Re:Google is close to releasing Siri rival called Majel
by vidarh on Thursday December 15, 2011 @09:10AM
(#3356163)
You're ignoring pretty much all the situations that would stop me from wanting to use it: The vast majority of the time I use my phone for something other than conversations is spent in the presence of colleagues, family or commuting in situations where I would not be interacting with them, but where talking to my phone would potentially disturb them. Voice actions is not an alternative - I never use them for exactly this reason. The alternative is my phones touch interface.
If I "had to" interact with my phone in the middle of a conversation, it might be different, but that's a fringe case I very rarely encounter.
Re:Google is close to releasing Siri rival called Majel
by freehunter on Thursday December 15, 2011 @09:27AM
(#3356220)
I can't get my friends to shut the hell up when I'm using voice search or music match software. I say "hang on a second" /beep/ "search for polar be" "dude we should get Taco Bell" "ars in Michigan".
"Now searching for taco bears in Bell, Michigan"
In my experience, it essentially looks the same as voice actions, except with a much higher success rate. The least socially intrusive action is whatever lets me transition back to the conversation the soonest, and voice actions win in terms of speed for a lot of use cases. Also, if you absolutely have to turn to your phone with someone else around, it's kind of courteous to telegraph exactly what you're doing.