Same, this drives me nuts. I also should be able to interrupt it when sending a text, specifying a contact, or confirming -- I'm always ready to answer before

Same, this drives me nuts. I also should be able to interrupt it when sending a text, specifying a contact, or confirming -- I'm always ready to answer before it is ready. But like Maps, there seems to be a bizarre anti-UX in Google Now where the functionality has actually gotten worse over time. Recall Google's 1-800 number and their SMS search service?? I used to point to those as examples of how user friendly I imagined interfaces would become. But we've headed in the other direction instead and of course those products are dead.