Good thing they were first to market with a wearable device and iPods... /sarcasm
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Apple's Echo-Like Smart Speaker With Siri and AirPlay Could Debut as Early as WWDC
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Good thing they were first to market with a wearable device and iPods... /sarcasm
Yes, I understand the architecture of Siri, and it was not a great business decision. Siri is completely irrelevant in the smart home right now. I can't recall the last time i've actually asked her to perform an action or look up something.
How do you expect Siri to recognize a local HomeKit instruction without the Apple's backend functioning? If Apple has an outage, Siri will just be "really sorry" and "she can't understand me right now". HomeKit will be rendered useless on Apple's "Smart" Speaker.
Acquisitions are meaningless when a company can't actually succeed at improving Siri. The mere action or stating such a thing does not make it true. It's going to take more than a few news articles to convince me. I can't be the only one here who is suffering from Siri's poor voice recognition capability and limited abilities.
How would you even measure Airplay success? It is not a stand alone device. It is in hundreds, if not thousands, of third party products. When I was searching for new receivers last year, it was part of my criteria for choosing one. Luckily, it is included in nearly every receiver out there, so it was no problem finding it. It is also in AppleTV2, 3, and 4. It is in Airport Express devices. It is in tons of third party stand alone devices. It is in speakers. I would call it successful if you consider market saturation important.
Just a quick list of some of the third parties that utilize Airplay:
Denon, Onkyo, Sony, Phillips, McIntosh, Marantz, Phillips, Pioneer, Harmon Kardon, Yamaha, Classe' Audio, NAD, etc.
The same holds true for Siri. How are you measuring success? It is in one of the most successful consumer products in history, it is in the best selling tablet, and it is now in the Mac. Apple has improved it over the years, so they still have it on their radar. If anything, a new device with Siri will only make it better because Apple will make it even more of a priority. It isn't perfect, but none of these assistants can say that at this point.
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Don't forget AppleTV. I am hoping they add this (and 4K) to the next gen AppleTV then I will buy.
I agree with you to a point. The initial Siri team had a great concept and it worked in smaller environments but if I'm going to guess on why Apple went and acquired VocalIQ is because they found that Siri was probably always going to have scaling issue. I think Siri was correct in that you always want the input to be natural language. Here Alexa struggles a bit and Google Home is a bit better (no need to enable skills).
I've lost internet connection and my Hue system still works great only remote access is hampered. You are not alone in your struggles with Siri...I find the accuracy variable. I'm looking forward to the next generation.
No, I am not. But I'm pretty sure you're speaking poorly of a product you know nothing about. So I thought I might offer another perspective. Sorry if I struck a nerve. You know none of this really matters, right?
This.
If they turned the current Airport Time Capsule into a device that could mesh and had SIRI capabilities, i think that would be a huge deal.
That would mean that early adopters (who presumably already have good wifi in their homes) and others would have to spend much more for this device than for Google and Amazon competitors. I've already got Eero in my house creating a fast wifi network. I don't particularly want to buy multiple $300 machines so that I can get some voice coverage. Not when Amazon sells me the Echo Dot for $40. If Apple wants to sell one that combines a router/wifi type setup and one without, that is fine. But let's not drive the price up too much by adding extra stuff that isn't optional.
Want are you on about? Airplay has been neglected for years and most third parties are not including the technology anymore in their speakers. As with a so many Apple things, it was a great promise but hampered by poor execution and bad licensing. It could have been the standard for wireless media but everybody uses Bluetooth now.
The fact that the Echo has no screen really forced Amazon to make everything work with voice only. HOPEFULLY the same will happen with this thing. It's the #1 thing that keeps me from using Siri beyond very simple things. As long as I have to keep looking at the screen, I might as well touch the screen.
They're good for controlling lights, setting timers, and learning informative facts, such as: God only loves Christians, dinosaurs still existed thousands of years ago, Republicans are the same as Nazis, and Barack Obama is the Emperor of the United States and is plotting a coup.
I find Siri is great for setting alarms, decent for controlling lights, and worse than useless if she doesn't quite get the name of the store (or whatever) that you want (she'll cheerfully mis-hear a name and give me driving directions to the other side of the country - NO human would do that).
We'all see... Being a brainwashed Apple "sheeple" myself, I must admit that Siri is terrible. I use it daily for the basic functions (time, weather, alarms, hue lights), but outside of that, it's pathetic. I can't believe the shortcummings in all these years since release.
Sure, but Alexa was designed to work inside a speaker. Siri was designed to work inside a smartphone even when it was a 3rd party app. So it is a legit hurdle for Apple. But they've had plenty of time to work on that. No real excuse now.
I use "hey Siri" all the time for my Hue lights and sometimes Ecobee thermostat. You don't need a screen for that and no different than Alexa except presumably Siri/Homekit is a tad more secure. What I'm hoping for is Apple has a basic low cost version like the Dot that I can put in several rooms in the house.
"I am on about"...how it is in hundreds of products. It may not be in very many crappy stand alone speakers, but it is integrated it to many systems by top end audio companies across the spectrum.
People that care about sound quality don't use Bluetooth in their main systems. Yes, Bluetooth is fine for crappy stand alone speakers. I don't know that Apple cares too much about Airplay not being integrated in those type of speakers or they would have already had speakers on the market with that feature. They focused on higher end stuff like the Airport Express and the other stuff I mentioned.
(As a side note, Airplay started as AirTunes and was only available on the Airport Express. That changed to Airplay and they made it compatible with photos and videos on the AppleTV. They have also made it available on hundreds or maybe thousands of other products. Bluetooth cannot handle video or photos and it is not bit perfect with CD quality files, so we are talking about a much less robust platform right now. I hope Bluetooth expands into other areas since it does not rely on the user to have a modern router or wifi, but it really isn't a direct competitor to Airplay. Casting is the closest competitor, but it is limited to a lot less apps than Airplay on iOS, so it has its own advantages and disadvantages)
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I thought Siri was adequate until I got/used a Google Home. The Google Assistant is FAR superior over Siri, its ridiculous! Don't get me wrong, Google Assistant is far from perfect and I love Apple products but Siri pisses me off more than its useful.
If you (try to) use Siri, I'm sure we all have bad experiences with it, beyond the "here is an article"... my example: I plug my iPhone into my stereo in the car, its within Siri's mic-earshot so I can say "Hey Siri [pause and wait] shuffle the 'bangers' playlist" ...this used to work...however, it was the ONLY playlist that would take the "shuffle the [insert other playlist name here] playlist" command. Weird. Suddenly a couple weeks ago, that command just stopped working.
In a nutshell, I want to replace my Google Home with an Apple product as we are a 90% Apple/10% other home, some things work okay together, but damn Apple needs to step up and REALLY get Siri up to snuff to get an in-home assistant working properly.
If you (try to) use Siri, I'm sure we all have bad experiences with it, beyond the "here is an article"... my example: I plug my iPhone into my stereo in the car, its within Siri's mic-earshot so I can say "Hey Siri [pause and wait] shuffle the 'bangers' playlist" ...this used to work...however, it was the ONLY playlist that would take the "shuffle the [insert other playlist name here] playlist" command. Weird. Suddenly a couple weeks ago, that command just stopped working.
In a nutshell, I want to replace my Google Home with an Apple product as we are a 90% Apple/10% other home, some things work okay together, but damn Apple needs to step up and REALLY get Siri up to snuff to get an in-home assistant working properly.
It is strange that the issues are not across the board with Siri. I just tested it with three different playlists and it works without a problem.
We have a couple Echo Dots at home and the main upside is that anyone can use them. Alexa has issues understanding on occasion, but it is faster with some inquiries than Siri.
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It could be argued that this has always been the case. Not the first music player, not the first smartphone, not the first tablet. In the long run, it never hurt them.