That said Siri feels at least 100 times smarter than Google assistant to me, the below are actual (if somewhat anonymized) examples:

- Google suggestions when I look at the phone at 5am in the morning: "text random friend of a friend that I answered a question for over Telegram" or "call customers project manager". See https://erik.itland.no/tag:aifails for screenshots and more examples. In the years I had access to the future it maybe helped me twice by pointing out it was time to leave for an appointment.

- Siri suggestions are mostly mundane (more or less predictably tells me when to leave for appointments, kids soccer and hockey training etc, suggests picking up kids at kindergarden - although not consistently, suggests sending messages to my wife over our preferred messaging solution, tweeting, or if I drive 5 minutes down to the shopping center: that I should drive home the way I always do etc) but I have never caught it suggesting outright idiotic things like Google, and once this weekend it even suggested something semi-smart (a text message to my wife that was surprisingly close to one I could have written myself to tell her I was on my way home, including one of my rather unusual abbreviations and with good timing :-)

TomTom had this solved eons ago - my TomTom 5000 from 2014 automatically sets destination as work when I get in the car in the morning, and home when I'm done with work. And it learns my schedule per day, so it doesn't do that on the weekends, or if I need to pop out somewhere at lunch. Such a simple feature from 6 years ago works better than anything that Google can seemingly come up with.

Almost 30 years later, how many orders of magnitude faster silicon and countless person-hours of research and I can't get my damn phone (which, yes, _is_ a marvel that way-back-when-me wouldn't believe) to recognize, "call mrs_mynameisash" when I'm using my hands-free while driving. I don't know how many times Google's voice assistant has called some (possibly local?) T-Mobile instead. And my wife's name sounds nothing like "T-Mobile".

„Thank you... delete thank you“

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzJ0CytAsec

I remember, when I was a wee little lad back in '96, playing on an old Mac Plus with a black and white screen. Even then we had software installed that would let us control the old Mac Plus with our voice. It was the first time I'd ever used a boom microphone.

Here, go reminisce: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlainTalk

My dad insisted that a boom microphone was required -- not just any microphone but a "boom" microphone specifically. It was interesting when I showed him some smaller microphones years later that worked better with less noise.

Oh man have I grown since. Hardware and processing power have both grown so much. But speech recognition is still as dumb (or even dumber) as it was 30 years ago. It certainly didn't need the internet to work back then!

Also Siri is constantly having problems knowing if I’m talking to my watch or my iPhone, even if my phone is in my pocket.

Perhaps it was just being passive-aggressive?

Funnily enough, this is one issue I don’t have: between my phone, watch and iPad I’m consistently impressed at how well it manages to choose the best one - does anyone know if Apple devices actively co-ordinate which one responds to Siri commands?

Me: Ok, Google. Remind me to leave at 1 O'Clock.

Google: Ok. Do you want to save this? <shows preview of reminder, dings to indicate it's listening>

Me: Yes.

Google: Shows Google search results for "yes" and tosses the reminder.

I say, “Add blood pressure <pause> 120 over 80 plus 60.” Then I use the shortcut to parse the string on the / and +, and record it to Health.

The hard part was finding delimiters that Siri would consistently record as a single character. That and realizing I needed a manual review step to make sure Siri didn’t happily pump garbage into my logs.

> Hey Siri, set a timer for 8 minutes.

> Ok. 8 minutes and counting.

I only figured out through trial and error that I can name my Alexa timers without waiting for it to prompt me:

  > Alexa, set a pasta timer for 10 minutes
  > - Pasta timer, 10 minutes, starting now.
  > Alexa, cancel pasta timer
  > - Pasta timer canceled

I can't speak for the chef, but it does on HomePod. Each gets its own name and that name is announced when the alarm goes off.

"bleep bloop bleepity boop! Eggs timer. bleep bloop bleepity boop!

It has for at least the past couple years now.

Hey Siri, set a timer for 5 minutes. "OK."

Hey Siri, set another timer for 10 minutes. "A timer is already running, do you want to replace it?"

If you miss hearing the distinction in the confirmation, you'll miss the scheduled event

Edit: They also have distinct classification of alarm/timers. You can use either word to create one but checking what you've set or trying to cancel will result in 'no timers/alarms' set if your request doesn't match their system design.

I do have to specify "Living Room TV", even though the speaker and chromecast are configured to be in the same room, it still just turns off a bedroom tv if I'm not specific about which tv.

Also "Hey Google, turn off the Xbox" works, because I linked that at some point.

So not just timers! ;)

The thing I use Siri most for is "Hey, Siri. Tell me a joke."

My dream job is to work at Apple compiling jokes for Siri to belch out on demand.

> Hey Siri, set a timer for 13 minutes

> 30 minutes and counting.

> Hey Siri, set a timer for thirteen minutes.

> oh you already have a timer running, do you want me to change it?

> yes

Also I have set timers and lock the phone ‘too early’ and the timer was lost

It used to do a cheesy "Starting your timer.... Now", which would have been okay if a bit tedious repeatedly, apart from the fact that actually you could see that the timer started immediately, so the whole delayed "now" thing was completely misleading. It was like that for well over a year until I noticed it was fixed just recently.

Siri: I couldn’t find a shopping list, do you want me to create one?

Me: no. Hey Siri, add tomatoes and grap-

Siri: you have to select which app you want to continue <shows 6 apps, including Paprika. I tap Paprika> Sorry, Paprika has not implemented this function yet.

Me: Hey Siri, addtomatoesandgrapestotheshoppinglistinPaprika

Siri: ok, I’ve added “tomatoesandgrapes” to the shopping list in Paprika 3

<phone flies out of the window>

I take a photo with my phone. It's not perfect because to mark things off you'd have to use the photo-editing on the phone which would be rather clunky for that purpose. But it works if you don't mind checking things off in your head.

> How do you keep it from getting erased?

I've got a glass whiteboard and use liquid chalk markers. It's tough to accidentally erase something with those.

Also fun - you say something, the words you said show up on the screen, and then change into completely different words.

Yep. When it works, I get entries for both "ginger" and "ale."

Voice Recognition Elevator - ELEVEN!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNuFcIRlwdc

First aired in 2009

https://github.com/fredley/digital-black

I see that I still have no reason to bother, it's going to frustrate me more than anything else (especially with how downhill voiceover has gone in 12).

The latter point is a bit broader: now that Siri can hit an arbitrary URL via shortcuts, you can really just set your own trigger phrase to do anything that can be automated. You better believe I have a raspberry pi on order which will be running a local webserver...

Point is, YMMV; just try it for yourself.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25280410

I don't use any of these "assistants", but curious if you responded with "Groceries List"? Knowing they work on keywords, to Siri, you may not be actually answering her question.