Siri was quite impressive when it came out. I just felt it never got significantly better until it became an embarrassment

It never was impressive. It only made cool demos and Apple aficionado worked the reality distortion field like crazy since then. It's actually embarrassing how bad it has always been compared to the Google stuff announced later with less fanfare.

I don't even care much because I don't think "assistants" are good for much of anything, but if I have to use one, Siri is not the one I would like.

Yeah, by having literally a shitton of cash, and having bought multiple ML startups over the years. Plus it’s not like they couldn’t make Siri better, multiple projects had internal problems with Siri and were trying to get it replaced, but none went anywhere, possibly because higher ups planning ahead with this.