Bixby bailout: Samsungers bailing on lame-duck assistant

"The delay is no surprise to industry analysts, who are growing increasingly skeptical of Samsung's ability to compete with the likes of Google and Apple when it comes to mobile software."

That's putting it very politely. Without wish to pick on Samsung (because all the others do it and they are all shit too), the only people who use the branded software on a phone are the people who don't know how to remove it.

All hardware vendors are complete idiots when it comes to writing apps. Samsung (OK, I am picking on them now) actually managed to write a chat application that only worked in the US and then proceeded to ship it on every phone they made, regardless of where it was sold. Presumably they have one or two decent kernel-level people on the staff, in order to write the drivers that they need because they idiotically refuse to document how their stuff works (so that they could use a mainline kernel). But apps? Nope.

Perhaps this is because, if you are really good at writing drivers, a major phone manufacturer is quite an interesting place to work, but if you are really good at designing apps, there are far better places to ply your trade.

This article reads as if voice assistance is something all users crave. It could be used as a price differentiator. I'd pay good money to have it permanently disabled.

Even if Bixby was amazingly clever, I still wouldn't use it. My Bixby button switches to the most recently used app, good for switching between 2 things. That is far more useful than a voice assistant (even a good one).

A new trend !

After 'fake news' we're now seeing the emergence of 'wishful reporting'. It's apparent wit all the reporters who now see the signs may is going to lose the election, Trump is going to be impeached and Bixby is going to be the undoing of Samsung and the final victory for Apple.

I can still remember the Scorn Siri attracted when it appeared, the derision of Cortana is still fresh in my memory, and a commercial with the line OK Google sending every android phone or a loop.

I doubt that Samsung users are shunning the 8 because Bixby isn't mature enough yet. Maybe the reporter would like very much this to be the case, but that doesn't make it factual.

Unwanted

My personal list of features/software to be actively avoided:

1. Anything that has an open mic when I have not initiated it for a call or recording.

2. Anything which does so AND is connecting to the net, thereby passing much input straight out over the airwaves.

3. Anything which for entirely trumped up reasons bypasses the enormous processing power of a modern smartphone for voice recognition, claiming this can only be done in "cloud". (Voice recog was working years ago on comparatively feeble CPUs: vendors use "cloud" for lockin, not because it helps you.)

4. And beyond that: any and all of the lousy, superfluous bloatware and other clumsy attempts by manufacturers to take me and my data hostage.

Just sell me a dratted phone, will you, and stop confecting bundles of shiny shyte designed to try and hook me like some feeble-minded, gullible would-be addict?

Digital assistants - don't really care about them, just as long as I can disable them.

They've always been fadish, just like Microsoft's good ol' pal Clippy.

People should just buy Google Pixel. I have one and it's great. All of the Google stuff you want, probably why you went with an Android phone, without any of the useless OEM apps and bloatware. As it is pure Android, it is also really fast and gets updates when they come out as opposed to whenever the OEMs and carriers feel like it (which could mean never if they want to move some new hardware). Samsung should just stick to hardware... where they are making a killing. No idea why they would want to take something perfectly great, an arrangement where Google does all of their heavy lifting for free, and mess it up. They are trying their best though. They want to be Apple, but it is more likely they will become nothing.

The problem is right there

"Bixby Voice benefits from time to further enhance natural language understanding, and we are currently growing our user testing in the US to prepare for launch"

If Samsung PR can't write a simple declarative statement in ordinary English, what hope is there for its software?

"Bixby Voice will improve its natural language understanding with time, and we are doing more testing in the US as we prepare to release it."

The $500 in the usual brown envelope please, folks.

Including Bixby in its current form was a fool's errand

I get that Samsung has been trying to push their own voice service/assistant for quite some time and acquiring Bixby was a next step but only partially implementing it was a fool's errand. It either should have been complete or not implemented at all in the S8 until they could drop the whole package in as an update at a later time. In the meantime, let Google's assistant do its thing.

I own numerous Samsung phones/tablets but I didn't move to the S8 because I have no need to upgrade yet but even if I had I would be one of the people over-riding the hobbled Bixby to use Google instead. In the long-run the poor decision didn't benefit Samsung at all.

Give it time. While the tech media never seem interesting in covering this angle, many of us prefer the Samsung approach for its emphasis on privacy and security. While Google assistant may be popular among the crowd who don't care about usage tracking, Samsung's solutions are very popular among the population who don't want to have their usage data tracked. This market is consistently under represented but it's huge and growing especially in light of all the new legislation being passed in the UK.

Bixby unlike how the coverage presents it doesn't work like Google assistant at all, it's a control hub that runs locally and doesn't leech your usage data to some server somewhere at all. In fact galaxies have tracker and ad blocking capabilties built in so everything can be used without restriction without usage tracking or ads.

Bixby is wasting everyone's time!!!

Bixby is wasting everyone's time! Here's how.

Bixby is a poorly programmed AI. I've used it for over half a year before I realized it's a huge waste of time, the reason is that Bixby lost EVERYTHING I taught it. And I taught a lot. Lately I was earning over 500XP points per day, and I would've become the top contributor worldwide within a month. Instead I became super frustrated and promised myself I would never contribute to Bixby and inform everyone not to waste their time to develop it.

When I called samsung regarding Bixby, the customer reps were making fun of me. I think it was a call-center in Philipines. They admitted they're all philipines at one point. They never helped me over the phone and were very irresponsible.

What we need is Samsung to allow other AI's to be assignable to the dedicated AI button. At the moment you have no choice but have bixby assigned to the AI/bixby button. If Samsung releases their phones the same way in 2018. We should avoid investing into their phones. Because They're trying to push a lame AI that's capable of forgetting everything. And that's unacceptable when there are way more advanced AI's out there.