Other than that though, I haven't found any practical use for them. Maybe once AI improves a lot, and it feels like you're talking to an actual person, it might be more useful.
In my eyes the primary thing that's standing in the way of voice assistants being useful isn't even as high of a bar as general AI, but just the ability to parse a command into multiple, potentially chained commands. Even with the inability to figure out things like context that would boost usability a lot — for example, it'd allow commands like, "set timers for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, and an hour" instead of having to make each request separately.
/S
The first time I tried the office kitchen microwave, I had to ask someone from accounting standing around, how to heat my cup, because that stupid thing just responded with a condescending beep to whatever I pressed :/
I also have a five year old who is pretty competent at talking to Alexa even though she can’t intuit what the button controls mean on the microwave oven.
What a lot of these natural language systems do is they force me to intuit their interfaces instead of just looking them up. It's more complex, harder to learn, and much less powerful. What I want is very reliable, accurate voice detection with a well-designed, composable interface.
I want to treat Alexa like a computer, not like a person. People are not the most convenient interfaces to interact with, computers are better to interact with for me than people are.
I understand that different people are in different positions, some people want to have a conversation, but you're not going to make a voice assistant that's good for me if you follow that goal. At some point the ecosystem needs to fracture and diverge so that normal people can use whatever NLP interface Google/Amazon/Apple spits out of their AI opaque-boxes, and people like me can use a voice interface that is designed around well-tested decades-old computer UX principles that have been proven to work well for power users.
My vision of a voice-operated utopia isn't treating Siri like a person, it's on-the-fly composing a complicated new task by voice that is saved for later use. It's using timers as a trigger for other tasks with some kind of pipe command so I can tell Siri to send an email after ten minutes, or so I can have Siri look up a search and seamlessly pipe the result into a some kind of digital notebook.
Saying "hey Siri" is fine if I'm in bed or in the shower, I don't need quick access to a shell in those places necessarily. That's fine to have as a backup. But for normal operation, if I'm wearing a smartwatch, it will pretty much always be more convenient and faster for me to tap and hold on that watchface than it will be for me to say "hey Siri".
I mean, that's a boring answer, but there's also a reason why my computers have buttons. I wouldn't want to use my phone because that's in another room or in my pocket. But a watch will always be reachable in less than a second, and the modern watches are waterproof, and I don't need to look at anything to use it -- I can just tap my watchface and start talking. And if my hands are dirty, or I'm carrying groceries, or I'm in bed, falling back to "hey Siri" isn't the end of the world in those scenarios.
In practice, when I see people interact with voice assistants today, they stop what they're doing, they give the command, they listen for a confirmation, and then they start what they're doing again. The biggest bottleneck there for their speed is precision -- they intuitively know that they need to stop what they're doing and optimize for the device. The precision, and the delays that are built into the UX to confirm what's happening -- that's the bottleneck. So if there's an operating mode that is just as fast and way more precise, we should just do that, we don't need to use voice triggers 100% of the time.
Bonus points if we're wasting processing time for a voice assistant to make a round trip and process the audio clip to try and figure out who's speaking. The person who pressed their watch is speaking, boom, we can get rid of that response delay now. How much time are we wasting trying to come up with wake words that optimize for both speed and precision -- when using wake words only as a fallback would allow us to make them more precise because they could be longer, more deliberate phrases?
Same here. Just wish it could handle setting multiple timers (yes I realize you can set multiple alarms, but those aren't one-time use).
Hey Siri, turn out all of the lights.
Hey Siri, play Ocean from Ambient Sounds.
Not a huge deal, but enough of a bump to break the flow.
I've got one for "Siri, good night" that turns off the lights, sets the phone to DND, turns down the brightness and starts Sleep Cycle in the correct mode depending on the day (alarm on/off).
They also support custom "routines" that you can program. We have a Clever Dripper [1] and use Tom's (of Sweet Maria's) recipe: stir after 90 seconds, drip after 4 minutes (2:30 after the stir). So I created a routine called "coffee timer" that triggers those two timers, and when we pour the hot water into the Clever Dripper we can just say "Hey Google, coffee timer" and it sets both of them.
Actually I put in four variations so we don't have to get the language perfect:
"coffee timer"
"coffee timers"
"set coffee timer"
"set coffee timers"
[1] https://www.sweetmarias.com/clever-coffee-dripper-large.html
1. Hey Siri, add Olive Oil to the grocery list. Super easy. When I’m cooking and running low on something, no need to break my stride and pull out my phone, or clean my hands. It’s immediately into my grocery list and out of my mental inbox.
2. Hey Siri, play some Jazz. Or whatever music. This is nice and easy to get some music on the HomePod for either cooking, working, or dinner background. The only annoyance is that Siri can be super particular at times unlike when searching Apple Music on my phone. Also sometimes my kids hijack my music selection with their own, hehe.
I also have a few automations that are set up for when I leave the house to make sure music turns off and my thermostat is set to "Away" mode.
I've generally really enjoyed basic smart home stuff. I have a handful of smart wall switches that work well, and for the lamp a wall-wart that I use. One of these days I'll just retrofit some actual lighting in the living room and can skip the lamp situation but until then... this is a nice workaround.
"OK, playing Supertramp."
Somewhere along the way that became my normal Siri experience, and it wasn't always like that.
* Call my wife (or $person)
* tell $person $message - sends a text eg: “tell Dave ETA 25min”
* ping $myname iPad - plays sound on my iPad so I can find it.
* set timer for $duration (I wish Siri wouldn’t be so loud in acknowledging)
* remind me $task on $date $time (you can switch the arguments around)
* take me home
* redial
* take me to $location (mostly used in my car)
Edit: found a list online [1] - seems to cover a lot of default commands
Hey Siri, speak quieter / speak at 25%
Example (NSFW/NSFL/gross): https://www.reddit.com/r/MakeMeSuffer/comments/l8d0qo/who_kn...
It's a lot easier to say "Siri, play podcasts" (Which triggers a Shortcut to start playing a specific playlist in Overcast) rather than opening my jacket, digging out the phone, taking off my gloves and fumbling with it to get the podcasts running.
* Hey siri what’s the weather
* Hey siri add broccoli to my grocery list
* Hey siri remind me when I get home to take out the recycling
Same principle. Simple request, hard to get wrong, low stakes, faster than clicking
* Hey siri remind me every other Tuesday at 8pm when I'm at home to take out the recycling
Some things are more easy to say than to configure with 20+ taps on the Reminders app.
I have huge gripes with "what's the weather". Siri will for sure say the temperature, which means nothing in a city where the windchill is often ten degrees lower.
Are you using a specific app for this or is it just a list in Notes called 'grocery list'?
Works beautifully for me and the lists are shared with our household so it updates for everyone.
"timer 1 hour 30" is parsed into "Make an alarm at 01:30 named Timer."
Every time I do laundry I get woken up at stupid o'clock the next morning haha.
Edit: Sorry to those below for the confusion I seeded. To clarify I mean the 1 hour 30 is the bit that doesn't work. If I add minutes to the end of it it works perfectly fine.
That's how I talk. Thats how I've talked for 32-$childhood years.
I'm not having a conversation with the thing, I want it do do something. Command, parameters.
computer, list the invisible files in my home folder
In what world does "timer one hour 30" parse into "Set an alarm for 1:30am and call it timer"
Presumably if a French person had trouble you'd tell them to just speak English?
Parsing time related stuff in general seems to be an issue. "Set a timer for a minute fifteen" makes an alarm named "Timer" set for 3 PM.
But if you say "Set a timer for a minute fifteen seconds" it works fine.
Curious if anyone else can duplicate the "a minute fifteen == 3 o'clock" issue or if it's somehow hearing me wrong.
Other simple time-based requests such as "what's the time difference to singapore?" don't work on siri either, which is irritating as I work across multiple time zones and I'm forever figuring out time differences.
1. Timers. Super useful when cooking. Also my kids can use it as they are doing remote learning and need to know when to get back to their video calls.
2. Playing videos while cooking. Sometimes I enjoy watching a sitcom while cooking on my Echo Show. Or I might want a cooking video though that’s more rare. My roommate uses it all the time for questions like “how long do you bake salmon?” With mixed results.
3. Controlling lights. “Alexa give me a light” as I walk into a room is way easier than turning on three separate switches in separate parts of the room. Turning them off is equally nice.
4. “Alexa tell me a kids joke” is a frequent thing we use.
5. Answers to random questions while at the dinner table. “Alexa who is the prime minister of New Zealand?” That type of stuff. It feels more natural than whipping out our phones.
6. We tried using Echo Show’s drop in feature but it is just too intrusive as compared to something like FaceTime. The other side doesn’t have to pick up the call. You just are in their house, camera on and all.
7. My kids really like when we play Harry Potter quiz. It’s a silly app but it is somewhat entertaining.
8. Really funny “routines” (their word for scripts). “Alexa, set condition two throughout the ship” to turn off all the lights. “Alexa, release the kraken” to set off the Roomba, etc.
9. My kids listen to podcasts all the time.
10. My kids use it to help them spell difficult words.
What I wish I could do a bit more with it is integrate it with things like random status dashboards. I combined a power metering AC plug with my washing machine and Home Assistant to know when it’s done running. Would be nice to be able to say “Alexa notify [roommate’s name] when the washer is done.”
Overall I think something much simpler that does processing locally could replace it for me but so far these things are cheap enough (echo dot) to put in every room.
(And then said list is shared with my family.)
Unfortunately iOS only supports one timer at a time so I can't make tea while my car is plugged in.