Parker Ortolani writing Gemini, Siri, and Default Assistants on iOS, arguing that Apple should allow you to set a different default voice assistant:

it would do two things: it would mitigate some of the damage with customer relations while they wait for the new Siri and it sets a new bar for the Siri team to have to exceed. There would not be any room for failure and they need to be under that kind of pressure.

I would love to see metrics on what people use Siri to do on their devices today. Do the current LLM assistants like Gemini and ChatGPT satisfy most of the needs people have? How much is smart home and native Apple app integration (that no other assistants are allowed to help with) important? If third parties were given more access so that they could do these things, would they be quick to add these features to entice people to make the switch? It’s impossible to say from the outside, and we can all just share our anecdotal experiences.

For me, I’m happy enough to keep using Siri and map Gemini to my action button or lock screen complication like I can today. I don’t use Siri for much, but all of my tech purchasing decisions for years have been built around working with Apple’s ecosystem, so it’s just easier to have Apple’s assistant be the voice assistant, even if I don’t trust it to do much more than turn my lights on, tell me the weather, and tell me how old a celebrity is.

One thing that would be cool is if my iPhone could recognize different wake words. What if I could just say, “hey Google” and my iPhone would light up Gemini to answer, but I could still say, “hey Siri” to get Siri? This would treat voice assistants much like iOS treats password managers today where you can use Apple’s and a third party option at the same time and they both work seamlessly throughout the OS.

I already hear the argument against this: most people don’t care and won’t change this setting. I’d simply reply that for an 18 year old platform with 1 billion users, there’s basically no feature they can release that most people will use. We’re long past the “low hanging fruit” era of iOS updates, everything is helping a sub segment of their users. Also, “most people don’t care” isn’t a sufficient argument on its own. If it were, accessibility features and Shortcuts should be on the chopping block. “Most people” won’t use most features added at this point and in my opinion, you also need to explain why adding this niche feature would make everyone else’s life meaningfully worse.