Siri alexa and google are like living with toddlers.

fooferdoggie

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My wife yells at them because they don't listen or make so many mistakes and are always getting in trouble with doing stupid things. She yells at them more then they actually work I think. I think siri is the worst. our mini homepod seemed to hear great for a bit now sometimes you have to talk really loud close to it;. then it will get the same command you have used every morning wrong. like my wife says turn on water to water her plants to turn the pump on and often siri goofs up. they all often do hear and are more deaf then a 90 year old with two hearing aids. well unless your not talking to them then they hear great. they all seem to get worse with time too. my wife is blind so she uses them more then most for her music and such and its a constant battle.
 

Alli

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Not to mention all the times that Alexa just butts into the middle of a conversation. No one said anything like her name. Her comments have nothing to do with anything.
 

Thomas Veil

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Ain't none of 'em smart like we expected them to be.

Here we thought they'd sound like HAL or Robby the Robot or the robot from Lost in Space ('65).

In reality, I can't say to my wife, "Seriously?" without hearing my phone go BLOOMP! and hearing Siri ask me what I want.
 

fooferdoggie

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Not to mention all the times that Alexa just butts into the middle of a conversation. No one said anything like her name. Her comments have nothing to do with anything.
yes its the only time they Actually hear well. I think siri is the worst it never seems to get better only worse.
 

MEJHarrison

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I don't use any of them. The most interaction I have with Siri is to tell her to shut the hell up. If I could make one improvement, it would be to have Siri say "Oops, my bad. Thought you were talking to me. Sorry". Then my "shut the hell up" would be far more satisfying. I can berate her all I want. But when the phone just sits there doing absolutely nothing, as phones tend to do, it just leaves me feeling like I'm arguing at an inanimate object.
 

Herdfan

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I got a Goggle Home for my mom to be able to adjust the thermostat without getting up (no way could she use an app). It was so bad, she just used it as a $199 clock and called me to adjust the temp with the app.
 

lizkat

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Only thing I could reliably count on Siri to do for me was answer correctly "Hey Siri what time is it?" and I can still see well enough to look at a device or a room clock and figure that out for myself.

Maybe I'm just not busy enough any more to need a personal assistant to open certain apps or to mind my calendar, reminders, switching to this or that kind of music or adding stuff to my grocery list. I can't type for beans on an iPhone but autocorrect is hilarious enough that I don't mind letting that fill in for comic dialogues with Siri.

I do sometimes re-enable Siri for awhile after a major iOS release, but then shut it down again not that long afterwards. Maybe she's ready for prime time and I'm just not, but anyway we don't see eye to eye on the scope of her duties: the ones I think she should be able to perform, she still shrugs off except for responding to "what time is it? and "Turn off voice control".

I'm not against the idea of a digital personal assistant but I'm thinking I'd rather have some kinda of brain to disk gig like I've always craved since back when I was a coder.
 

Clix Pix

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I don't use Siri and I don't have Alexa or HomePod or any devices in my home to which I need to use voice commands.

I appreciate that these devices offer great value to the visually impaired and to others but for some of us the voice command thing just does not work.
 
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chengengaun

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I find Alfred a lot more mature in doing personal assistant things (wait, is that why it's called Alfred?). Siri is just annoying - had to interject in meetings and calls whenever I pronounce a two-syllable name that doesn't even remotely sound like Siri. That is enough to interrupt my thoughts.
 

SuperMatt

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I only use Siri while I’m driving, and find it can do what I usually need in that context. Checking and sending text messages, asking for directions, calling people, etc.
 

Alli

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I find I use Siri for location-based reminders. Other than that, I don’t use it at all. Alexa, OTOH…we just redid our router, causing us to redo all the smart lights in the house. What a pain. But I’ve gotten really used to saying “Echo, goodnight,” once I’m in bed and having my bedroom lamps go off.
 

fooferdoggie

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we always hear with apples Newest update how much better Siri will be but not no better but maybe a bit worse. every day the same command may or may not work.
 

rdrr

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I have all three, and each one seems to have issues.

Siri is always going off with someone saying "Seriously" or "Serious" in sentence. And gets all huffy when I tell her to F-off

Alexa always wants to tell me how I can use her more efficiently and it randomly "bongs" like someone is listening in. No notifications or packages arriving.

Google does get a little stalkerish with always knowing where I am about to go. It constantly tells me the best route to work, home, or on the weekends how to get to NH to see my daughter, at the time I am about to leave the house.
 

lizkat

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As noted before I don't really use personal assistants like Siri and her competitors. I do experience Google trying to manage the edges of my life it still has a grip on, e.g. gmail, and a past trial of YouTube TV. It's forever asking me would I like to consolidate my accounts, would I like to add 2FA to my mail security with a mobile phone number (I finally went there after making a mistake transferring an account across computers once and lost access to it for nearly a year), would I like to reconsider and come back to YTTV ("No, bc baseball playoffs are over.")

Realizing I'm being tracked commercially is so annoying because I'm way past the age of anyone's idea of a "customer" per se, past utilities, groceries and the very occasional material purchase of a worn out piece of kitchen gear. In my family we have long agreed not to clutter each other's homes with unnecessary gifts, so we stick to food or token home-made items. Yet like my contemporaries and everyone else, I have to install anti-tracking extensions and mind a raft of other privacy-related software settings... and the net result of that is still unwanted ads (just not tailored to me) and once in awhile junkmail from former vendors to whose pitches I try to stay unsubscribed.​

Maybe I do need a personal assistant. One with more muscle than Siri or those others. One that's more like a virtual bodyguard and capable of saying "F^ck Off Already!" on a regular basis to digital inquiries and pitches and making the admonition stick. But so far it seems like that sort of assistant is not in the designers' dreams, which of course are constrained by the beancounters they work for.
 

tobefirst

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We have an Echo of some kind in every room in the house and almost all of our lights are controlled via smart switches. In the last month, the Echos have lost touch with a significant number of the lights. I've deleted and re-added the skill and unplugged and re-plugged the Echos and that didn't fix it. The next step, I'm afraid, is deleting all the Echos and setting them all back up again, and then re-adding all the skills. I don't know what happened, but they have gotten dumber.
 

sgtaylor5

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We have an Echo of some kind in every room in the house and almost all of our lights are controlled via smart switches. In the last month, the Echos have lost touch with a significant number of the lights. I've deleted and re-added the skill and unplugged and re-plugged the Echos and that didn't fix it. The next step, I'm afraid, is deleting all the Echos and setting them all back up again, and then re-adding all the skills. I don't know what happened, but they have gotten dumber.
Amazon has a Alexa retention issue

I used to like Cortana v1 (first iteration of Windows Phone). She got dumber too. I don't use Siri unless I have to.
 

bunnspecial

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I do use Siri sometimes-my main use is to have a(mostly) hands free way to place calls while I'm driving. My secondary use is to set reminders or the like. Other than that, some of the fun Easter Eggs like "Where can I hide a body"(think that one is gone now-didn't work the last time I tried) or "What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow"(there are a couple of others) can make fun party tricks but that's about it.

At my last job, our secretary was named Sherry. Up in the front office where she worked with a bunch of other folks, since the department secretary(particularly in acadaemia) is the single most important person in the department, the phrase "Hey Sherry" flew around about 200 times a day. That would randomly set off the asker's phone as I guess with a typical Kentucky accent that sounds a lot like "Hey Siri". More than once, I answered my office phone with "Hey Sherry" and my phone would do the same. It was amusing the first time or two, then just annoying.
 

fooferdoggie

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New toshiba microwave wont work with alexa. alexa sees it and when you say turn on microwave alexa asks for how long then gives you a error when you tell it.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Not to mention all the times that Alexa just butts into the middle of a conversation. No one said anything like her name. Her comments have nothing to do with anything.

I mostly have this happen with my Apple Watch because when I bend my wrist a certain way it hits the crown which activates Siri. To make it less annoying I have Siri set to the male Australian accent voice. It's hard to get mad when you hear it. If Trump used an Australian accent I'd probably feel he makes a lot of good points.
 
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