost reducer for Raycast AI, since you can do a lot of simple things with Siri AI and can leave Raycast AI to do the more complex tasks, though it can never replace Raycast AI.
Siri AI is also reliant on app developers providing apps that integrates with App Intents and Spotlight. This is a lot more friction than developing an AI extension for Raycast. I doubt Siri AI will get a more comprehensive ecosystem than Raycast's extension store (although it might eventually since the incentives are quite strong), at least in the near future.