I'm glad you're happy about it, but for me, Siri is a disaster. It only has about a 75% chance to get a simple music command right. Pretty hopeless.

I'm always pretty surprised by the disparity, I wonder if its an accent thing. Quite frequently we use our HomePod from the other room since they were too pricey (before today) to put in each room. I cant think of a time where its had an issue with us giving it commands even when we're hollering from the adjacent room.

It probably is - I live in London with a spectrum of housemates from about the place and the needed "Alexa voice" is basically RP if you want it to work at all.

Siri has gotten much better for me. It's actually useful now. With my Airpod Pros I can reliably respond to texts using my voice. Music commands are also much better.

I'm not sure if I have just adapted my commands to ones that work, if Siri is improving, or it's both.

Google assisted has a 40-59% success rate for simple alarm and timer commands in my home.

That is a surprisingly exact percentage range. How are you tracking this?

I must be getting old because playing an audio track, looking up some information or changing the volume seems a first world "problem" and is still incredibly easy just by using the device that is performing the task, eg. playing music. Back in the day, using my CD player or cassette player didn't seem like hard work.

The gulf between the "issues" that these devices solve and real problems in the world (starvation, war, death by covid) has never been wider.

I honestly am happy that they're useful for people but they feel like devices looking for a real purpose. I know someone with 70+ "smart" lightbulbs and cameras and devices all over his house and I do not understand how turning the light on or off can be considered too difficult for him to do.

I think reading through this thread confirms it! Didn't mean to target your comment in general but this is as far as I've got reading through this thread.

Like you, I wouldn't trust the Google or Amazon devices at all!

I've been a homeowner for nearly a decade now and I have to say I sympathize with you, even if for slightly different reasons, mainly the "hassle" factor. I see most of these "smart" things as just one more thing that can break.

Sure it may take a bit longer for me to initially run some wire for speakers (or cost more on a new home build), but once it's set up it is one-and-done. My stereo receivers are a little bulky, but they hide in a corner and the last forever and I don't need to debug their internet connection when I change my Wi-Fi password.

In engineering we talk about building solutions that are as simple as possible, and no simpler. Light switches and door locks are the epitome of this; adding batteries and wireless communication yields a "wow" factor at first, but I cringe at the idea of the numerous ways these can all fail now! I have enough to deal with just keeping up with maintenance on the simple stuff. I'll keep my nightly routine of manually turning off lights and locking doors, thank you.

Not to mention the fact that all of this is changing so fast. Are my HomeKit compatible devices even going to work with whatever phone/speaker/tv setup I have 10 years from now? Am I going to have to pull out all my light switches then? You know what's compatible with the human finger I expect to see at the end of my hand in 10 years? A normal freaking light switch.

I expect that by the time my kids are grown up everything will have settled on a common standard and "smart" devices will be a boring commodity product made by boring brands like GE on my boring Home Depot shelf. At that point I'll probably consider putting it in the wall. Right now I see 50 different one-off Chinese brands racing to the bottom competing with $100 top-of-the-line latest-and-greatest Apple techs and it's all just not worth the effort.

Turning off one light is not hard. Walking through the house in the evening to make sure the kids didn't leave lights on (and to lock up the various doors, and set the thermostat back, etc) is annoying. Being able to speak a single voice command to do all that on my way upstairs is much more convenient. Could I still do it by going to a different room? Absolutely. Is it nicer to not have to do that? Definitely.

Why did you have a CD player if cassettes worked for your? Was rewinding the cassette really too much trouble? Kids these days...

Audio fidelity! CDs were better than cassettes, even the later metal coated tape! CDs had no easily-discernable hiss for the most part (although a few early tape to CD transmissions were very hissy). Having said that, cassetes were far more robust and I regret getting rid of my Walkman with Bass Boost, that's for sure.

So? I'm sure you could understand the words just fine on cassette. Wanting to hear a bit less hiss in your recreational music listening seems like a pretty "first world problem" to me...

Good point!! You have highlighted my foolish complaint!

A sign of getting old indeed: when the technology at stage `n` is surely good enough and you see no reason for `n+1`. ;-)

You also set up a nice straw man there. Nobody’s saying that these things are “solving problems”. They’re just cool new technology. Being able to ask for an album while I’m chopping the vegetables for dinner is cool. Why not?

I must accept I am out of touch with the kids, like Principal Skinner...

"why not" is quite a good question though. I will ponder, thanks.