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Virtual assistance, which company, Apple, Google or Amazon is the best choice or none or all?

If you do go back probably ten years or even twenty years and you would say that there is going to be a virtual assistant where you can ask what is the weather, dim the lights, give me directions to the Golden Gate Bridge it probably sound like something futuristic or right out of the Jetson’s that was a cartoon that aired on Cartoon Network.

My first virtual assistant was Apple and while I am very happy with the virtual assistant there are a few things that I’m not too crazy about and I could say the same thing with Google’s virtual assistant and I’m sure eventually I will be saying the same thing with Amazons virtual assistant so let’s do a comparison of all three of them.

Getting the attention and making them listen:

For Google and Apple’s virtual assistant you must say Hay Google or Hay Apple, then your question or command, however for Amazon’s all you have to do is say the name of the assistant Alexa then then your question or command or if you still want to say “Hay Alexa” you can do that as well.

Public broadcast system that’s built in to them:

All three virtual assistants have a built-in public broadcast system that you can make announcements and it will broadcast to all of them once you have stopped speaking.

If you have two or more of the same kind that are on the same network then all you have to do is say hey or the name of the assistant make an announcement and once you have stop speaking it will then broadcast announcement over the others.

You can use the app as well to make an announcement as well, for the app, see below:

• Apple: You must use the Home App: To do that, you need to first be added as a member in the home settings of your home app.
• Google: You must download Google Home and then signin to your Google Account
• Alexa: You must download Amazon Alexa app, signin.

Music:

All three virtual assistant pull music from their music service for example Google pulls music from YouTube music, Amazon pulls music from Amazon music an apple pulls music from Apple Music generally speaking all three of them offer a basic service for free however to be able to play a specific song on demand, listen to completely ad-free, listen to any songs you have added to any of your playlist if you created any, be able to download any songs for off-line listening (if allowed) and many more other perks a subscription is required.

• All three offer a free trial usually for 30 days and a credit card is required and if you do not cancel before your 30 days you will automatically be charged to normal subscription service unless you choose to cancel. All three of them offer a month to month subscription service or you can choose to purchase a year subscription and usually you would save.
• All three of them allow you to create different playlist whether you have a subscription or not however in order to listen to any music from your playlist a subscription is required but the level of subscription does not matter for this.
• All three of them do not have any advertisements if you have a paid subscription, this includes a free trial.

Calling via virtual assistants (this is not the PA):

All three virtual assistance allow you to make phone calls through them but they will need your phone number or you can choose to give them a phone number issued by the company (Google Only)

• Apple: iPhone’s only – No iPads sorry. This specific feature will only work with an iPhone it will not work with iPads regardless of the version the iPad is. If you want to make an outgoing call from your iPhone hands free you can ask the virtual assistant to call Nathan for example and virtual assistant will call Nathan if it is found in your contacts, if you have more than one Nathan than you may need to say the full name or say witch Nathan to call. You can also ask the virtual assistant to call a phone number as well and the virtual assistant will call that number.
• Google: This feature is only available on some devices that have Google assistant. If you have a device that has Google’s virtual assistant you may be able to get a phone number issued from Google as they have a service called Google Voice. Google Voice is basically a virtual phone number that you can send and receive text messages in addition to sending and receiving telephone calls. In the Google Home app you can say use this phone number instead of using your phone number and in addition you can have your number show up as unlisted or listed. They still need your phone number but you can use your Google Voice number, make it show up as unlisted or listed. The only way to make outgoing calls is the phone number must be added to your contacts, if the phone number is not added to your Contacts you will not be able to make a telephone call. In the past if this wasn’t required but unfortunately this is not a requirement.
• Alexa: You can make telephone calls hands-free via the Alexa but Alexa needs your phone, you must add your phone number into the communicate tab in the Alexa app.

Third-party services:

All three of them allow you to use a different service other than the default service which is the one that they are owned by, so you can use a third-party service in lieu of the default music service, but for this I will only be covering what all three allow you to use.

• Pandora (Free with ads or paid subscription without ads)
• Sirius XM (Free with trial with no ads, subscription radio, ad-free)
• Spotify (Free with ads or subscription, ad-free)
• IHeartRadio (Free with ads or subscription, ad-free)

User friendliness:

When I mean by “user friendliness” is how the assistant answers and does what you want it to do, not how easy to use or difficult it is to use.

This probably will be based on personal opinion or preference but I’m going to go ahead and post it anyway because I think it is important.

When it comes to Apples assistant Siri I think Apple definitely needs to improve on how the assistant answers. For example if you ask Siri to fart for example, you’ll get some answer other than a fart sound. I think Apples assistant Siri is always very serious and down to business. Some people have even accused Siri to be known to have an attitude or be rude in some cases.

Google and Alexa, I think both of them pretty much rank exactly the same in my opinion, the both of them are willing to do a little bit more like if you ask it to fart they will have some fun.

Shopping:

Amazon’s assistant only: This is by far one of the coolest feature that Google and Apple‘s assistant doesn’t offer that is notifications on price changes on items that you have saved for later.

A few days ago I had added a few items to my shopping cart on Amazon but then decided to save them for later to see if the price would drop so I would be able to save a little bit more as prices on Amazon tend to change all the time by decreasing or increasing.

Amazon’s assistant was indicating that there is a notification, when I checked out what the notification is; the notification was about an item that saved for latter, the price had changed by dropping. After the assistant told me about what it was to the new price, the assistant asked if I wanted to add it to my shopping cart so I could check the product details before buying or I would also have the make the purchase on my behalf.

Prices:

I think Google’s assistant and Amazon’s assistant is pretty much within the same price range depending on which version they usually will cost around $30-$40 depending on where you choose to purchase it from and if it is new or used.

Apples assistant as a standalone assistant is going to cost anywhere from around $110-$80 depending on if it is new or used and where you get it from.

Conclusion:

I probably could compare all three of them on every little thing but I think overall, all three assistants provide a unique experience. I think all of them offer different features but the other one doesn’t offer which sets them apart from each other on the other hand in some ways it all come together to support the same thing that is to answer questions, support music service i.e. Sirius XM.

Photo Source:

The photo used as the featured photo for this article is licensed under Creative Commons Zero (CC0), public domain. You can find the photo uploaded by Kai Stachowiak @ https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/en/view-image.php?image=203592&picture=background-wallpaper.