Attitudes to the hugely delayed launch of the new Siri seemed to be split between frustration and resignation. Apple promoted the more intelligent voice assistant in a deleted video ad for the iPhone 16 , but it appears it may officially launch alongside the iPhone 18 .

Amazon’s Alexa+ service initially looked to be well ahead of Apple , but it too was delayed – and also appears to be failing to deliver on its promises …

The so-called conversational Alexa was first unveiled in February of last year. After being announced with much fanfare, it wasn’t long before the company started backtracking on some of its promises.

A soft launch in August didn’t go well , with reviewers complaining about missing features, reliability problems, and even basic commands failing. The full US launch didn’t take place until a month ago, with reviewers unimpressed .

wanted to give Alexa+ a fair trial, so used it on his for a month. I think it’s fair to say that his verdict is less than glowing.

After more than a month with Alexa+ on this 15-inch screen, I’ve concluded that Alexa+ simply doesn’t work well […] It maneuvers like an unpredictable toddler smashing around and half-completing tasks […]

It felt like interacting with a synthetic bridge troll haranguing me until I said the magic combination of words. The AI assistant can be so persnickety that I let out an exasperated sigh at least once during every interaction in my kitchen as I trudged over to the remote or touchscreen in resignation to finish something Alexa+ struggled to accomplish.

He gives several examples of Alexa+ failing miserably unless he managed to figure out the exact combination of words the assistant expected, which is the very antithesis of a conversational AI.

It’s also notable that this is the exact same complaint I had about the original Alexa way back in 2018. It claimed all kinds of capabilities but couldn’t deliver on any of them unless you had pre-installed the necessary skill and memorized the exact phrase required.

The new Siri would appear to still have time yet to deliver on its own promises.

Image: Amazon