And I’m always annoyed that it doesn’t tell me how long I set each timer to when I have multiple timers, just the remaining time, which makes it hard for me to know which is which.

It’s not encouraging that even the most common use cases for these systems still have rough edges.

The Google ones do support named timers, so you can say “start a pasta timer” and later ask “what’s left on my pasta timer” etc. I thought Siri added this at some point, but I wouldn’t be surprised if not.

It does. "Hey Siri, set a timer for 45 minutes called pasta bake", "Hey Siri, how long left on pasta bake?" works.

Actually, it seems that google is now able to cope with things a bit better. I've just tried and I can now ask for "how long left on my 45-minute timer?" and it does finally answer. It actually also shows up in the UI. That is sort of recent, though, as I've had that problem earlier this year. It seems that siri is now unable to set multiple timers, though.

Anyway, it does seem to have improved, but I wonder why that stuff wasn't in from day one. It seems pretty obvious to me.

Nope, Siri can also do multiple timers. It asks for an name if an unnamed timer of the same length already exists.

Weirdly, the ability to set multiple timers varies by the device you are using.

A HomePod can set multiple timers. A Watch, iPhone, or iPad can only set one timer. There is no obvious technical reason for it. It just seems like only the HomePod team thought it was an important feature.

This becomes annoying if you have multiple devices set to respond to “hey Siri” and the wrong one picks up the request and then refuses to comply.

This used to be true, but at least the Apple Watch lets me do this all the time. I forget which OS update added the capability.

Oddly enough, in the iPadOS 15.7.1 at least if I say "Hey siri, set a timer for 20 minutes" it will say "20 minutes, starting now". Then if I say "Hey siri, set a timer for 5 minutes" it says "there's already a 20 minute timer. Replace it?"

If I say "set a timer for 20 minutes called A" it just ignores the "called A" part.

I do "Hey Siri set a timer for Foo for 5 minutes" I get a timer named Foo, and I can then set concurrent timers named Bar, Baz, etc. without replacement.

Yep, that seems to work which brings us back to the need to memorize fairly precise incantations.

It even plays a little Italian jingle if you start a pasta timer.

I discovered recently that you can set a timer just by saying "Hey Siri, four minutes," or however long you want, and she will set a timer to that length. Not that I'm doing anything with the extra second I've saved myself, but it feels good anyway.