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Apple 'Pressing Ahead' Into Prototype Testing for Echo-Like Smart Home Device Powered by Siri
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Oh please enlighten me O wise one. Because I have really detailed knowledge about industry practices and norms and fail to accept excuses that are routinely used when releasing less than the best products, software or hardware. I'm waiting with baited breath.
Competition is most definitely a positive driving force for advancement and a stagnation killer. Wishing ill on competitors is like shooting yourself in the foot as a consumer. I'd say 'vote with your wallet'.
Apple has a reputation of not necessarily being the first out of the gate with a new product category, but often having the most well-thought-out, most useful, and nicest implemented version of such new products. Many of us are willing to pay a premium for that.
Having said that, it seems that lately Apple is more of a follower than a trailblazer or perfectionist. They still have great products, but more and more confusion-causing inconsistencies seem to crop up in their product line-up. I hope I'm wrong, but I sometimes wonder if they've lost the razor-sharp focus they once had.
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I guess being older I subscribe to teaching kids when something is wrong or being wasted, rather than trying to circumvent bad habits by automation.
When they go to their friends houses, they will leave the lights on, not be an example for their friends etc.etc.
"Electricity does not cost much is the wrong attitude"
It does cost and not everybody is well enough off not to care.
And, having to provide and generate electricity uses resources (I know some green is used by power companies)
and just like water will have to eventually go up a lot in price, electricity will go too.
I may sound like a preacher, but there is nothing wrong with trying not to waste ANYTHING, whether it's cheap or not.
Just a general attitude trying to leave a livable planet behind for future generations.
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That should be combined with an air freshener!
Yeah, this is really important to me too. The effort of not only stretching out my hand as I enter a room, but actually needing to manipulate my wrist into pushing a switch, is one of life's greatest burdens. The kids in Aleppo have it so much easier in their bombed out buildings with no electricity, not having to deal with these awful awful trials of life.
It is even better than that.
Now that Apple, in their infinite wisdom, have removed the ability to give tracks star ratings in iOS I am forced to rely on Siri to set track ratings.
"Rate this track two out of five stars".
Siri's response-
"5/2 equals two point five"
Literally every time I ask Siri to rate a track it manages to screw it up. The best it does is kind of figure out I want to rate a track but misses what I want to rate it and asks
"what rating do you want to give this song"?
Siri is worthless for doing much more than setting kitchen timers for me. By comparison I've been blown away by how well Alexa works when I visit friends who have an Amazon Echo.
Wow. 
Apple copies another product made by someone else.... WOW!! Just Wow!!!!!!!!
I hate to say or admit it, but I miss Steve Jobs.... Apple is run by copy-cat incompetent "me too" types now. They can't even keep their computers up-to-date anymore. Horrible. Just horrible.
Apple copies another product made by someone else.... WOW!! Just Wow!!!!!!!! I hate to say or admit it, but I miss Steve Jobs.... Apple is run by copy-cat incompetent "me too" types now. They can't even keep their computers up-to-date anymore. Horrible. Just horrible.
I'd expect you're right. For some reason Siri isn't up to Apples usual excellence. Much like cloud services and music, Apple's efforts just don't measure up. One would think after as long as iCloud and Siri have been around they'd be far better than they are.
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I must say that you've nailed it, Apple seems to be adrift like a ship with a drunk captain.Wow.
I hate to say or admit it, but I miss Steve Jobs.... Apple is run by copy-cat incompetent "me too" types now. They can't even keep their computers up-to-date anymore. Horrible. Just horrible.
For HomeKit alone this would be worth it. I bought an Echo and while it's made me a firm believer in the idea behind the product, Echo'a execution is terrible. It's a pain to get to work with smart home devices and despite hearing accurate commands, more than half the time it won't do what you want it to do because it relies so heavily on ifttt and other janky 3rd party apps that don't work well at all.
Siri is definitely improving, but even as is, I'd buy several Siri boxes on day one for HomeKit control. Siri's been fantastic on that front on the iPhone thanks to HomeKit and iOS 10 improvements, and to have a device in home that others could easily control would be an incredibly compelling product. This is where things are going.
Siri is definitely improving, but even as is, I'd buy several Siri boxes on day one for HomeKit control. Siri's been fantastic on that front on the iPhone thanks to HomeKit and iOS 10 improvements, and to have a device in home that others could easily control would be an incredibly compelling product. This is where things are going.
Think about all those people who a) use Siri b) have an iPhone and c) use Bluetooth portable speakers.
The fact that there are hundreds of different speaker types around, should point them in that direction - provided they make it portable and chargeable with batteries.
It'll be interesting to see what form factor they build this in. I always figured it would be integrated into the AppleTV but little pods similar to the Amazon Dots might be interesting.
The primary use case is if you have a larger house, than it doesn't make sense to have AppleTVs in all your various rooms.
If they were to integrate into the AppleTV, I wonder if it would be into the base or if it would be into the control (the way Siri is now) with an always-on remote.
I believe Apple is in the best position to win in this space. The main complaint my friends have with their Echo is that Alexa is very limited in capabilities and commands. Even with Google's upcoming Home and all their Google Now work, those are all really dependent on Google providing all the functionality. Apple's approach of using Siri and their entire ecosystem of 3rd party apps, which is already going to available on launch day of this - that's just going to be hard to beat.
Apple's wait and let others validate the market approach for this one makes complete sense. It's OK for them to be slow to market because while they are trying to build the best product for this, their Siri-based ecosystem and HomeKit product offerings is just going to get larger and robust.
The primary use case is if you have a larger house, than it doesn't make sense to have AppleTVs in all your various rooms.
If they were to integrate into the AppleTV, I wonder if it would be into the base or if it would be into the control (the way Siri is now) with an always-on remote.
I believe Apple is in the best position to win in this space. The main complaint my friends have with their Echo is that Alexa is very limited in capabilities and commands. Even with Google's upcoming Home and all their Google Now work, those are all really dependent on Google providing all the functionality. Apple's approach of using Siri and their entire ecosystem of 3rd party apps, which is already going to available on launch day of this - that's just going to be hard to beat.
Apple's wait and let others validate the market approach for this one makes complete sense. It's OK for them to be slow to market because while they are trying to build the best product for this, their Siri-based ecosystem and HomeKit product offerings is just going to get larger and robust.
OR
...but Apple has chosen not to reveal first weekend sales numbers for the iPhone 7 because it feels the results are "crap" due to "running out of ideas".
You do realise that as you live in the UK it is law that every single thing you do on the internet is recorded and kept for I believe two years by the service provider your using at the time?
And when was the last time Amazon was hacked, or leaked information, or sold information without people knowing? Again your in the UK and you would have to be advised if your information was sold.
It's pure hyperbole all this worrying people have, Google and Amazon are a LOT more upfront with what they do with your information then Apple IMO, but thy are all trustworthy.
Put it this way, the UK government has lost data through careless MPs, I don't ever recall Amazon or Google being hacked yet, and that's one up over Apple.
Their was a story recently which highlights a worrying change, I don't bat an eyelid with what Amazon or Google or Apple do, but hackers obtained the medical records of British athaletes and posted them online, no idea why as none of them had cheated, but just think about it. Hackers will now target and obtain your medical records.
It's clear it's easy for them to get some information but hard to attack people like Amazon who state they have attempted atracks every day.
But believe what you want as it's a free world.
I believe under EU law (we haven't left yet) it's up to two years' worth of data retention but we're waiting for this (better known as The Snooper's Charter in the UK) to go live which our current Prime Minister was trying to push through when she was still Home Secretary. Many people suspect it's just trying to legalise what has been going on for many, many years under other powers and laws. They have studiously avoided the use of terms like 'databases' but there must be vast reservoirs of data on everyone and their activities.
Fair point re the data loss through carelessness (it's not just MPs but sensitive information has been lost, left on trains etc. by all sorts of people who shouldn't have.) I think I mentioned this elsewhere to someone else who was calling me out in this thread but my default instinct (and I admitted that this might be naive) was that I would trust Apple more to have something like an always-on device that responds to voice requests than I would over the likes of Google. For the latter, that's how they make most of their money, it's their business model. Amazon will already know a lot about me, as I'm a Prime subscriber and have been a customer since they started operating in the U.K.
My instincts are, if I were to get something like an Echo or the Apple equivalent it would probably be the latter that would be one I'd expect to be harder to exploit and would be less likely to be using personal data. Apple are extremely secretive so my instincts could be wrong.
Yes, the so-called Fancy Bears hacking team got into the World Anti-Doping Agency's system, probably via a phishing attack over email and got hold of medical records. There's no way of being sure but some suspect it's a Russian government sanctioned operation trying to score points due Russia's proven, state-sponsored doping program. They faced bans at the Rio Olympics (though not a blanket ban) and they were completely banned from the Paralympic Games. They're trying to make other countries (so far mainly U.S. and U.K. athletes) look bad because some have been taking medication, for which they've had legal exemptions (and many of them have been quite open about what they've taken) but it's a world of difference from what was happening at Sochi in 2014, for example. (FSB agents passing samples through a hidden tunnel in the wall.)
I'm not sure our beliefs are actually that different (I'd say it's currently a free world up to a point and depending on where you live) but our concerns seem to correspond; storing peoples' data online securely. Whether that's a corporation or a government, the data needs to be treated with care and respect, both in transit and at destination.
Def something for consumers to be wary about given what we already know is afoot.
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Never mind that, no more nookie in the living room, well unless of course you want to make it onto some Amazon employees Christmas office party video reel
Yes. Exactly! Privacy is most certainly a sacred right of a free society.
I don't think that real time camera info would be sent back to an Apple server.
Facial recognition would almost certainly be done locally, perhaps with its own dedicated processor, and limited to a small set of registered faces.
Sophisticated voice and sentence and intent recognition is harder, and that's why... only after a keyword is recognized to wake up the system... our voice is digitized and sent up to a neural network to be deciphered.
Facial recognition would almost certainly be done locally, perhaps with its own dedicated processor, and limited to a small set of registered faces.
Sophisticated voice and sentence and intent recognition is harder, and that's why... only after a keyword is recognized to wake up the system... our voice is digitized and sent up to a neural network to be deciphered.
Apple maybe not. Other companies, well let's put it this way, I've got Arlo security cameras and every single second of footage is uploaded to Netgear like it or not.
That may well be a slightly different situation, but still, unscrupulous companies like Google who need as much information about you as possible to sell to their advertisers so they can make billions off your back? I wouldn't trust them quite so much
That may well be a slightly different situation, but still, unscrupulous companies like Google who need as much information about you as possible to sell to their advertisers so they can make billions off your back? I wouldn't trust them quite so much
1) Google doesn't sell information to advertisers. They sell anonymous ad slots.
2) Apple collects info and sells anonymous ad slots as well. What do you think iAds is about? Heck, Apple probably has even more personal info on us. They claim to have almost a billion iTunes accounts, with our credit/debit card info, addresses, and purchase / location history.
Heck, at least Google gives us a dashboard where we can see what ad slots they'e put us in, and even edit that info. Does Apple do that? No, it would expose what they do.
Moreover, Apple makes noises about "people being the product" and then hypocritically sells access to us for cash. One example is making banks pay a constant blackmail fee just for their own customers to use standard EMVCo NFC payments.
But perhaps the best example of selling us, is the way that Apple has for the past decade collected over a billion dollars a year in kickbacks from Google for being the default search engine. In short, Apple gets paid for letting Google collect search info. That way, Apple can claim to not do it themselves, but make tons of money from it nonetheless.
Hit a nerve did we there. So let me get this straight, Apple, the company who consistently puts user privacy and security first. The company who is investing significant time, effort and money into industry leading differential privacy, which had been applauded by security and privacy advocates the world over. Is just the same as Google, the company who's very existence is entirely dependent on leveraging its users information in order to sell targeted advertising. Yeah, that sounds about right. Well let's run through some actual facts. Grab coffee, I'm sleep deprived and after that I feel like a rant.
To;dr, Naebody's perfect, all any of them actually care about is cold hard cash.
Well let's take a look at iAd first. That could probably be best summed up by someone who knows far more about it than either of us, Winston Crawford, who had this to say after he left Apple, before the demise of iAd.
When asked about Apple harvesting user data, this is what he had to say.
“I don’t believe they [Apple] are interested in this capability because they have a strict policy around what they do with user data,”
“IAd has great assets and great capabilities, but they are going to follow Apple’s policy to the letter of the law.”
So basically he believes the problem iAd had in the marketplace is because Apple refused to harvest and share private user data with advertisers, the service had no future.
Let's now take a quick moment to cover Apples privacy policy. I say quick because the full thing is rather lengthy as you can imagine.
But it's probably best summed up by Apple themselves "We use your data to create the best experience and we don't sell it".
With Apple all private user data is stored locally on the devices and encrypted. When there is a need for a communication between the device and Apple for information all of that information is both randomised and anonymous.
Let's break it down to some of their main services
As we've spoken about iAd, how about somewhere that a part of iAd lives on in a way. Something quite new in their services section maybe and one that offers up advertising. Apple News, well we all know that's tailored to fit a user, they must be supplying individual user information, well, no. What you read in the News app is not specifically linked to you as an individual. Instead it's tied to an anonymous News app specific identifier. You, as a user can even go and reset that information at any time.
What about the fact that the News app uses iCloud to sync and share your tailored specific news content. That surely constitutes identifiable information on Apples servers. No, again that information is stored and encrypted on your devices and only synced across the cloud, it is unavailable to Apple or anyone else.
The one area where the halo slips a bit is with the ads in the News app. Apple does use your news reading activity to tailor some ads to you. But crucially none of that information is available outside of the News app. None of that information is available in any other app or service at all. Apple also do not sell any of that information or provide any of it to advertisers to track you. You also have the option to turn on Limit Ad Tracking in the settings and Apple will not target ads to you based on your activity if you enable that.
Apple Music, well there's a biggie, what with them being so closely tied to the record labels. Your information surely isn't safe there. Well yeah, in order to provide you with tailored content specifically for you, they have to have some degree of tracking of your listening habits. Which is why they provide you with like and dislike options. All of that information is very handy to a publisher. Except as Apple states, no user information used in Apple Music is available for third party use and is not available for use outside of Apple Music. Oh well, next.
Since iOS 9 there has been proactive Siri which provides, for example, suggestions for apps. Everything required for the proactive features are stored on your device, not the cloud, not on any server. Unlike some services.
When there is a need to provide information from Apples servers to offer up personalised recommendations or say an intelligent reminder to leave the house because you have an appointment coming up. Apple uses anonymised rotating identifiers so that any information, locations or other data is not traceable back to you. That aside you can turn off the proactive features access to your location altogether.
Mapping, now here's somewhere else Google uses a lot of your personal information and data to earn money. But let's compare.
As far as Apples Maps app is concerned you are just a random number and one that regularly resets itself, wiping away every shred of your data when it does so.
Apples maps also splits up any trips you plan into segments. This is so that neither Apple or anyone else can piece together any of that information to track your whereabouts in any way. As Apple themselves say, ”Helping you get from Point A to Point B matters a great deal to us, but knowing the history of all your Point A’s and Point B’s doesn’t.
Google on the other hand stores and tracks all of your location data when you are signed in to your Google account. This let's them compile a complete overview of who you are, what things you searched for along the way, where you stopped off and so on. Of course none of that is of any use to advertisers is it. It's not as if they could pinpoint what gas stations you stopped at or where you went shopping or anythi.. Oh, wait.
I could go on and on but this is getting long enough and I can't be arsed really, I'll just finish up the Apple section by mentioning their industry leading on-device personal encryption and steadfast refusal to break their own encryption to supply user data to outside agencies.
Now let's do a quick rundown over some of Googles privacy polices and what they do with your data.
I'm sure this will be fine, I mean any company who scans each and every email you send or receive in order to glean out information for advertising purposes can't be bad can they. And yes, they do actually do that, by software of course. But if you think only the software could get access to it and no human, you're kidding yourself.
From the mouth of Google:
"We try to show you useful ads by using data collected from your devices, including your searches and location, websites and apps you have used, videos and ads you have seen, and personal information you have given us, such as your age range, gender, and topics of interest.
If you are signed in and depending on your Ads Settings, this data informs the ads you see across your devices. So if you visit a travel website on your computer at work, you might see ads about airfares to Paris on your phone later that night"........
.......Well that's just super. Sounds really nice and cuddly to me. They don't appear to give information directly to advertisers, that's a good thing. Now if only they didn't do the dirty work on behalf of the advertisers. What they're doing here isn't a world away from handing over your information, they're using every aspect of your online life to target you. Nice.
Gmail now there's something else that's awesome and safe and cuddly. "The ads you see in Gmail are based on data like keywords from the messages in your inbox. This process is fully automated; nobody reads your emails in order to show you ads.".......
........They say and I don't doubt that they believe that themselves. But are they 100% certain that absolutely no employee has ever had a sneaky peek? It's certainly technically possible so, yeah, I'm sure I trust that. But even if I did trust the machine, every personal email I send or receive scanned and dissected and stored in some company's data file on me, no thanks.
"Many websites and mobile apps partner with us to show ads. These advertisers decide to show given ads to audience “types” based on personal information our users have shared with us and data we collect about your online activities: for instance, “25 – 34 year old males who are interested in travel.”
We might also show you ads based on sites you have previously visited — for example, you might see an ad for those red shoes you added to your online shopping cart but decided not to buy. But we do this without revealing any personal information, such as your name, email address, or billing information.".......
..... So to cut it to the short version. We use any and all private data we can legally lay our hands on without getting slapped with lawsuits every day.
Here are the three main types of data we collect:
Things you do
When you use our services — for example, do a search on Google, get directions on Google Maps, or watch a video on YouTube — we collect data to make these services work for you. This can include:
* Things you search for
* Websites you visit
* Videos you watch
* Ads you click on or tap
* Your location
* Device information
* IP address and cookie data
Things you create
If you are signed in with your Google Account, we store and protect what you create using our services. This can include:
* Emails you send and receive on Gmail
* Contacts you add
* Calendar events
* Photos and videos you upload
* Docs, Sheets, and Slides on Drive
Things that make you “you”
When you sign up for a Google account, we keep the basic information that you give us. This can include your:
* Name
* Email address and password
* Birthday
* Gender
* Phone number
* Country
And that's just the basics, there's a massive, massive amount of stuff to go through when it comes to how Google uses your information. Take a good look at those 3 bullet pointed sections above. That's just a little of what they collect and leverage for advertisers when it comes to your personal data.
But the most crucial things in all of that are these. It's not randomised, it's not anonymous, it's directly linked to you as an individual and everything you say or do when using a Google service. And when something that stores so much information on a person is so tightly linked directly to them, security and privacy are naturally a concern.
As for Apple taking money from Google to be the default search engine in Safari, well that's just good business acumen. It has no bearing whatsoever on the security Apple provides. There are other search options available and if people choose to use google then that's their own doing.
Now I'm not saying that Google are all evil and should be banished. Not am I saying Apple are as pure as freshly fallen snow. All I'm saying is these are simply some of the facts, actual facts, laid out by the companies themselves and when it comes to an individuals privacy and security, I know who'd be near the top of my list based on just what's here alone.
Now do what you're going to do and rant away about it in defence of Google, I care not any more. I've said my bit, though actually it's mostly just facts from Apple and Googles pages. I must sleep now
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Jebus that's some bloody length now that I see it all
That is what Microsoft's Cortana does to me right now.
I hope that this works out for Apple because I love their ecosystem but use an echo for morning news while making breakfast and for controlling the lights and temperature.
Sometimes it's good to be first to a new technology, sometime is better to be late and let other companies spend their resources to figure out what works and what doesn't before coming up from behind and winning the race.
Look at Dropbox that was really a pioneer in cloud sync, and now they are just one of many options people have.
That's actually a rather nice use for them I hadn't fully considered. It would be nice to just grumble out a command and have the mornings news read to me while I bash about making my morning coffee.
Can't do that with Siri that I know of, when I try it on my iPhone I get the rather predictable "Here's what I found " response and I doubt my Watch would fare any better.
The future is going to be an interesting place. We may only be at the birth of it just now but I can see how in the future it's going to be like the films and tv science fiction of the 70's and on promised. Hope I live to see it.
We'll be barking out commands to some unseen entity to control almost every aspect of our daily lives. Hell I knew it was definitely headed in that direction when I got my first Smarter iKettle. A WiFi kettle for goodness sake, thing is, I do use it and find it very handy chatting away to visitors. Oh I'll just pop the kettle on, no keep talking I'm not going anywhere
Apple COULD have made the responses to specific queries you might use a lot programmable by the user and locally processed (instead of the "cloud spyware" it actually is), but hey, why make things easier or better or more private for the user when you can spit out spiffy words like "Cloud Computing" ?
My two cents.
Apple is wonderful and Amazon, with the exception - some might argue of the Fire Phone, is wonderful. Alexa is simply better in my opinion than Siri. Alexa is the hard working assistant that you buy a birthday and holiday gift for while Siri is the somewhat rude and dismissive assistant that you don't love, but don't fire in hopes that they retire.
We have an echo in the area where the kids do their homework and it is a great tool.
In my opinion, Siri would need a complete overhaul to compete on the same level as the Echo and Alexa.
Apple is wonderful and Amazon, with the exception - some might argue of the Fire Phone, is wonderful. Alexa is simply better in my opinion than Siri. Alexa is the hard working assistant that you buy a birthday and holiday gift for while Siri is the somewhat rude and dismissive assistant that you don't love, but don't fire in hopes that they retire.
We have an echo in the area where the kids do their homework and it is a great tool.
In my opinion, Siri would need a complete overhaul to compete on the same level as the Echo and Alexa.