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Who’s doing it better? I have yet to hear from a Google or Amazon user who has a transformatively better experience, and I think that’s why they haven’t jumped
by acdha 6mo ago
Who’s doing it better? I have yet to hear from a Google or Amazon user who has a transformatively better experience, and I think that’s why they haven’t jumped so far because they have hundreds of millions of users who have daily habits that they don’t want to lightly disturb.
- wenc 6mo agoRight now Alexa+ and Gemini are objectively better. The best is ChatGPT voice mode. It understands non English words and accents amazingly well, and even though the LLM model isn’t the full fledged one, I can have deep conversations with it for an hour without it missing a beat.
- barumrho 6mo agoSiri doesn't need to have conversations with you. ChatGPT can do that. But, it should be able to do actions you'd do on your phone.
- cachius 6mo agoSpeech to text should work. I regularly have to manually edit the transcribed input. The more special words the more frequent. Completely disregards the context of the current input, for example, on Hacker news might involve special technical and IT vocabulary.
- nozzlegear 6mo ago> Completely disregards the context of the current input, for example, on Hacker news might involve special technical and IT vocabulary. Does any voice assistant do this right now? Genuine question, I don't actually know. It sounds useful as long as it's not invasive.
- mh- 6mo agoAny of the LLM-based ones should pull this* off - so that's to say.. none of the popular commercially available ones, yet? Alexa+ does, but I don't use it for anything except kitchen timers and home automation triggers, so I can't speak to how well it works in a longer conversation. Zoom's meeting notes excels at this, Google Meet is terrible at it. Meet mishears our company name about 90% of the time; various attendee names are a coin toss. * "this" being: context consideration in speech-to-text/transcription.
- skeledrew 6mo agoPretty straight forward on Android at least to wire up a harness that talks to Tasker[0] or another full automation app. [0] https://tasker.joaoapps.com/ https://tasker.joaoapps.com/
- nozzlegear 6mo agoThe iOS equivalent would be Shortcuts, which, while not as powerful as Tasker depending on the context, is an official Apple feature that most apps support. Claude and ChatGPT both have various Shortcuts hooks, including voice conversation.
- mh- 6mo agoThe experience of having to tell Siri to "Ask ChatGPT <about something>" really sucks, though. It doesn't consistently do it, the handoff frequently just stalls out and you never get a response, the transcription that gets passed to ChatGPT is low quality, etc. And though I have the feature enabled that should cause it to ask ChatGPT about things it can't answer, that works even less frequently. But even if all of these things were true, the stuff on your phone you would expect to be exposed to the model as available tool calls, are not. So their efficacy is very limited. (edit: iPhone 16 Pro Max, if anyone is curious)
- nozzlegear 6mo agoOh I was just thinking creating a shortcut that you'd tap on your Home Screen/control shade (whatever it's called) to activate ChatGPT, or wire up to the action button. I forgot you can have Siri do the "ask ChatGPT xyz" thing – I agree, that integration sucks.
- mh- 6mo agoI'd definitely do the former. I don't even think this is specific to ChatGPT or Claude's apps. There seems to be something about how intents get triggered by Shortcuts on iOS that feels flaky to me. Whenever some app suggests a shortcut (most recently Starbucks promoted a shortcut that orders your "usual"), the success rate when I tap it is <50%. It's possible it's uniquely worse on my device, since I haven't done a "clean install" (vs letting the device upgrade flow copy over) in like a decade. But I'm also not up for dealing with the pain of setting up from scratch just to find out it's bad on a fresh profile, either.
- DaiPlusPlus 6mo ago"objectively better" is a subjective statement :) My preference, however, is for a voice-control UX just like I get with my Amazon Echo and "classic" Alexa like I have been for the past 10 years I've been using it: I think I can best describe it as a "voice-driven command-line" just like your OS' CLI shell, which makes its interactions predictable, even if it means I need to "know" what commands are valid in a given context. We all need predictability and reliability when it comes to my home-automation integrations. ...but computer interaction with a LLM / transformer-driven / "AI agent" is anything but predictable. When Amazon opted everyone into Alexa+ I agreed to give it a go and see if it really made things better or not - and it did not. I opted-out of Alexa+ and went back to something actually reliable.
- ShyCodeGardener 6mo agoWhenever I see one of these comments, it's always from someone that tried it at the start and then gave up because of a bad experience. And many times there are more people commenting back that this was essentially the 1.0 version and that the current 2.0 version is much better. So as someone that uses none of these products (old voice assistants vs. ai ones) it's really hard to evaluate if any of these anecdotes mean anything. You could have tried Alexa+ at the start when it was shitty compared to plain Alexa, and maybe it's better now. But equally none of the people that comment that it is "amazing" in its current iteration qualify their statements with their experiences comparing and contrasting the old version vs. the new version making them seem either unqualified to make statements based on how much "better" it is than the old version or at worse they are shills (paid or not). The best take is that they are comparing (e.g.) day-one Alexa+ vs. the current Alexa+ without a comparison to the original Alexa. ... which is to say that it really feels like there are no clear conclusions that could be drawn from all of this.
- DaiPlusPlus 6mo ago> that tried it at the start and then gave up because of a bad experience I've had enough bad experiences with products that never got better, or just got worse (Exhibit A: Windows 11). Like most primates, I am capable of learning, and I've learned that once a consumer product/service goes bad there's little hope of a turn-around. I accept that you're telling me that it's gotten better, but of the people I know IRL who also use an Echo, none of them have told me that Alexa+ is worth trying, let alone committing to. Yes, it's on me for not giving Alexa+ a second chance, but I'm not willing to give Alexa+ a second chance because, as a technology product/service customer, I just don't feel respected by the industry I work for (...lol); if Amazon, Microsoft, Google, et al won't respect me, why should I venture outside my comfort-zone for... what benefit, exactly?
- virgil_disgr4ce 6mo agoI concur that the ChatGPT voice mode is excellent. I can't even think of anything to knock it for other than for whatever reason it never 'hears' my kids, but that's probably because it's not intended to be used in multi-participant chats? But for one-on-one, it is a really outstanding experience. Especially since they tamped down the way over-the-top humanisms.
- alfiedotwtf 6mo agoThis! I talk to ChatGPT every morning, and will listen and navigate my feeds while I drive, summarises posts, answer my questions. It just works.
- HereticLocke 6mo agoI agree, ChatGPT voice mode is pretty impressive. Almost similar to Samantha in 'Her', laughably.
- bobthepanda 6mo agoScarlett Johansson is suing OpenAI, in fact
- nozzlegear 6mo ago> Almost similar to Samantha in 'Her', laughably. Things that Sam Altman would prefer people not say lol
- CountHackulus 6mo agoAlexa+ has been a massive downgrade for me. It's extremely laggy and constantly misunderstands me, whereas the old one never did. "Set a timer for 20 minutes" used to be instant and just work, I did this the other day and it took 10 seconds to respond and set a timer for 10 minutes.
- hamdingers 6mo agoSame here. I can see why LLM-driven voice assistants makes sense to product people in the abstract, but introducing non-deterministic behavior into a device I primarily use to help with timekeeping and control lights is nothing but a regression.
- mh- 6mo agoI had the same experience until I upgraded my Echo (we have a few, but the one in the kitchen gets 99% of the voice commands). Just looked it up in my order history: I went from an "Echo Show 5 (1st Gen, 2019 release)" to a "Amazon Echo Show 8 (newest model)". Whether I should have needed to upgrade is a separate question, but, yeah.
- stronglikedan 6mo agoAlexa+ is terrible compared to Alexa. It's so bad that I've dusted off my v1 echos cuz they're too old to run Alexa+. Complete shit show that is. I do like Gemini better than Assistant, even though it's not quite there yet. But that's just a matter of time because they actually designed it from the ground up to be a drop in replacement for Assistant.
- acdha 6mo agoI’m curious, what are you talking about for that long? It sounds like that’s moving out of the home automation space into something else.
- Cthulhu_ 6mo agoPlus, if someone else does it better (or different), I bet they've got a team and technology at a 90% done state waiting to jump on it, pick it apart and make it better. I don't think they're not doing anything.
- BoredPositron 6mo agoHere have an anecdote: Gemini Assistant is pretty good.
- phrotoma 6mo agoYesterday my google home mini gave me the current temperature in farenheit. I live in Canada and use a pixel. Dumbest fucking AI going. May as well give it to me in coulombs per hectare.
- bakies 6mo agoClaude.. I switched my phone assistent to claude and it does everything that google (used to) do like set alarms and timers, but also does everything claude can do.
- arnavpraneet 6mo agoHow did you do that?
- infecto 6mo agoI was looking myself and it appears only certain regions (Japan) have that option.
- bakies 6mo agoSettings > Apps > default apps > assistant
- hrimfaxi 6mo ago> Who’s doing it better? Any of the Whisper-based apps on the App Store.
- Wowfunhappy 6mo agoActually, could you recommend one? The ones I've found all seem to want subscriptions. I'm okay paying a few dollars for a well done frontend, but an ongoing sub to run an open weights model locally is nuts...
- oceansweep 6mo agoI’ve found this one to be useful offline with no ads: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6447090616 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6447090616
- oceansweep 6mo agoThis is one I use with no tracking or ads: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6447090616 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6447090616
- Wowfunhappy 6mo agoThank you! (It looks like you might have posted twice btw!)
- simgt 6mo ago> I think that’s why they haven’t jumped so far because they have hundreds of millions of users who have daily habits that they don’t want to lightly disturb. I don't think that's part of their decision making, Liquid Glass moved most things around for seemingly not much else than novelty and that's not the first time.
- alfiedotwtf 6mo agoWhen a company doesn’t have anything to innovate on, or hires a new marketing exec, the first thing they do is change the company logo. Liquid Glass was Apple’s logo change moment
- pram 6mo agoThere have been many metaphorical and literal logo change moments in Apple’s 50 years champ
- bmitc 6mo agoYea, if anything, it's Apple's normal mode to heavily disturb and move things around.
- bzbz 6mo agoAgreed. I vaguely remember another HN link that said Apple tried a competing-team approach to building a better siri, but it fell apart due to internal politics reasons?
- nebula8804 6mo agoLiquid Glass makes sense if this is what they are working towards: https://www.macrumors.com/guide/20th-anniversary-iphone/ https://www.macrumors.com/guide/20th-anniversary-iphone/ They have done this before, release something large early in anticipation of a major shift and iron out issues before the shift happens. Liquid Glass started off a little janky but they appear to have been ironing out initial issues with each update.
- naravara 6mo agoIt’s not “transformatively better” but it definitely involves fewer frustrations to interact with. That’s always been Apple’s main value proposition, you’re not getting the most cutting-edge stuff but you’re supposed to have something that “just works” not something that makes you go “GODDAMN IT!” when it inexplicably seems to fumble normal things. So if you buy Apple products based on that value proposition it’s a big problem for Apple if they can’t seem to keep their brand-promise in this area.
- recursive 6mo agoGoogle user here. My experience with the new assistant is worse. The old one could pretty reliably set timers. The new one could not.
- netsharc 6mo agoI hate it too.. the old assistant is pretty smart, obviously it has some language processing, but not "AI", but it's very fast for things like "Set alarm for ... ", "Remind me at X about Y", "Add calendar event on x at y about z", or "Navigate home". And now if I want to use Gemini on my phone I have to replace Assistant. Nah, I'll keep Assistant thanks, and just have a shortcut to load the Gemini in the browser. Except the browser experience is so fucking buggy, constant reloads needed..
- BeetleB 6mo agoOh man. I made the mistake of converting my Google Home devices to Gemini. The first problem is that it's just slow. If I want it to turn off some light, it takes a long time before responding. But yeah, the failure to do basic tasks. I have a routine that I used to have it run (controls several devices at once). Now: 10-20% of the time it runs it. 60% of the time it says it's running it but it doesn't do anything. 20-30% of the time it says it can't do it unless I opt in to invasive permissions. And when I opted into them, it still failed about a third of the time. So I opted out again.
- recursive 6mo agoI don't know if it's related to Gemini, but sometimes the Android Auto tells me "I don't have permission to do that" simultaneously with actually doing the thing that is allegedly lacking permission. Sometimes I want to move off the grid.
- BeetleB 6mo agoJust recently got my first "modern" car. Man, I hate touch screens. And I hate Android Auto. My previous car had an aftermarket Bluetooth system (radio, etc). It was way, way better than Android Auto or any entertainment system I've seen in any car.
- EwanToo 6mo agoAs a Google user in a household of iPhones, my opinion is Gemini on android is radically better than Siri.
- brightball 6mo agoGrok integration in a Tesla is doing it muuuuuuuch better.
- taude 6mo agoMy android phone was so much better for voice-to-everything. Whether it was transcribing my voice for text messages, or doing looks on the internet. Siri is just so bad. Still love not having google's paws all over my data, though, so not going back.
- nerdsniper 6mo agoOn just the transcription side: WhisprFlow produces much better speech-to-text for long text messaging-by-voice (dictation / transcription) than apple's speech-to-text does. Whisper models in general seem to do a lot better than most built-into-OS/app models. Which is interesting, because there's nothing stopping them from just using Whisper models. I love MacWhisper personally. Also, Gumroad is a fantastic app distribution platform for my personal values. https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper https://goodsnooze.gumroad.com/l/macwhisper As far the "decision tree" side ... there's not much that can be done about that now. Agentic agents still go too "off-the-rails" to be productionized out to the billions of smartphones of the world. I'm working on voice-controlled agentic-with-rails AI features for my HomeAssistant, because Alexa / Google Home suck. But that's a hobby project and rogue AI actions only affect me, not billions of customers.
- nozzlegear 6mo agoFeeling #blessed that I apparently have the exact same upper midwest accent they must've trained Siri on, because I've literally never had an issue with dictation or being misheard. And I use it a lot! (It misunderstands my wife from California all the time, though.)
- bmf 6mo agoWasn’t planning on it, but Show HN: JoinIn.AI?! We’re working on making a better audio interface to LLMs that is socially adroit enough to handle even multi-party conversation.