I got really tired of SIRI popping up when I accidentally held down the home button too long; so I finally went into my settings and turned her off. Now, she no longer talks to me , but the little screen pops up and tells me about SIRI just in case I actually want to turn her back on again. I have also read that both SIRI and Alexa are basically spying on us, and I imagine that it true whether I have her turned on or not. With Alexa, all I have to do is talk to her and ask her to play music and she does; so she must be listening to every thing, to know when I am speaking at all. I just figured that there is nothing that is important in my life for the government (or even the dreaded Russians) to be interested in, and if they want to spy, they will do it one way or another anyway; so like Chrissy, I do not even worry about it.
Pretty much the only thing I ever say to Siri is "Shut up, Siri." I have an iMac, a MacBook, and an iPhone, all with Siri, but the few times that I have tried to get Siri to do something for me on my computer like open a file or play a song, the Siri on my iPhone answers instead. Even if my phone is all the way across the room and I am sitting right in front of my computer, the phone Siri answers and I'm supposed to stand by while she searches for something that she's not going to find because it's on my computer, not the phone. I'm thinking of getting something with Alexa so that they can talk to one another and leave me alone.
I don’t ever use Siri on my phone or iPad and have her turned off, but I have discovered that Siri is very useful with the Apple Watch. When I want to call Bobby (we lose each other in Walmart ), the easiest thing to do is just use the watch/phone and say , “Hey Siri, call Robert”, and she takes care of it immediately. For some reason, she doesn’t understand “call Bobby”, but when I say Robert, then she knows who I want to talk to, probably because he is in my contact list as Robert and not as Bobby. I seldom call anyone when I am driving, but if I need to do that, then using Siri and my watch is the easiest thing , and I can still keep both hands on the wheel while doing it.