Apple is just waiting until last years tech is cheap enough to sell for next years price 
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Apple's Plans for Upcoming Siri Speaker Remain Unclear in Regard to Display
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Try reading the post from the beginning. The idea was a speaker that handed off to the phone to avoid having a screen on the speaker. That's redundant because you might as well start the operation from the phone.
LOL
Apple will surely under price the competition, keeping with their past history. If Apple comes in under $500, huge surprise.
Ivie? You mean...Jony Ive. Sound quality is important enough over a display in the home automation market. You seem to be concerned with the thickness of the device over the actual function.
It's so sad Apple could easily taken the guts of an iPad mini and spun it into a Siri station a year or so ago. You could have placed on a wall with a correctable fisheye lens allowing the user to drag their finger to scan the room on the mated unit or iPad. In any case you would see a normal flat image 180 degrees!
You could have even have offered a desk version with a motorized rotating base that would follow your movement or your voice in addition to the augmented view of the corrected fisheye lens.
The new 'Amazon Echo Show' is missing these needed key pieces to be really useful. Can you imagine having to get up and move the unit so you're in the image or you've aimed it at the back kitchen door but the intruder came in though the window. Or, you moved from one side of the room to another only to have your friend on the other end of the connection loose sight of you. This is why it needs to be able to pan & tilt magically following you just like a drone.
The unit also should take note of the temp & humidity, sunlight & interior lighting as well as your pets and intruders movements when you're not home or when you are a sleep. The core of the system should be a hub device which can be secured both physically as well as its network access.
You could have even have offered a desk version with a motorized rotating base that would follow your movement or your voice in addition to the augmented view of the corrected fisheye lens.
The new 'Amazon Echo Show' is missing these needed key pieces to be really useful. Can you imagine having to get up and move the unit so you're in the image or you've aimed it at the back kitchen door but the intruder came in though the window. Or, you moved from one side of the room to another only to have your friend on the other end of the connection loose sight of you. This is why it needs to be able to pan & tilt magically following you just like a drone.
The unit also should take note of the temp & humidity, sunlight & interior lighting as well as your pets and intruders movements when you're not home or when you are a sleep. The core of the system should be a hub device which can be secured both physically as well as its network access.
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I still don't understand. I could do this whole conversation from any one of the devices you sent the hourly forecast to.
I think the 'Show' looks like a great device that will fly off the shelves.
No doubt it will be $199 after promotions, Black Friday etc.
The fact that the 'Show' works with existing Dots and Echos for voice call will make this a 100% success IMO and save folks with long distance landline calls - cancel your phones landline, just have broadband.
No doubt it will be $199 after promotions, Black Friday etc.
The fact that the 'Show' works with existing Dots and Echos for voice call will make this a 100% success IMO and save folks with long distance landline calls - cancel your phones landline, just have broadband.
It's too late. Amazon is ahead of the game and that's a problem. Apple's speaker shouldn't come out looking like a "me too!" product. But at this point, that's exactly what it will be. And if history repeats, Apple will charge a "premium" (Apple Tax) which will mean an on-par device at higher cost only for convenience of working with other Apple services seamlessly. It will sell, but Apple has gimped themselves by waiting too long.
The ONLY, repeat ONLY object of the new Amazon device is to increase the amount of stuff you buy from Amazon. That's the be all and end all of the thing.
And you have to pay to use the thing! Great marketing by Amazon.
As I see it, Amazon wants to be the only major retailer left on the planet. What happens then eh? What competition?
No, it's not. It also is definitely not a tablet and it doesn't want to be one. Watch the video that Amazon made for it. Normal people in their every day life using this device for EXACTLY what normal people in their every day life would want to do with such a gadget -- when their hands are busy doing chores, working in their homes or changing their babies' diapers. The way Amazon lets them use the screen MAKES SENSE and actually is helpful -- beyond the scope of what a tablet could do in any of these situations. Amazon "got it".
And yes, I will buy one of those gadgets, too, the moment they become available in Germany.
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Yes, it will be better looking, absolutely. But that will be the only advantage. At the same time, it will also be less useful and it will be crippled in some way - because it will be dependent on some other iOS device that I don't have and don't want to buy. Then there is Siri, which is not even playing the same sport as Alexa...
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Good luck with using that combo without your hands.
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Amazon got it nailed. They focused on the things where a screen can actually add value to Alexa, and they made it work. And at this price -- especially since you can get two devices for a significant rebate (just to push the video call feature) - this thing will sell itself (at least in first world countries).
Oh... And then there still is the fact that this platform is entirely open for third party developers and everybody can develop "skills" for Alexa with almost zero investment.
With Amazon having launched the Echo Show, a new Alexa-enabled smart speaker that comes equipped with a 7-inch screen, Bloomberg has shared a little tidbit on Apple's own speaker plans, making it clear that there's still no concrete information on whether Apple's speaker will include a display.
In a piece outlining Amazon's new speaker, Bloomberg references a comment made recently by Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller, where he said that a voice assistant in a device without a screen doesn't "suit many situations."Rumors of Apple's work on some kind of in-home Siri-based smart speaker to compete with the Amazon Echo first surfaced in early 2016, but while the speaker is said to be close to launching, details remain scant.
We've heard it will feature Siri integration and focus heavily on sound quality, with "excellent acoustics performance" and some form of Beats technology. Design details shared in late April said it would feature a Mac Pro-style concave top with built-in controls and a "fat" body with speaker mesh covering the majority of the device, but no display was mentioned.
The new Amazon Echo Show
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said the speaker has a 50 percent chance of debuting at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference coming in June, and as Bloomberg first mentioned in September (and reiterates again today) the speaker is currently being tested within the homes of Apple employees, so it may not be long before we have more concrete details about the device.
Based on today's Bloomberg report, Apple's speaker will have one benefit over the Amazon Echo and Google Home - native Apple Music integration. Amazon devices chief Dave Limp told Bloomberg that while Amazon would "love to have Apple" the company is "not super big" on allowing Apple Music integration.
For more details on Apple's upcoming Siri speaker, make sure to check out our dedicated roundup, which aggregates all of the information we've heard about the device so far. More information about Amazon's Echo Show can be found in our launch article.
Article Link: Apple's Plans for Upcoming Siri Speaker Remain Unclear in Regard to Display
They should make a larger 17"-19" version, kind of shaped like an iMac, that houses a keyboard and mouse inside the body somewhere. That way, you can talk to it all day long, and interact with its touchscreen, but when you absolutely need to type something out, you can just pull it off the counter and make it into a full fledged PC.
Exactly, an iPad mini with a speaker-dock (incl. extra microphones) conceptually provides the same functionality. Sure, that's more expensive than Amazon's solution but it gives you a detachable tablet on top. In principle, Apple could release an Echo-like product that also allows for docking of iPads and iPhones.
How else would it be a Siri speaker with a screen if it didn't have, like ya know, a screen.
Otherwise, it'd just be a Siri speaker.Presumption being everyone else has multiple Apple devices?
Sometimes utility in a product goes beyond our own personal use case. I have no use for an Apple Watch but that doesn't mean I can't see the utility it brings to someone else.
Yes it is called a television. It's also called a iPhone, an iPad, and an Apple Watch. Owning that television didn't seem to stop you from getting those other speakers with screens on them.
If by "make waaayyyy too much sense" you mean "only considers a narrow personal scope that depends on the ownership of other Apple devices to actually be valid"... then yes, you're right.
If the Apple iHome (speaker) or whatever they plan to call it, ships without a display, it will already be old tech. Amazon has Apple beat in this category for the time being, even if Apple doesn't even plan on releasing one.
Yeah, that'll be great. You set up your Siri Home Companion to echo to your phone and head out to work.
Meanwhile, your lovely wife is back at home trying out the new tech, not knowing yet that the results also go to your screen.
You, at work, are surprised and then amused to see her experiments. She's asking first for the time, then the weather, then for a fact about someone famous.
You decide to show your coworkers how cool this idea is.
Then suddenly you all see results for an Ashley Madison man search show up on your iPhone. Then a list of divorce lawyers.
Ooops