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Comment by saturdaysaint | Hacker News Reader

As someone that uses both platforms extensively, I find claims of Siri and Maps inferiority utterly mind-boggling. On an iPhone, I can get directions to anywhere or call anyone or create calendar events while barely looking at my phone. Google Now is nice in some respects but almost always requires an off-putting degree of annoying manual manipulation to accomplish actions as simple as calling someone.

For me, Maps gives me eerily accurate drivetime estimates whereas Google's times are utterly useless. And I consider the UI patently inferior. I feel like a need two hands and a full minute to do things that require a few quick taps in iOS. Google seems to need to ping their server to get my search history or home address, whereas iOS calls it up in milliseconds. I would also kill to have navigation on the lockscreen as in iOS - it always requires a janky series of button presses and swipes on my Android phone.

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>For me, Maps gives me eerily accurate drivetime estimates whereas Google's times are utterly useless.

Fascinating. Apple Maps is always wrong for me, with the estimated time of arrival constantly changing as I drive, while Google (and Waze) are spot on.

It's heavily dependent on the city you're in as far as I can tell. Google Maps is awful in Madison, but I've had better results with it in Atlanta.

Well of course the ETA changes while you are driving, that seems obvious. It's an estimate, it depends on current conditions, it can't be correct from the start.

For instance, just now I pulled up directions to the place I drove on Sunday. Apple Maps gives three routes, ranging from 35-40 minutes. Google Maps gives three routes, ranging from 29-33 minutes. In my experience, it will take closer to the time Google says, so if I'm using Apple Maps, the ETA will start out at 35 minute from now, and by the time I get there, it will be 5 minutes sooner. The only "current condition" it is depending on is that I'm driving faster over the route than it expects.

The estimate also depends on current traffic conditions.

I won't debate the accuracy of either case since it can only be an anecdotal and unproductive conversation. You were disputing the value changing over time, not it being inaccurate. Google does seem to give more optimistic estimates in general.

As people often say, it might have something to where you're using these services. E.g. in York, UK both Apple and Google Maps work perfectly fine.

The back and forth of claims regarding Siri seem to indicate an uneven level of service. My own experience is that it works great just enough to fail frustratingly.

It's not perfect, but I would kill to have it on my daily driver Android. Siri consistently nails daily things like "Directions home" or "Call [girlfriend]" or "set an alarm for 10 minutes" or "Show movies near me", all manual tasks when I'm in Android.

Interesting. On my Nexus 5 all of those examples work perfectly without touching the phone. Since around the time of the Nexus 4 the voice recognition has been really good (for me at least).

Not trying to argue - it's just interesting how much variation there is for different people (for both Siri and Android apparently).

Maps works well for me and I can think of few times when I have found it lacking. Siri, on the other hand, gives me a timeout ~15% of the time.

Well Android requires me to stop what I'm doing and fiddle with my phone to get directions home or call my girlfriend or get movie times %100 of the time. I'll take the occasional timeout since Siri seamlessly routes me to my house with a single button press/voice command.

Does Google Now not do this? (not an Android user)

I'd say it almost does this. But there are enough fit and finish issues (like, a few orders of magnitude beyond Siri's supposedly showstopping "occasional internet timeouts when in spotty network coverage") to make it functionally useless.

Just initiating the voice commands is a pretty telling comparison.

iPhone: hold down ergonomically placed home button until it beeps, say what you want (eg "directions home"). Siri waits a well-timed beat and launches maps.

Android: press unlock button (semi-awkwardly placed on upper right corner), do weird home button motion only used to launch Google now (drag the soft "home" button up). Say "OK Google" to initiate voice detection, say what you want. Then there's a poorly calibrated lag to make sure Now is doing what you want, a hair over 5 seconds maybe.

Then there are weird fit/finish issues. Android seems to do weird things when headphones w/ a mic are connected, so it takes several seconds longer to be able to say "OK Google" after launching. If you use headphones a lot, it's basically a dealbreaker. And I find a lot of fit and finish issues when Google actually performs the action.

I'd be curious to try the Moto X to see if its "always listening" mode mitigates some of these issues.

tl;dr Now is great as a morning homepage, but an abysmal failure as a Siri-like assistant

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