I could see how it would be much more valuable in a major city, where traffic will be more accurate thanks to a greater number of users, and where public transportation is more widely available. Unfortunately, smaller metro and rural areas don’t benefit from any of this. As such, I rarely look at Google Now at this point. It never has more than 2 or 3 cards for me, populated by information that I either already know, or that isn’t totally accurate.

The biggest issue for me with Google Now is that you have to be totally immersed in Google in all phases of your digital life to get much out of it. I use Exchange at work, so it can’t see everything in Android I’m doing unless I limit how I use it (Android naively syncs with a single Exchange calendar). This isn’t an option for me at work because we use multiple calendars, some of which are shared. One benefit of Apple and Siri in this regard is that, because ALL third party calendar events are accessible in iOS either through CalDav or Exchange, Siri can notify you of any of them when you ask it to. I actually find it kind of funny that Apple, with all of its platform lockins, does a better job of parsing outside PIM information out of the box than Google, with its more open strategy.

I don’t use Google’s voice transcription much, but I know that it is really good. However, I’ve actually had a lot of success with Apple’s, as long as I am on WiFi or cell signal is good. I hear people complain a lot more about Siri than transcription. It isn’t really Apple’s, though. They just license voice transcription tech from Dragon.

Initiating dictation through Siri has limited usefulness, since it tends to cut off messages if you have any pauses in your speech. It’s only good for very short messages. However, using the mic button works very well for me. I have transcribed large sections of text for email or articles with few network problems. It would be nice to have it offline, like current versions of Android do, though. When Apple moves Siri and Voice Transcription to the Mac, that seems like a perfect time to test offline transcription.

I guess this all depends on what you like and what you are used to. I got used to Siri early on after its release, so I know its quirks and how to get the most out of it. Because of that, I am very comfortable using it for certain things that I need. I actually feel the same way about Google Now that many others feel about Siri. It didn’t knock it out of the park right away, and hasn’t been incredibly reliable for me, so my interest waned pretty quickly. Since it doesn’t fit where I live and what I use it for as well as Siri does, I don’t see that changing any time soon.