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Comment by andrewmcwatters | Hacker News Reader

Crappy? Dude, Siri at one point couldn't even tell you what today's date was. The bar is on the ground.

I do not know if it is because I have been trained to make simple requests, but there are only a half dozen things I would verbally ask a robot.

- time of day

- calendar date

- weather

- set a timer

- simple math calculation

That’s 90% of the functionality right there.

Funny you mention this. My usage is the same. I suspect we’ve all been trained to expect little-to-nothing from these assistants.

I'm sorry, something went wrong with your "what time is it" request.

Oh you asked "what time is it in Miami?" Because I already cut you off after "what time is it".

This happens on a daily basis when I'm not talking right into my phone.

It's even better asking it to play a playlist I have made and downloaded in Apple Music only for it to say "I'm going to need your permission to access your Spotify data" and play something completely random.

Even saying something like "play the playlist ____ in Apple Music" doesn't help, it cuts the "in Apple Music" part of.

For me I ask a lot of things like "How do I say <xxx> in Spanish". It's better than a google translate because it's not quite as literal, it will translate to proper colloquialisms if necessary.

And incredibly it manages to get those wrong a non-trivial amount of the time.

Think Different

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