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I'm not sure what "clunky UI" you need to interact with, you can play music without touching your phone. You literally just say "Hey Siri, play Two Weeks by FKA Twigs" and it will begin playing. It shows your request being transcribed when its made but that screen goes away on its own shortly after.

Most people's complaints about Siri as far as I can tell (via Twitter mostly, so it's a tech crowd) is that it's basically not Google Now. That is, Apple doesn't have a search engine so it can't answer general interest/trivia questions unless it's specifically related to a domain Apple has included (such as Wolfram Alpha or MLB for baseball).

Now many people think it should be able to do that, but that's certainly not what it was designed for. Siri is a "personal assistant" to help you do things on your device via voice. They've recently begun to expand these integrations by creating a Siri API which will probably expand to cover more domains over time.

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>Now many people think it should be able to do that, but >that's certainly not what it was designed for.

That's just a cop out though to say it isn't designed for that. Siri's biggest competitor is designed for it and does it very well on top of doing everything Siri does besides that (except perhaps wolfram and witty replies). Apple's hand is forced on the matter, and frankly their hands are tied without having an extremely powerful search engine under their belt. I doubt they are gonna get too far scraping Bing before MS steps in, if that's the route they decide to go.

It certainly doesn't do everything Siri does on iOS devices, because it can't. Apple's hand won't be forced because no one buys an Android device over an iPhone/iPad because Siri doesn't do the same things Google Now does. Google believes that is a feature that can sell phones, but I predict that the Pixel will never pose a threat to Samsung or Apple and likely won't sell much more than Nexus devices have.

Apple also has a good working relationship with Microsoft so if they wanted this functionality it wouldn't be via "scraping".

Oh well sure it can't on iOS devices, but that is Apple's doing, not Google's.

It does have full functionality on all GMS (Google Mobile Services) Android devices though (Sammy, HTC, LG, 1+, Sony, etc.). As for people not buying a device for it's assistant, I think that is an extremely short sighted comment. At least in the US where everyone has an iPhone and considers Siri near worthless, not many people use their assistant. And many of those that do are locked into a mindset that it can only do basic things/answer simple questions (i.e. remind me of x, whats the weather, whats score of the game, text nick hey). My friends head nearly fell off the other day when I asked my phone why people put nitrogen in their tires and it read back a perfect response without me even having to touch it.

As people break out of the "assistants are shitty" mindset in coming years, and especially as talking to your phone becomes more socially acceptable, I think there will be much more focus on who does it best. Without a doubt the future is going to be riddled with AI. In that sense to write off personal assistants as marketing gimmicks sounds as ludicrous as writing off the electric light bulb as a neat trick in 1850.

You missed my point, which was that Google Now can't do the things Siri can on iOS. This is important because Apple has aggregated a large and highly valuable user base. Contrary to your claim otherwise, this user base makes 2 billion Siri requests per week [1]. The fact that Google Now can't insert itself into this position works to Apple's advantage because that dataset will enable Apple to improve the product over time. It also means that everyone who wants to reach that audience will partner with Apple and/or use the newly available Siri API (as many have done), which will further add new functionality.

And if Apple really wanted to replicate the "answer general interest questions" use case with Siri it wouldn't require Apple to create a search engine, just a bizdev deal with Microsoft and some engineering work (probably from both parties).

I also never made any claims that assistants are shitty or would stay shitty. I said that Assistant/Google Now isn't enough differentiation to convince a customer to purchase a Pixel over an iPhone (or a Samsung Galaxy for that matter). The iPhone's competitive advantage doesn't rest on any one single feature or service. It isn't enough for Google to make a better assistant, they must be better than Apple on a number of vectors (too many to list, one big one that tech nerds often don't consider is Apple's retail footprint and the customer service advantage that provides).

[1]http://www.apple.com/ca/pr/library/2016/06/13Apple-Previews-...

Just curious, what are those things that Siri does and Google Now doesn't (except being more conversational and telling jokes, which 'Google Assistant' does too now with Pixel phones)?

I'm definitely bought over by the Google Assistant, it only improves upon the vastly useful and very smart Google Now already and is going to get a lot better with every release.

Hmm, I'll try that. Edit. Ahh, Siri seems not to know how to play albums, only songs. It also mis-parsed an album name of a song I have hearted in Apple Music. The mis-parse was for a more obscure title, but the incorrect behavior for playing an album was for a more mainstream one.

I've noticed that since my Apple Music trial expired I have to say "play MY song Self Control" or "play MY album Endless" for Siri to properly work. If I don't do that Siri just says it can't find the music.

Did you say you wanted an album specifically? I've never had any trouble with saying "play the album X".

I'll try saying "play the album", I've just asked her to play <album name>...

It works for me.

> Play me some <Artist name here>

> Play <Album name>

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