7 ms·

You totally underestimate the utility. Getting a voice assistant was life-changing for me. GPS comes nowhere close.

by Kiro 8y ago

lisper 8y ago
Yes, hence: YMMV. (Which, in case you don't know, is an acronym that stands for "Your Mileage May Vary", which in turn is an idiomatic expression meaning: a reasonable person could disagree.)
dlandis 8y ago
> Getting a voice assistant was life-changing for me Can you expand on that? In what way?
- saulrh 8y ago
  Compare the workflows for leaving a reminder or note. Before: * Find phone/computer * Unlock * Locate self in interface and navigate to application selector * Invoke note-taking or reminder app * Type in note or reminder * Navigate through tagging/scheduling interface * Commit note/reminder Or: * Locate notebook * Locate writing utensil * Open notebook to current page * Write note * Remember to check notebook every thirty minutes for the rest of your life After: * Be in shouting distance of phone or assistant base station * "Okay Google/Alexa, note to self/set a reminder for eight pm: <blah blah blah>" For most people the "before" is a minor inconvenience. These people don't really need organizational tools anyway. For people with memory problems the "before" is a rock wall that renders the vast majority of organizational technology functionally useless. You know how sometimes you walk into a room and realize you have no idea why you needed to be in the room? Or how thirty seconds spent answering email can end with all the the eggs you were juggling crashing to the floor and it takes you half an hour to get back "in the zone"? Imagine that, but it happens at the drop of a hat, five times an hour, in the time it takes you to say good morning to someone... or because you had to context-switch to execute the motion to unlock your phone. There are lives that can be changed by organizational technology. But exactly this population was the one least well-served by classical note-taking and reminder apps. That "before" workflow was the six-inch drop at the end of the wheelchair ramp [1]. Voice assistants are a game-changer. [1]: https://i.redd.it/x5qhwm2blyl01.jpg https://i.redd.it/x5qhwm2blyl01.jpg
  - lisper 8y ago
    * Find phone/computer * Unlock * Locate self in interface and navigate to application selector * Invoke note-taking or reminder app * Type in note or reminder * Navigate through tagging/scheduling interface * Commit note/reminder I just now took a stopwatch to time how long it took me to do all of this: 30 seconds, and 20 of those were walking to my office. That is not a negligible amount of time, but it's not a huge cost either. But... * Be in shouting distance of phone or assistant base station * "Okay Google/Alexa, note to self/set a reminder for eight pm: <blah blah blah>" That's what happens when everything goes right. But based on observing friends who have Alexa, things only go right about two times in three. The rest of the time Alexa gets something wrong, often with comical results. The time it takes to recover from those situations can be a lot longer than 30 seconds. Often my friends just give up and drag out a laptop, or, more often, just decide that whatever it was they were trying to do really wasn't that important after all and give up.
    - snaky 8y ago
      I think the key difference is the focused attention and brain bandwidth to spend. Traditional way is way more efficient but requires more of that - you need to do a relatively long sequence of actions, coordinated to the goal. Using voice, there is no sequence, and it doesn't matter how many times you need to try and to repeat the same simple phrase - you spend no additional bandwidth with every repeat. The voice way is like writing the simple add-mupltiply loop in C, and UI way is like writing the same in assembly (using vector extensions). Assuming you know how to do it very well, writing assembly code for that loop wouldn't be even longer to do. And you don't have a 100% chance the compiler will do the right thing with unrolling and vectorizing in this particular case, but most of the time you check the output and try another compiler options until it do the right thing, and only after a bunch of tries you finally resort to assembly. That's basic energy-conserving optimization present in people's firmware in their brain.
      - saulrh 8y ago
        Yep. A garbled duplicate of a reminder or note doesn't cost anything and even alarms aren't a major issue unless they're set for the middle of the night, so if anything hiccups I just retry. Your analogy touches on another important factor, which is that the human brain has a titanic amount of hardware dedicated to accelerating and reducing the overhead of voice. It's so good that it even participates in basic cognition, so most of the time the note you want to take is already right there and properly formatted for speech. There's a reason that "thinking out loud" is a thing. :P
- avip 8y ago
  The simple fact I can call people while my hands are on the wheel is a non-trivial improvement in my life.
  - justtopost 8y ago
    Basic voice dialing has been a thing for at least 15 years. Its progressively gotten better, and alexa et al. are no leap forward. The old sytems, while perhaps flawed, at least did not send recordings of you anywhere.
- mattwad 8y ago
  For people that are already into the IoT space, I think it's a no-brainer. I have smart bulbs (Lifx). They look great but have little to no support for physical switches, and the app works OK until you want to have two phones controlling them. Suffice to say, voice control has made the experience 10x better especially for guests. Now, we also have a Roomba and some other smart things. Rather than get a new app for everything, it's all controlled by once interface.
  - reitanqild 8y ago
    > ather than get a new app for everything, it's all controlled by once interface. Makes sense. But why does that interface have to be the clumsy, always listening crap that we see today? And why can no one except Apple[0][1] give any guarantees with regards to what they use my data for? [0]: No, I'm not a Apple fanboy. I just can't stand their UX, seriously, which is sad since I value their current stanace on privacy. [1]: And for what it's worth, Apple seems happy with selling out if the alternative is leaving the Chinese market behind as documented elsewhere in this thread. Although I'll admit that from what I read they where up front with their Chinese users about the change.
ams6110 8y ago
I hate talking to computers, so I don't see a voice assistant in my future ever. I'm in my early 50s by the way, and have been coding since I was in high school. Maps/navigation is the only reason I even have a smartphone.
Bartweiss 8y ago
I'd be fascinated to hear how. I can imagine things a digital assistant could do that I'd value quite a lot, but none of them are done by what's currently on the market. (And most of them would involve heavy smart-home integration, which makes their privacy failings even worse.) Meanwhile, the offerings I've actually seen so far look like their maximum utility would be converting tablespoons to cups while my hands are messy from cooking.

You totally underestimate the utility. Getting a voice assistant was life-changing for me. GPS comes nowhere close.

by Kiro 8y ago

You totally underestimate the utility. Getting a voice assistant was life-changing for me. GPS comes nowhere close.

Yes, hence: YMMV. (Which, in case you don't know, is an acronym that stands for "Your Mileage May Vary", which in turn is an idiomatic expression meaning: a reasonable person could disagree.)

dlandis 8y ago

> Getting a voice assistant was life-changing for me Can you expand on that? In what way?

saulrh 8y ago
Compare the workflows for leaving a reminder or note. Before: * Find phone/computer * Unlock * Locate self in interface and navigate to application selector * Invoke note-taking or reminder app * Type in note or reminder * Navigate through tagging/scheduling interface * Commit note/reminder Or: * Locate notebook * Locate writing utensil * Open notebook to current page * Write note * Remember to check notebook every thirty minutes for the rest of your life After: * Be in shouting distance of phone or assistant base station * "Okay Google/Alexa, note to self/set a reminder for eight pm: <blah blah blah>" For most people the "before" is a minor inconvenience. These people don't really need organizational tools anyway. For people with memory problems the "before" is a rock wall that renders the vast majority of organizational technology functionally useless. You know how sometimes you walk into a room and realize you have no idea why you needed to be in the room? Or how thirty seconds spent answering email can end with all the the eggs you were juggling crashing to the floor and it takes you half an hour to get back "in the zone"? Imagine that, but it happens at the drop of a hat, five times an hour, in the time it takes you to say good morning to someone... or because you had to context-switch to execute the motion to unlock your phone. There are lives that can be changed by organizational technology. But exactly this population was the one least well-served by classical note-taking and reminder apps. That "before" workflow was the six-inch drop at the end of the wheelchair ramp [1]. Voice assistants are a game-changer. [1]: https://i.redd.it/x5qhwm2blyl01.jpg https://i.redd.it/x5qhwm2blyl01.jpg
- lisper 8y ago
  * Find phone/computer * Unlock * Locate self in interface and navigate to application selector * Invoke note-taking or reminder app * Type in note or reminder * Navigate through tagging/scheduling interface * Commit note/reminder I just now took a stopwatch to time how long it took me to do all of this: 30 seconds, and 20 of those were walking to my office. That is not a negligible amount of time, but it's not a huge cost either. But... * Be in shouting distance of phone or assistant base station * "Okay Google/Alexa, note to self/set a reminder for eight pm: <blah blah blah>" That's what happens when everything goes right. But based on observing friends who have Alexa, things only go right about two times in three. The rest of the time Alexa gets something wrong, often with comical results. The time it takes to recover from those situations can be a lot longer than 30 seconds. Often my friends just give up and drag out a laptop, or, more often, just decide that whatever it was they were trying to do really wasn't that important after all and give up.
  - snaky 8y ago
    I think the key difference is the focused attention and brain bandwidth to spend. Traditional way is way more efficient but requires more of that - you need to do a relatively long sequence of actions, coordinated to the goal. Using voice, there is no sequence, and it doesn't matter how many times you need to try and to repeat the same simple phrase - you spend no additional bandwidth with every repeat. The voice way is like writing the simple add-mupltiply loop in C, and UI way is like writing the same in assembly (using vector extensions). Assuming you know how to do it very well, writing assembly code for that loop wouldn't be even longer to do. And you don't have a 100% chance the compiler will do the right thing with unrolling and vectorizing in this particular case, but most of the time you check the output and try another compiler options until it do the right thing, and only after a bunch of tries you finally resort to assembly. That's basic energy-conserving optimization present in people's firmware in their brain.
    - saulrh 8y ago
      Yep. A garbled duplicate of a reminder or note doesn't cost anything and even alarms aren't a major issue unless they're set for the middle of the night, so if anything hiccups I just retry. Your analogy touches on another important factor, which is that the human brain has a titanic amount of hardware dedicated to accelerating and reducing the overhead of voice. It's so good that it even participates in basic cognition, so most of the time the note you want to take is already right there and properly formatted for speech. There's a reason that "thinking out loud" is a thing. :P
avip 8y ago
The simple fact I can call people while my hands are on the wheel is a non-trivial improvement in my life.
- justtopost 8y ago
  Basic voice dialing has been a thing for at least 15 years. Its progressively gotten better, and alexa et al. are no leap forward. The old sytems, while perhaps flawed, at least did not send recordings of you anywhere.
mattwad 8y ago
For people that are already into the IoT space, I think it's a no-brainer. I have smart bulbs (Lifx). They look great but have little to no support for physical switches, and the app works OK until you want to have two phones controlling them. Suffice to say, voice control has made the experience 10x better especially for guests. Now, we also have a Roomba and some other smart things. Rather than get a new app for everything, it's all controlled by once interface.
- reitanqild 8y ago
  > ather than get a new app for everything, it's all controlled by once interface. Makes sense. But why does that interface have to be the clumsy, always listening crap that we see today? And why can no one except Apple[0][1] give any guarantees with regards to what they use my data for? [0]: No, I'm not a Apple fanboy. I just can't stand their UX, seriously, which is sad since I value their current stanace on privacy. [1]: And for what it's worth, Apple seems happy with selling out if the alternative is leaving the Chinese market behind as documented elsewhere in this thread. Although I'll admit that from what I read they where up front with their Chinese users about the change.

ams6110 8y ago

I hate talking to computers, so I don't see a voice assistant in my future ever. I'm in my early 50s by the way, and have been coding since I was in high school. Maps/navigation is the only reason I even have a smartphone.

Bartweiss 8y ago

I'd be fascinated to hear how. I can imagine things a digital assistant could do that I'd value quite a lot, but none of them are done by what's currently on the market. (And most of them would involve heavy smart-home integration, which makes their privacy failings even worse.) Meanwhile, the offerings I've actually seen so far look like their maximum utility would be converting tablespoons to cups while my hands are messy from cooking.