One of the best parts of HA is the HomeKit bridge: any supported device is exposed to HomeKit …… so if I’m using a personal device, my VA is Siri. Much smoother and more integrated than any of the app VAs. I have it configured to require a click, so it’s not always listening. However the rumors of the upcoming Apple smart home hub are mighty enticing, so we’ll see
I stopped using Google Assistant years ago.
Echo devices are pretty much in every room and a huge privacy issue. Also that’s my one integration with the biggest internet dependency. I don’t know if I can get rid of them, but I’d surely like to try
I’m not into any of the assistant ecosystems, they creep me out too much to have them listening in.
I’ve got my HA instance set up for independent VA integrations and I’ve had a few tries and using pi’s with microphone and speaker hats as custom endpoints, they worked okay-ish but it fell by the wayside eventually and i’ve just been waiting on this kind of first party-promoted kind of announcement to get back in to it.
They also used to creep me out, but Siri was the one that got me. Of the majors, Apple is most concerned about privacy and the only one whose business model is not exploiting us that way. More importantly, as something on personal devices, it’s still useful if you require a click rather than always listening. It becomes normalized, and you no longer consider what you’re giving up
Then we discovered using Alexa as an intercom, and the convenience of always having it listening in every room, and threw out our own privacy. I’d really like to claw this back
