I still have zero desire to speak to any computer with my voice. Not saying it's a bad product feature. Probably just a psychological profile some of us fall into.
EDIT: Yes I'm already aware it can be useful/quick for doing X :)
EDIT: Yes I'm already aware it can be useful/quick for doing X :)
edit: For that they don't need to be networked, of course.
[Edit] Google Home seems to be pretty good at separating your voice from background noises, like shower/TV.
One of the other things I used them for frequently before disabling it on all my devices and removing all of the networked mics from my house was things like "remind me to $THING at 21 tonight".
On the iPhone, the speech to text can be done on the phone. I'm not sure if this is the case for Siri, but it doesn't need to be done in the cloud.
That said, the words to intent mapping doesn't appear to be something that the on phone model is able to handle.
I bet it wouldn't have to be if its vocabulary were restricted to timer related words.
I’m not sure it’s worth the development time. But it’s like: Let’s create a UI with all info we think the user wants, and everything else will be done by Siri.
It's your lucky day! There is an "Enable Ask Siri" checkbox in System Preferences on macOS, and a similar toggle in the iOS Settings app.
I want a check box that says: "Ask to enable Siri", which I can uncheck. So "Enable Ask Siri" should be off, and "Ask to enable Siri" also off.
- play some song or playlist
- open all the blinds, or a set of blinds, or all lights, or some lights. And close then close them/turn them off.
That’s about it. The only reason it works well for those use cases is because the equivalent menu/physical controls take too much time to use vs voice commands.
Sure lots of cars have this already with voice, but Siri et al are much more reliable at it.
But what's more interesting is that through talking with others we've discovered one interesting thing about what it's like for other people to hear a voice in their heads:
In most people's dreams, when someone talks, they can hear the voice, which has a specific pitch, rasp, etc. For me and my friend, in our dreams we can never characterize the voice. We just become aware of the sentence spoken and the time passed (even though in a way it feels immediate), but if we focus, it's clear that we cannot recall any sensation of hearing a voice in any way. It blew our minds off when we realized that other people's dreams are different in such a way.
I can think of sentences. But they are not spoken in my head. There is no voice, which would be male or female etc. And I only do that when the sentences are the goal. They are not the means.
I’m not sure that this is true. I think in terms of my dreams they are closer to what you describe as your experience; mostly visual, with speech something that’s more often understood than heard. I imagine most people have something similar, and not so analogous to real life.
I do have an inner monologue in my waking hours though, and it’s very interesting to think about what it would be like to not have one!
Then I noticed that I don't think with my internal voice when coding. I'm still thinking but not with sounds in my head. That blew my mind and made it easier for me to understand other's internal experience.
I wonder if people who rarely have an internal voice are less interested in things like podcasts, where the information in conveyed aurally.
That's correct. But neither can you think in sentences in that case, unless your relationships are just calculated means to an end. Whether you want to continue a relationship is not a conclusion of a sentence, but something you know without words, just like you know without words whether you want to eat the dish that's on your plate.
- My fingers will more reliably get me to where I want to go in a reasonable amount of time.
- I don't desire for The Google to know the instant I turn my lights on or possibly take a dump.
- It's only a matter of time before "always on" turns into "always listening".
Right now I can ask Alexa to open or close the curtains, to start cleaning my house, or to play some music or podcast — all without having to find where my cellphone is or risking getting trapped a couple of hours on the internet.