“Hey Siri, turn on the bedroom lights at 5:30AM”

“Hey Google, close the shades at sunset”

“Alexa, turn off the TV at 9PM”

“Hey Siri, turn on the A.C. if the temperature gets above 73”

“Hey Google, turn on the house lights when there’s movement in the entry area”

“Alexa, open the garage door when John gets home”

All of the above requests are things that can be done, but they all require some sort of rule be set up on a smartphone. While all of these assistants can turn things on, turn them off, move thing up and down, and such, they can only do those things now. I can turn on the lights now. I can open the garage door now.

If I want to automate something to happen later, I have to use the Apple Home app on iOS, or hope that Belkin, iDevices, etc. have built in automation features into their own apps. While the Home app makes this manageable, it’s still more work to go through the numerous screens needed to set a rule than to simply ask your voice assistant to do it for you.

Supported: “Hey Siri, remind me to take out the garbage at 7PM”

Supported: “Hey Siri, turn on the living room lights”

Not supported: “Hey Siri, turn on the living room lights at 7PM”

iOS (and Android/Alexa) can set reminders for the future where you’ll get a notification at a certain time or certain place, so they should extend that logic to support smart devices as well. This seems like such an obvious thing for these assistants to do that I’m honestly shocked that none of them support this yet.