Unexpectedly, this can sometimes be a positive too. "Hey siri, turn my lights <pink/orange/purple/blue/red/white>" has on multiple occasions been interpreted as "Hey siri, turn my lights", which then results in the lights being turned off. This is hugely entertaining when you're demonstrating your new Philips Hue bulbs over FaceTime, and the person on the other end now just sees your camera go black instead.
But siri always interprets "Fifty" as "Fifteen". Pretty much every single time, it always makes the same mistake, no matter how clearly or slowly I try to pronounce it. I have to say "Hey Siri, set a timer for five zero minutes" to get it to pick it up accurately.
I suspect the problem with "50" is that whatever ML underpins it is heavily tuned/biased towards "15" because a lot of people probably set 15 minute timers all the time. 50 minute timers are much less common, I suspect?
That is assuming they were trusted to work on it instead of report to status meetings, or meetings to their dotted line manager, etc. Apple was built around Steve. It’s going to take a while.
The Google alternative is, from what I understand, something that just works.
Doing that bit of theatre, with some humor, pop culture relevant things, even just good responses, appears to matter more to people than "it can do it", and "it actually did it" hit rates.
OK Google needs a name.
Google is this big, smart thing. People get that.
But, "Ask Siri" has less friction and appears easier to identify with than giving an order to a corporation is, "OK Google."
Maybe just, "Hey Google" would make a subtle difference.
And, in typical Apple fashion, "Ask Siri" is all you need to know to attempt it.
Further, discovery has error. If that can be best guess, combined with some fun, people will play.
"OK Google" lacks these human friendly connotations.
A name would be a follow, hard for Google, but... If it were me, I would flat out own that, get the name, and run ADS. "We hear you... meet [name not common, familiar sounding, friendly, easy to say.]"
There has to be either an old world name with good connotations, or a variant that is catchy, fun, gender fluid.
Lol, use goog. Mostly kidding, but a tiny bit serious.
Better, much better is out there.
Or, let the user name it. Why not?
"OK Google, can I call you inigo?"
"Sure, I will answer to inigo. And OK Google when I'm not properly introduced, OK?"
Got downvotes, but it seems to me Google has the superior product. True for me and how I use it anyway.
Add in a little personification, and it's nothing but win, IMHO.
So far, I've seen people like the bit of theatre related to Siri. Whether we do or not isn't necessarily the point.
Supposedly these devices have low-power chips that can only recognize certain pre-configured names (like "OK, Google"), and then wake up the main CPU to do the rest.