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Comment by interpol_p | Hacker News Reader

I know everyone says Siri sucks, but I use it hundreds of times a day now and it's just... working. Though my use consists entirely sending messages, asking to play artists or music tracks, and making reminders

I get that as a trivia and knowledge service it's pretty sucky, but as a voice assistant it's doing a good job

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Yeah I use Siri for Homekit, reminders etc. too and it works great. But that's because I've learned what not to ask and that sucks. Checking for restaurants, shop opening times, cinema schedules works so well with Google assistant (in Germany). With Siri it's a game of chance. Asking basic questions about what distance two cities are turn into a game of how to pose the question so siri understands me.

Absolutely. I wouldn’t rely on Siri for those things either. But I have come to realise that I use it hundreds of times per day to do messaaging, music, weather and reminders. So I’ve gotten some significant value out of the service

When I tell Siri to message my girlfriend she misunderstands the name and wants to send a message to a person that I have never messaged before, who has a last name that sounds similar to my girlfriends first name.

When I ask Siri to show me the route to somewhere, she'll invariably send me to a place hundreds of kilometers away, because the place in my city wasn't an exact match or something.

The only thing that works reliably is setting timers.

Hah, I’ve had that problem with Siri. Friend with a similar first name to the last name of a person you never message

Definitely seems like they could use some context here to improve contact selection (time of day, message regularity, name similarity)

I also use Siri all the time for voice dictation and it's pretty good.

The only reason to actually type a message on an iPhone, instead of voice dictate, is if you're in a place where speaking will bother other people or violate your privacy. Otherwise, press the microphone button and dictate what you want to write!

It's also completely free, for unlimited use, which is worth keeping in mind.

I did a test with both Siri and Nuance’s app on my iPhone. I set both to listen to a podcast playing on another device. Nuance’s app did far better with dictation.

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