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Comment by RKearney | Hacker News Reader

I own multiple iOS devices, a few Echos, and a Google Home. One of the things I noticed after getting an Echo was how much more fluid and simple it was invoking the "assistant". Simply asking, "Alexa, what's the weather today" just seemed so much more natural than having to prefix everything with "Hey" or "Okay".

Using Siri or Google Assistant for more than one question at a time quickly makes me feel like I'm going insane. "Hey Siri.. Hey Siri.. Hey... Hey..."

I'm hoping Google and Apple fix these subtle annoyances. Or maybe it's just me.

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I think the reason why the 'catchphrases' for Siri and Google Assistant are longer is because the cost for false positives is higher. Phones are subject to much more varied conditions than a cylinder that lives on your nightstand. Anecdotally, I have seen Alexa activate incorrectly much more than Siri, I just care a lot less.

Hey Google and Hey Siri are not longer than Alexa.. still three syllables.

Isn't part of the point of the prefix to avoid collisions with sounds that are part of everyday speech not intended for the assistant? "Alexa" becomes problematic when Echo is used in a office/home in which someone is named Alexa -- among the top 100 most popular female baby names since 1995 [0] -- which is why the wakeup word can be changed to "Echo" or "Amazon" or "Computer".

But the sound of the wake word, whether it's just "Alexa" or "Hey Siri" vs "Siri, doesn't seem to deal with the main issue of your complaint, which to me is how limited "conversation" is with the assistant.

If you ask Alexa for the weather, you'll still have to say her name for any followup questions within that immediate context, i.e. "Alexa, what's the weather today? Alexa, what's the weather this weekend?".

Though there are a few functional exceptions in which Alexa will prompt you for additional information without needing to be re-awakened, e.g.

You: "Alexa, set my alarm for 6 'o clock"

Alexa: "Is that 6 'o clock in the morning, or in the evening?"

[0] https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/index.html

I have my Echo set to use "computer" as the wake word because it's just way more fun that way. But, of course, "computer" is a pretty common word these days. It hasn't yet been annoying enough for me to change it.

I always felt that Siri was named with the intent that it could be used as a wake word (so you could say "Siri what's the weather today?") because Siri itself is a rare given name and [si ri] are sounds rarely said at the beginning of a sentence.

And then at some point Apple realized they had to make a longer wake word to cut down the number of false positives ("Siri" -> "Hey Siri", from 2 syllables to 3).

Google probably went through the same process ("Google" -> "Okay Google", from 2 syllables to 4).

Amazon probably deliberately chose a 3 syllable name with "Alexa" for the same reason.

I can imagine future improvements where we can have the originally imagined wake words "Siri", "Google" and "Alexa", and at that point I would be most happy with "Siri" because it would be short and not-corporate.

Siri (the company) was a spin-off from SRI – Stanford Research Institute.

The initial product, before the Apple acquisition, was an iPhone app with a chat interface. I don't recall that it supported voice input.

It is still possible that the founders were thinking ahead to voice input and wake words when they named the company.

The technology was initially developed under the DARPA CALO research program (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CALO).

It's my understanding Siri came from SRI Labs and who sold the technology to Apple.

> and [si ri] are sounds rarely said at the beginning of a sentence.

seriously?

Yes, because the first two phonetic syllables of "Seriously" are [sɪ rɪə], which makes it different.

You can change the prompt it listens for

Plus, "Ok, Google" is just a terrible sequence of consonants/syllables. Just doesn't work in my mouth.

"Hey Google" is slowly becoming a secondary option: http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/17/hey-google-hotword-n...

This is what I usually use for my Google Home these days, but by anecdotal experience it seems to fail to recognize it much more often than when I used "OK Google". I wish it offered more options in terms of activation words, or better yet, allow us to set and train Google Home to use our own custom activation words.

I’m still baffled that we can’t name our personal assistants the way we see fit. Why can’t I trigger it with « Hey Jarvis », « Alfred », « Marvin », « Come in Scotty », « Computer », or whatever hot word I fancy, especially when it’s supposed to respond only to my voice? Is that because of some pre-training of the NN?

You can train Assistant on your phone to a custom word, I have to imagine it's on the roadmap for Google Home at some point

Glad I'm not the only one -- I just can't say that phrase without garbling it: "Okayggglglele"

If you're doing more than one interaction, you can just hold the home button to activate Siri for followups. And you don't need to prefix 'hey siri' if you're activating Siri via home button or screen button.

I've seen so many people prefix 'Hey siri' when they don't really need to:

Holds home, Siri activates "Hey Siri, how's the weather?"

If could just be "How's the weather?" In that instance.

I shouldn’t need to click a button to effectively interact with my -voice- assistant :)

But it seems a reasonable interface concession given the relative infrequency of multi-query conversations, plus the huge undesirability of having Siri AI figure out (I.e. continue listening and sending data to Apple's servers) for itself whether the conversation has actually ended. Also, for many conversations, you'll be needing to look at the phone anyway (i.e. have it in your hand) to see Siri's answers.

When one person makes a concession it's good business. When millions of users make a concession it's bad design.

I wonder how that works on the iPhone X

The sleep/wake button on the right hand side of the device now triggers Siri when you hold it down for long enough.

Then how do your turn the thing off?

Depends on what you need.

You can now reboot from Settings in iOS11 if the device is responsive and unlocked.

If it's locked or you just want to properly shutdown quickly, press and hold a volume button and the lock button to bring up the SOS mode, which includes the shut down slider.

If the device is unresponsive, it's much less obvious now: https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/force-restart-iphone-x-wh... Volume up, then down, then press and hold the lock button.

Probably hold it down even longer.

They added shut down and reboot to the settings app in iOS 11.

> you can just hold the home button to activate Siri for followups

Unhelpful while I am driving...

A voice assistant that requires physical controls massively reduces its utility and core purpose.

“Requires”?

If this is the only designed in way to make multiple queries without saying "Hey Siri" repeatedly, then it is required for that operation. You literally have people above calling this the "solution" to the issue raised.

It is like Schrödinger's UI design. It is both being claimed as the solution to the problem being raised while at the same time being called entirely optional. Sounds to me like there is no actual solution, and this is a bandaid.

It'll do multi-part queries without pressing the button (or saying "Hey Siri") between each part. On the other hand, if you want to check the weather AND set an alarm, you need to activate Siri twice.

It'll do multi-part queries without pressing the button (or saying "Hey Siri") between each part

On the other hand, if you want to check the weather AND set an alarm, you need to activate Siri twice.

“If this is the only way to do except for that other way of doing it, then there’s only one way to do it”!

I think it comes down to the fact that for all the « conversational » publicity stunt, the current implementations insist on the voice assistants to be non-modal. When you think about it, every vocal interaction you have with people is explicitly (through voice) or implicitly (through body language) modal. How hard would it be for the mode to have to end with « thank you Siri » or a sensible time-out, or now with the iPhone X, loss of directed attention (and even activated again with return of directed attention within a reasonable timeframe)

Agreed. The constant hey siri is exhausting vs Alexa's approach. Though as others noted Siri was developed for a phone and devices on the go. Echo is a device that is in your home where you don't have to worry about someone saying Alexa unless a family or a friend is named that in which case you can change the word. HomePod will be the first chance for Apple to change that but pretty sure they are going to stick with Hey Siri for consistent and reliability.

what if someone in the room is named alexa

Then you change Alexa to one of the other options (Amazon, Echo, Computer)

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