30th September

Google Assistant was never perfect, but for a few years it did improve bit by
bit, and in a noticable way. Theyn it seemed to languish, because Google went
all in on LLMs and thought Gemini would make a great assistant. On the surface
it seems obviously more capable, but the few times I tried it, it sucked.

Then I heard Google were planning to do away with Assistant altogether in favor
of Gemini, which was alaraming, and now that day has come, which is hugely
disappointing. It's simply not fit for purpose and can't perform half of the
functions on device that Assistant could. Ask it to play a particular album
and it'll just choose something else. Maps control is vague and awkward, and
settings reminders just seems to be a non-starter. What's more, is that it
has no local functionality, meaning it must have a connection to function, and
because it's an LLM it comes with limits. Granted I'm not likely to hit them,
but I feel slightly better that this blunder is actually costing them in a very
real way.

More than ever a decent alternative to Android and iOS is needed. If only
WindowsPhone had survived. I'm no big Microsoft fan but WP was genuinely good
and was absolutely better than both iOS and Android at the time.