I'd settle for a siri that can at least turn the lights off properly.
Google assistant on the nvidia shield left Siri in the dust years ago. Siri can't even chain basic commands in your smart home, it can't retain any kind of context (e.g. dim the lights...a bit more).
Just today running latest developers beta, I asked Siri to turn on the coffee machine and it started playing some song instead. I found out later that I had named the switch coffee machine plug.
Similar thing happens when I ask Siri to play my favorite songs and it starts to play a song named favorite from my library
I gave up on using Siri for my lights because 1/3 of the time it would get caught in a “who is speaking? Please go through the voice configuration to identify yourself.”
This was frustrating for me as it always prompted “who cares? Just turn off the lights.” As well as would drive my parents and other guests batty.
> This was frustrating for me as it always prompted “who cares? Just turn off the lights.”
I guess you should be able to create a bucket of low-risk tasks that require zero authentication, like letting your guests turn off the lights. I do get why they are cautious, though, because in some cases this could be a security risk, like a burglar turning off lights from outside the home.
Siri is Gemini now (Semeni?) so expect similar stories from both major phone OS providers going forward, since we have lost more diversity in the mobile market (seems anti-trustworthy to me)
I hate to do this, but I decided to "search" google for "gemiri" just to see, and was presented with
---
AI Overview
The term "gemiri" is relatively rare and can refer to a few entirely different things depending on the context.
Tech Slang (Gemini + Siri): It is a modern, informal portmanteau used by tech enthusiasts on social platforms like X (formerly Twitter). It describes a hypothetical or user-modified pairing of Google's Gemini AI with Apple's Siri assistant.
Medical / Cancer Regimen: In oncology, GemIri is a shorthand medical code for a combination chemotherapy regimen consisting of Gemcitabine and Irinotecan
I tried "turn off the lights in [room a] and [room b]" in the new Siri app and rather than Siri saying they can't do compound commands they just turned off the lights in one of the two rooms listed.
So, progress?
Any agent with the Home Assistant MCP hooked up can do it fine.
THe settings siutation is so annoying, there are still so many options locked away inside control panel and the new settings app has a few that dont exist in control panel, its so fragmented.
Something you are not accounting for is that rolling stock is fully private still, and a huge huge chunk of the profits. Operators don't make much money, the govt owns and runs the rails themselves, but the rollling stock is where a lot of the money goes
This is a super annoying quirk, lots of things don't work well if you're using workspace as a normal gmail account, and they don't quite warn you up front.
It's pretty much my #1 example of Google's propensity for shipping its org chart.
Workspace accounts come with their own compliance requirements and edge cases that products need to handle, but rather than do that and provide a consistent user experience most product teams don't answer to the relevant PAs and so don't care, and Workspace accounts are a small enough minority of users that nobody has to care.
I've often railed against a particular way of doing product that's really common in our industry, but I suppose it's been a while so I'll do it again:
We have a real problem with metrics-driven product development, where we exclusively care about the 95% use case and actively disdain the 5% use cases.
On paper it makes sense - you direct your energies towards the highest-payback activities. But the problem is that every user falls into some 5% use cases, so a product that is purely made up of 95% use cases ends up becoming a patchwork that is frustrating to every user, somehow.
Rather than "product works great for 95% of users" you get "100% of users cut themselves on some corner of the product".
Google converted my mum's Gmail account to a workspace account automatically. Now she can't use her bedroom alarm clock because it's connected to my dad's Gmail account and you can't share access to workspace accounts. It's stupidly maddening.
And yes I realise that an IoT alarm clock is ridiculous, but that's not the point.
It was a proper Gmail account? Or was it an email@domain account that maybe was using her work email address?
I’m asking because I used to work adjacent to this area, and I know of only a few scenarios where an account becomes a workspace account after being a consumer account.
Off topic a bit: Facebook just converted my personal account to a professional account. I have no idea why. Although as I think about it for a moment, it might be related to the fact that I visit/use Facebook less than once a year....
It's a completely avoidable situation too, there's nothing stopping them from offering custom domains as a perk of paid Google One plans for regular Google accounts. Workspace is beyond overkill for individuals, you shouldn't need all that complexity just to attach a custom domain to a personal Gmail account.
I had to admin Google Workspace maybe 9-10 years ago. It was rough but I thought they'd beep refining it. I'm back in a company using GW and I swear to god it's gotten worse. The basic features that simple don't exist are boggling. It is not a serious product and I feel bad for companies that have to use it. I've been here three months and I'm already planning our migration away.
Google assistant on the nvidia shield left Siri in the dust years ago. Siri can't even chain basic commands in your smart home, it can't retain any kind of context (e.g. dim the lights...a bit more).
reply