Tim Richards
James Bannan@timrichards the only thing I use Alexa for is setting timers (the visual representation on the Echo Clocks is great) and using a voice trigger to control home automation. I never ask it anything
@jamesbannan I do ask Siri questions about the weather, and celebrities' ages, and conversions to metric units, etc. So I do get some use from it. But it's annoying how often it's unreliable, in that it doesn't hear what I'm asking accurately.
@timrichards the modern tech experience does seem to involve a lot of shouting at inanimate objects
@jamesbannan Ask @NarrelleMHarris how often I end up yelling at Siri before it hears what I'm asking properly!
Narrelle M. Harris
Kevin Boyd (he/him) 🇨🇦@timrichards i used siri shortcuts to make a voice dictation flow that writes directly to my Obsidian vault's daily note.
@kboyd I have no idea what that means, but it sounds impressive :)
@timrichards It means that I can voice dictate a Captain's Log, like on star trek, by saying "Siri, Captain's Log".
It's not as elegant as depicted on TV, due to input processing limitations, but it does work. And it's powered by Siri thanks to Siri Shortcuts.
So the assistants aren't necessarily as useless/inflexible as they might seem, is my core point.
@kboyd Cute. So that's intended as a diary entry?
@timrichards yes, exactly.
Dan W@timrichards everything that Siri can do adequately could be done using the Pre-Siri Voice Command feature.
Apple have removed this functionality from history, but I was more successful playing a specific song from my music library on my iPhone 4 than I have on any iPhone since.
jellibat@timrichards I always turn siri off right away when i set up a phone. I've not seen any use for it yet. though if my arthritis gets worse I'm sure it will be useful then
@jellibat To be fair I do use it a reasonable amount, but not for anything particularly amazing. A lot of checking the weather, setting timers, asking for foreign currency conversions, that kind of thing.