Comment by dewey

It’s wild how many of you have issues with Siri - and to be clear I’m not here to discount those issues, and I very much believe all of the anecdotes here.

For me, Siri on either phone or watch is pretty much perfect - I don’t ask for much, mostly timers or making reminders.

Google’s Nest Minis though? “Lights on” has a 50/50 shot of being a song of the same name, or similar name, or totally unrelated name. Same for “lights off”. If I don’t annunciate “play rain sounds” clearly enough I get an album called “Rain Songs” that is very much NOT calming for bed time. It doesn’t help that none of these understand that if I whisper a command, it should respond quietly - honestly the siris and nests and alexas all got like one iteration and then stopped it feels like.

I want more features but less LLM. I want more control, and more predictability. Eg if every night around 1am I say “play rain sounds” my god just learn that I’m not, in all likelihood, asking to hear an album I’ve never listened to!

One of my favorite episodes:

I set 2 timers for the same thing somehow. I then tried to cancel one of them.

  >“Siri, cancel the second timer”
  “You have 2 timers running, would you like me to cancel one of them?”
  >“Yes”
  “Yes is an English rock band from the 70s…”
  >“Siri, please cancel the timer with 2 minutes and 10 seconds on it”
  “Would you like me to cancel the timer with 2 minutes and 8 seconds on it?”
  >“Yes”
  “Yes is an English rock band from the 70s…”

Eventually they both rang and she listened when I said stop.