One thing to add to this, it's amazing that in 2025 voice assistants still suck so badly. You'd think this is a problem AI could finally nip in the bud.
But even giving my phone the dumbest of instructions will result in an agonizing back and forth where it doesn't hear me quite right and constantly has to repeat back things.
Heaven forbid you ask the phone to do anything useful like change a setting or pull up directions for you. You will be unceremoniously dumped out of the conversation and into some sort of hellish afterthought experience.
I ski a lot and wear headphones for music and to take any emergency calls. I use siri to ask “What time is it?” 50:50 whether or not it works. This has been my experience for as long as siri has existed and I have kept up to date on hw and sw. I only stick with it because pulling the phone out in the cold is even more annoying than having to repeat the long press and myself. Don’t get me started on a question that simple needing an internet connection… because I’m excluding that error case.
Siri was better in the past while driving, and actually helpful at times. Nowadays it demands that I unlock my phone. My mistake? My car doesn't have Car Play. I drove a rental last week and Car Play was far more cooperative. Sadly, it appears that I am being punished because I don't happen to be able to replace my car as often as I upgrade my phone.
It downright sucks when the local pronunciation isn't accepted by Siri. In Ottawa we pronounce St. Laurent Boulevard as the French do - "cent lorann", yet Siri only accepts the sourthern style American pronunciation of "saynt lawrence". This happens for a whole lot of place names in eastern Ontario given the bilingual nature of the national capital region.
But even giving my phone the dumbest of instructions will result in an agonizing back and forth where it doesn't hear me quite right and constantly has to repeat back things.
Heaven forbid you ask the phone to do anything useful like change a setting or pull up directions for you. You will be unceremoniously dumped out of the conversation and into some sort of hellish afterthought experience.