Voice control (Siri, Google Now, Amazon Echo, etc.) is not a very useful feature to me, and wonder if I’m in the minority.
Why it is not useful:
- I live with other people.
- Sometimes one of the people I live with or myself may be sleeping. If someone speaks out loud to the TV or phone, that might wake the other up.
- Even when everyone is awake, that doesn’t mean we are together. It annoys me when someone talks to the TV while watching basketball. I don’t want to find out how annoying it would be to listen to someone in another room tell the TV or their phone what to do.
- I work with other people.
- If I’m having lunch, and a co-worker wants to look something up on his/her phone, I don’t want to hear them speak their queries out loud. I actually have coworkers that use their phones as boomboxes to listen to music while eating lunch, as if no-one else can hear it, or everyone has the same taste in music, or everyone wants to listen to music at all during lunch.
The only times I use Siri are:
- When I am in the car.
- When I am speaking with others in a social setting, like a pub, and we want to look something up pertaining to the conversation.
- When I’m alone
When I saw Apple introduce tvOS, the dependence on Siri turned me off from upgrading my Apple TV.
Am I in the minority here?
I get the feeling I’m not. I cannot recall anyone I know using Siri for other anything than entertainment with friends. Controlling devices with your voice in public must be Larry David’s worst nightmare.