I agree with you though for anything more complex. I do not control the color of my lamps via voice or select what media to play on my voice controlled HiFi. I could setup a few "scenes" for that, but I have not seen a need for it. I usually have my phone around or when I am sitting at the PC I can just use the dashboard in my browser. And there are situations where voice control just does not fit well, e.g. in public or with people sleeping in the same room.
* To have to reach for my phone * To have a tablet mounted within reach (that's more clutter) * To have to get up to the light switch/nearest controller.
This sounds lazy but that is literally the point of all this stuff - to make things convenient.
Likewise, if I'm in the kitchen and want to set a timer, I don't want to have to use my hands (I'm probably already using them), I just want to yell that I need a imer set.
The examples you name are somewhat exceptions where I can imagine, if someone is really lazy, that a language control could be better than buttons, but in most cases I think the difference is minuscule. I have to walk 2 Meters from the couch to the button ("and I wanted to get a new drink anyway").
On the other hand, I can see that language is really good for information/knowledge retrieval. Ask ChatGPT to help you with something.. and get the answer via voice.
Your view I think works where the device is static or always on you like a watch but not when the device could be misplaced.
You can simply say "navigate me to such-and-such", or "turn off the display", or whatever, tasks which would otherwise involve several steps and be much more distracting.
Meanwhile, if you are driving the car, touch screen means not watching the road for crutial 2 seconds while you are trying to hit the damm screen while the car is moving.
Sorry, I don't understand "Imer", can you repeat?
Typo serendipity ;)
I had to turn off Echo integration altogether for the same reason. Took them 2 minutes to figure out they could command Alexa to turn off the lights in someone else's room. Even though Alexa recognizes them as different people and has the room lights assigned to their respective room.
I wonder if Amazon has fixed that yet. Haven't tried in a couple years.
I've heard of a great light flipping prank that supposedly happened at Caltech a few years before I was there. There was a row of rooms overlooking a courtyard. Each had a window on the courtyard. At the end of the row was a bathroom, also with a window on the courtyard.
Some pranksters once when the student in the room next to the bathroom was out rewired his switch and the bathroom switch so the each switch controlled both rooms.
Then they sat in the courtyard watching that night. He got home, they saw his light (and the bathroom light) go on as he got ready for bed, then go out as he went to sleep.
A little while later someone went to use the bathroom. They turned on both lights.
That woke the sleeping guy, who got up and turned the lights back off and went back to bad. The people in the courtyard heard an annoyed yell from the bathroom, where the occupant was apparently sitting on the toilet.
Toilet guy went and turned the lights back on. That woke up sleeping guy, who they heard swear, and he got up and turned the lights off.
Toilet guy as faster this time, and got the lights back on before sleeping guy reached bed.
What then happened was the lights alternated on and off at an increasing frequency until finally both people went out to the hall to try to see if there was a clue there and they figured out what was going on.