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Comment by huehehue | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's the emerging neo-Luddite in me, but I'm alarmed at how many people begrudgingly continue to use these tools (accessibility reasons notwithstanding, which is an admittedly major caveat).

I have a very low tolerance for error in things like setting timers, playing music, getting weather, calling someone. This is because I can complete these tasks simply, quickly, and with 100% reliability by hand. The marginal improvements allowed by tools like Siri aren't worth it to me if there is any decrease in reliability.

I'm sure there are use cases I'm not considering, but I've also seen perfectly able-bodied folks shout "call Steve" into their phone for 40 seconds longer than it would have taken to navigate manually. Conceptually, the idea of stacking even more engineering onto these tools to get these tasks working reliably is funny.

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Nah, I'll have to disagree with you there. I don't know about Siri, but I am one of those people using the Google Assistant to set timers and reminders, and for me at least, this is reliable (enough), and definitely faster than by hand.

The obvious use case is setting a timer while cooking, when the phone is at the other end of the room and your hands may be dirty, but I'm using it even in non-cooking settings.

In fact, I just tried it and timed both approaches for setting a reminder. Results:

* Assistant: "Hey Google, set a reminder 10 days from now to file my taxes.": 4.5s to say it (I'm free to focus on other things after this point), 7.5s until reminder is created.

* Manual (pick up & unlock phone, open app drawer, open Calendar app, find the day 10 days from now, click on that day, click create a reminder, type in "file my taxes", save): 17s

So Apple pumps more than a billion dollars into developing and marketing a virtual assistant which fails the vast majority of the time and you’re proud of it because it can set a timer by voice?

I’m just going to say - i’m underwhelmed

He was referring to Google assistant.

But I can second his point of view from a Siri user standpoint. I use it almost every day for two insignificant task, but yet it work and I use it everyday:

- Shutting down the remaining alarm clocks (I'm really not a morning person)

- Setting up timer when I cook

At some point I also used it to control smart lights but I haven't set up the system again in my new flat. And I'm seriously considering reverting to a purely physical and traditional light-switch interface instead of relying on IoT. (Take ages to set up right, rarely changing setup afterwards, waiting for updates to switch light on, flashlight mode when electronic become damaged, etc).

Again, the only feature i’ve seen mentioned as a positive is controlling a clock/alarm

You’re even acknowledging how cumbersome iot is

Is that really the pinnacle of virtual assistants - billion dollar alarm handlers?

They weren't defending virtual assistants. Relax and read more carefully the context of the thread.

I just read it again and I never read them express pride in the tool or say they were using Siri. The comment is about the impact for them on using a voice-based interface to set a timer. Bad faith argumentation.

> reliable (enough)

This is the key thing, and the formula's different for everyone. I know that my strategy of "look at the clock and remember" will work until I'm senile, as will "panic-check the mail every day until my last tax form arrives and file that night"

> I know that my strategy of "look at the clock and remember" will work until I'm senile

I'm glad you have that option but understand that for many people this will not work and there's nothing they can do to make it work.

Siri is tremendously frustrating to me, but helpful to my parents whose eyes are going bad.

For all Google's faults, the Google assistant is years ahead of Siri and Alexa at natural language comprehension. It's not perfect, but it clears my bar, and it comes in handy a few times per day.

It doesn't matter how frequently Siri gets things wrong, my wife insists on using it for everything. The number of times I've heard her repeat herself to Siri five times in an increasingly frustrated tone is pretty high. It's baffling.

Number of seconds is not a relevant metric for some people.

More relevant for me is how much and often I need to switch my physical and cognitive task at hand to briefly use my device. If I'm in a focused mode going back and forth in my house getting things done, it's a huge benefit to just verbalize my thinking in the moment rather than come to an abrupt stop and switch to visuospatial navigation to drill down to the timer app, and fine tune the amount before I can switch back to what I was doing before.

But that argument only holds if the voice assistant actually works. The point is that it often doesn’t, requiring repeated attempts that end up taking more focus and time then just manually doing it. There’s no way that doesn’t end up requiring as much if not more cognitive switching.

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