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My only potential problem with HomePod is Siri. Siri is the dumbest assistant of the major assistants out there. That's really a shame considering Siri has been around the longest of all of them.

You claim doesn't hold up in the all the most popular side-by-side comparisons.

Check YouTube for recent voice assistant comparisons. MKBHD has one just a few days old.
 
People love to rag on Siri because it's an easy target. In no way is it terrible, but a lot of people think it should be much better due to it's time on the market and Apple's software prowess. At least it's not as bad as Bixby.:eek: Each assistant has it's strengths and weaknesses. MKBHD recently did a voice assistant challenge. Of note: you can tell where he was trying to "help" certain assistants in some queries - especially his speech pace with Bixby. To be fair, it's new on block.

I see why he chose the phones in question- but was he afraid to add Cortana to the mix too? Granted, only the HP Elite X3 and Alcatel 4S and some older Lumia's are available for Windows 10 now but even so...

I tried the experiment out myself with Cortana and it did pretty good.

I tried to do some extra stuff with Cortana on a 950XL to see how it coped so I said:

'Send a Message to my wife'
I got the reply - OK - who are you sending the message to'
I said the name of the person in my address book.
I got the reply - OK - do you want me to associate 'name of person' as your wife?
'Yes'
'OK - what is your message'
'Hi there. Just a quick message to tell you that I'm running late and will be home around 5:30pm'
'Alright <she then repeats message> then adds 'Send it, add more or start again'
'Send it'
'OK - Message sent'.

All worked seamlessly. I then tried

'Add a message to my calendar for tomorrow at 2:30pm called 'Design Meeting' for 90 mins.
'Alright - repeats everything back, getting the 90 minutes correct i.e. 2:30-4pm and not 'Design Meeting for 90 mins'.
Is this correct?
Yes
OK

Next - Translate 'What's the quickest way to the railway station' into Japanese.
Sure things - here is how to say 'repeats question' into Japanese. A Japanese speaker then speaks and the kanji appears on screen.

and so on... how does Siri / Bixby / Google deal with all this?
 
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I see why he chose the phones in question- but was he afraid to add Cortana to the mix too? Granted, only the HP Elite X3 and Alcatel 4S are available for Windows 10 now but even so...
I don't think it had anything to do with being afraid. Cortana is virtually nonexistent on mobile. What would be the point? Say he included Cortana and it won, impressively even. Then what? Bragging rights? It's not really like anyone could take advantage of it. Imo, there simply was no consumer facing reason to include a basically non mobile assistant in a mobile comparison. An assistant challenge on desktops/laptops? Sure, that makes more sense. Mobile? Not so much. Again, just my opinion.
 
I don't think it had anything to do with being afraid. Cortana is virtually nonexistent on mobile. What would be the point? Say he included Cortana and it won, impressively even. Then what? Bragging rights? It's not really like anyone could take advantage of it. Imo, there simply was no consumer facing reason to include a basically non mobile assistant in a mobile comparison. An assistant challenge on desktops/laptops? Sure, that makes more sense. Mobile? Not so much. Again, just my opinion.

I thought he was comparing the technology rather than which phones come with the best assistant. I can't imagine there are many phones out there with Alexa on them and only the Galaxy S8 has Bixby.
 
Interesting, I always thought Anker was (at least partly) owned by Amazon. (They do in fact own a number of brands and give no such indication as such during the buying process).

Back to the point at hand - just another cash-grab "smart" speaker flooding the market.
 
I see why he chose the phones in question- but was he afraid to add Cortana to the mix too? Granted, only the HP Elite X3 and Alcatel 4S and some older Lumia's are available for Windows 10 now but even so...

I tried the experiment out myself with Cortana and it did pretty good.

I tried to do some extra stuff with Cortana on a 950XL to see how it coped so I said:

'Send a Message to my wife'
I got the reply - OK - who are you sending the message to'
I said the name of the person in my address book.
I got the reply - OK - do you want me to associate 'name of person' as your wife?
'Yes'
'OK - what is your message'
'Hi there. Just a quick message to tell you that I'm running late and will be home around 5:30pm'
'Alright <she then repeats message> then adds 'Send it, add more or start again'
'Send it'
'OK - Message sent'.

All worked seamlessly. I then tried

'Add a message to my calendar for tomorrow at 2:30pm called 'Design Meeting' for 90 mins.
'Alright - repeats everything back, getting the 90 minutes correct i.e. 2:30-4pm and not 'Design Meeting for 90 mins'.
Is this correct?
Yes
OK

Next - Translate 'What's the quickest way to the railway station' into Japanese.
Sure things - here is how to say 'repeats question' into Japanese. A Japanese speaker then speaks and the kanji appears on screen.

and so on... how does Siri / Bixby / Google deal with all this?
Tried the first one in Siri and she asked the name of my wife, then asked if I wanted her to remember that.
 
You claim doesn't hold up in the all the most popular side-by-side comparisons.

Check YouTube for recent voice assistant comparisons. MKBHD has one just a few days old.

I watched that video. He did a small subset of things relative to all the possible things you could throw at voice assistants. I do agree with his general conclusion -- Google has the best voice assistant and everyone else is just trying to catch up.

Also, I don't agree with his conclusion that Alexa is the "baddest" as in, the worst, voice assistant. The skills you can add to Alexa give it the potential to be infinitely more powerful than Siri is today. Also, I just don't have the same expectations for a voice assistant in a $35.00 device as I do for a voice assistant in devices that easily sell for 10 times that amount (or much more). If Apple is going to charge a premium price, they need to put the fit and finish on their product. Siri has been around for too long now for people to make legitimate excuses for it.
 
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This is an interesting move for Alexa services, and I'm almost tempted to pick one up for the bathroom (how about a news brief during the morning shower?).

I'm fully HomeKit-enabled around home, and deep into the Apple/SIRI ecosystem, but Apple's tendency to be laser-focused on specific niches (like music) constantly confounds my desire to adopt a flexible technology. So the extremely expensive SIRI speakers hold no interest for me as the only room I listen to music is outfitted with a much nicer stereo system.

Alexa's larger web of home control products is great; in addition to controlling everything SIRI can, it also handles things like my Logitech Harmony Hub, so I can easy control my whole A/V system by voice.

The thought of adding extra $35 hubs for the system in tertiary rooms makes it all the more appealing.

And yes, while I do have an Apple Watch on me most of the time, the SIRI delay is significant enough that I mostly avoid using it at home since Alexa's response time is so much faster. More than once I've found myself walking into the condo with arms filled with groceries happy to be able to just call out and have the kitchen light turn on for me. That kind of effortless ambient response is just not on Apple's roadmap it seems.

Apple is pretty far back in the catch-up game on this front, unless you don't have a nice stereo, are happy having voice control in only one room, subscribe to Apple Music, and want an expensive music device that won't integrate with your home theater system.

But for so many other use cases the ability to invoke Alexa on inexpensive devices is WAY ahead of where Apple is now.
 
Back to the point at hand - just another cash-grab "smart" speaker flooding the market.

And this is bad... how? It's definitely not bad for Amazon: There's another device using Alexa - and with that Amazon's services - on the market. 35 bucks, good enough as a radio replacement, perfect for use in offices, garages, the kitchen, the bathroom and it fully supports all third party devices that are compatible with Alexa. If that doesn't attract customers, what will?

But for so many other use cases the ability to invoke Alexa on inexpensive devices is WAY ahead of where Apple is now.

And Apple will NEVER get where Amazon is with Alexa or where they will be in the future. The HomePod costs 10 times as much as the Anker speaker -- and it is targeted at an entirely different audience. Apple actually seems to believe that people buy smart speakers to mainly listen to music - apparently they have no vision for other use cases, they just see it as an extension for their Apple Music service. Yes, the HomePod will sell and yes, most of its buyers will only use it for exactly that purpose. Meanwhile, Amazon's Alexa will find a place in the home of everybody else who's on a budget and who's not locked into the much more expensive Apple ecosystem.

I'm also looking forward to the Echo Show becoming available outside the US -- and for compatible devices in the same category. Then I'm sure we'll soon get a one thousand US dollar "smart screen" from Apple as well...
 
External connections to speakers shouldn't be necessary if the quality of the audio of the HomePod is of high quality. Otherwise, external speakers would defeat the purpose of owning the HomePod for the audio experience Apple is claiming will deliver. But i your situation, the Dot would make sense to have external speakers.
It's necessary if you're on Spotify.
 
I watched that video. He did a small subset of things relative to all the possible things you could throw at voice assistants. I do agree with his general conclusion -- Google has the best voice assistant and everyone else is just trying to catch up.

Also, I don't agree with his conclusion that Alexa is the "baddest" as in, the worst, voice assistant. The skills you can add to Alexa give it the potential to be infinitely more powerful than Siri is today. Also, I just don't have the same expectations for a voice assistant in a $35.00 device as I do for a voice assistant in devices that easily sell for 10 times that amount (or much more). If Apple is going to charge a premium price, they need to put the fit and finish on their product. Siri has been around for too long now for people to make legitimate excuses for it.

Apple doesn't charge a premium price for Siri per se; you're comparing the echo dot, which only does voice assistant, with a high end smart phone, which does and is about infinitely more. btw, Siri comes free with macOS. FREE!
 
Tried the first one in Siri and she asked the name of my wife, then asked if I wanted her to remember that.

That'd be a good script for a film - a virtual 'Fatal Attraction' where your virtual assistant goes on a mad rampage through cyberspace, altering your wife's Instagram, Twitter, bank accounts etc. ;-)
 
Apple doesn't charge a premium price for Siri per se; you're comparing the echo dot, which only does voice assistant, with a high end smart phone, which does and is about infinitely more. btw, Siri comes free with macOS. FREE!

Yes, but Siri is not "free". Yes, we no longer need to pay to upgrade macOS. We also don't pay to upgrade iOS, watchOS, or tvOS. However, in order to use any of those OSes, you must first buy hardware from Apple. It's for that reason that I stand by my statement that Apple does, in fact, charge a premium price for Siri.
 
Like Apple isn't a services and software company first (iPhone retail aside)? Both of those "asides" are both companies first and foremost. And Apple, like Amazon, also gets large portions of it's profit from services.
Pretty weak comparison, Amazon's aside isn't tech, but retail. Apple's "aside" is their mainstay in tech.

Take a guess why iOS upgrades are free, why macOS ones are too.

Why did they make iLife free?

iWork as well... All of these supplement the hardware.

Glassed Silver:ios
 
Having tested the Genie while it was under an NDA, I was surprised that it had some unadvertised features. One neat hidden feature of the Genie is that is also acts as an AirPlay speaker... now let's see if that is still true after today's firmware updates.
 
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