Siri in its current incarnation is a distant third compared to Cortana and Google Now (or what ever they call it). I also think this is very much a knee jerk reaction given the unexpected popularity of Amazon's Alexa.
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Rumored Siri Speaker in Production Ahead of Possible WWDC Debut
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They need to be mesh wireless routers and extenders... which given the engineers form the Airport Team have supposedly been shifted elsewhere could be a possibility ( no idea where that leave time capsule though? )
Homekit extenders
To be fair I think any wired Apple device should be part of a mesh wi-fi setup...These speakers / Apple TV / iMacs / Pros ( even when in sleep mode ) future Time Capsule device etc
The need to have apps be apple to access and use them like Alexa skills... HomeKit is great and all but that is not a complete solution for home automation.
Oh and definitely be able to use them as a home intercom when they are setup around a house... seems freaking obvious.... "Siri call Office speaker"
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I find Cortana completely unusable... perhaps it's due to location (UK) - Doesn't provide any meaningful information. Totally agree with Google Now being streets ahead.
Alexa is also very useful although they need better algorithms for the mics to ignore what's playing... if music is over 50% then if just never picks up the "Echo" / "Alexa" you have to wait for a break in the songs
Homekit extenders
To be fair I think any wired Apple device should be part of a mesh wi-fi setup...These speakers / Apple TV / iMacs / Pros ( even when in sleep mode ) future Time Capsule device etc
The need to have apps be apple to access and use them like Alexa skills... HomeKit is great and all but that is not a complete solution for home automation.
Oh and definitely be able to use them as a home intercom when they are setup around a house... seems freaking obvious.... "Siri call Office speaker"
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I find Cortana completely unusable... perhaps it's due to location (UK) - Doesn't provide any meaningful information. Totally agree with Google Now being streets ahead.
Alexa is also very useful although they need better algorithms for the mics to ignore what's playing... if music is over 50% then if just never picks up the "Echo" / "Alexa" you have to wait for a break in the songs
I think that's the case, I use Cortana on my PC and it works great, and I've used it on a windows phone back when I had one of those bad boys. It was more feature rich then Siri was.
I found it quite odd that Apple was the first manufacturer to come out with a voice assistant on the phone, and yet has not really ever improved it, where as Google, MS (and not Amazon), have taken that idea and run with it. I think Apple dropped the ball on this and they could have had a killer feature if they only kept improving it.
All of these comments saying Apple had better improve Siri amuse me. Do you really think they will put a product like this out and not put any effort into Siri?
I suspect this product won't ship immediately because they will be working on Siri. There will be a slick presentation and then they will announce a date to ship. After that everybody will criticize the delay and it will be sold out beyond Christmas.
I suspect this product won't ship immediately because they will be working on Siri. There will be a slick presentation and then they will announce a date to ship. After that everybody will criticize the delay and it will be sold out beyond Christmas.
Multi-room capability a-la Sonos is a must. Otherwise, go back to the lab.
dont forget the iPad "flop". the one with the name so bad it sounded like a sanitary product. no one would buy that. dig out the analyst predictions and see how many got that wrong. most of them.
i still am on the fence over whether this "voice assistant" product is needed at all but then i can't see a need for an Apple Watch or Apple TV yet even though i have a heap of other Apple products. Neither Watch not TV do enough for their price (for me). I got sick of charging my FitBit every three days. A Watch would be worse than that. I already have a Chromecast for watching Netflix so an Apple TV offers little extra. It looks nice. Just hard to justify buying. Friends who have Watches say they are good but not essential tech. Would they buy them again? No.
Fingers crossed the new iPad pro/s deliver... that purchase I could justify.
Yes
I'm not sure, because I think it may be priced higher then Amazon or Google's offering, just because Apple tends to pick a high price point. I suspect you're right about it not being ready in June, perhaps it will be based on OS X 10.13 which will be released in the fall.
I have the google assistant app and it got the theater correct. I tried multiple questions on both and some are the same but most google is better at.
I have an Alexa, two in fact. I'm really not sure how anyone can have one of these and then be surprised that they are popular. I mean you just speak into the air, anywhere from the room, and it plays pretty much any song you want. That is in its simplest form and it is darn close to magic. And the thing is very cheap. I haven't even set up any of the extra applications and I still use it every day.
Also, since the dawn of modern day Sci-Fi writers have been assuming that computers would have voice integration features with an AI component. It seems amazingly obvious to add a few better microphones and an electric cord for always on capability and make the AI assistant ubiquitous. This should have surprised no one except that Amazon did it first, cheapest and best.
Apple is late to the game. However, this will likely be similar to both the iPhone and the iPod. Apple will be late but its product will be the best. I certainly hope this isn't a knee jerk reaction. In face when they were designing the very first iterations of Siri I really hope they thought of attaching Siri to a bunch of world class microphones and a power cord and played around with this idea. Such an experiment probably would have taken an hour to set up and it would be an obvious one.
I think there's a difference between this product and the iPhone/iPads and Apple is hurt by being so late.
First the iPhone - it may not have been the first smartphone, but it combined features never before seen and started a revolution in cellular devices. The iPad riding on the popularity of iOS and apps gave people something, and finally jump started the tablet market, though tablets are still languishing. In both cases, Apple wasn't "late to the game" per say, they took an existing product that was under-utilized and improved it in a way that consumers found very useful.
Now with this Siri thing, Google, MS and Amazon have superior digital assistants and there's little Apple can do to provide something that they haven't done yet, in fact Apple will only catch up to them. So in my opinion, Apple is indeed late to the game, and is hurt by their inferior Siri. One can hope (or expect) to see a vastly improved Siri but until I see it, I'm not so sure
I agree, they're late and Siri is inferior.
Apple has a big advantage though, a big user base that loves their ecosystem and would prefer Apple's speaker for that reason only.
I'm not going to buy their speaker, but I'm sure they can sell millions of those.
And to entice even more customers to buy that kind of product they need to improve Siri on their iPhone first. Once you get used to talk to your digital assistant all day long because it provides useful answers you can consider buying the speaker.
Sure. They have pushed "hey Siri" for years w/o really improving Siri. They finally put Siri into Mac OS X but then didn't let Siri control HomeKit devices. Siri has been a center piece of HomeKit, well, since HomeKit was announced. Yet, the way you must talk to Siri is still very contrived and with a learning curve. So yes, I can see Apple having a very honed demo with just the right phrases to wow but then not so much in real life.
Of course none of that will matter if the speaker is too expensive. It's fine if they have an Echo-like device, but what really have Alexa a push off was the less expensive Dot. Apple is going to have to have a collection of speaker devices, not just one $299 device. These need to be in every major room in the house to really have a true voice control system. Otherwise it's just a novelty.
I am open to hearing what this product can do, but I am not convinced yet that I need such a thing. I already have an Apple TV hooked up to my TV, receiver, and speakers that I spent good money on. I think it would be a smarter idea to bake this into a new Apple TV somehow. Also, I am hoping Apple has something up it's sleeve regarding the hardware. Some new advancement is microphone technology, AI enclave on the device itself, new speaker technology, something. They really need to differentiate this product from Amazon/Google. Also, 3rd party integration will be key.
I have both Siri and Google Assistant on my iPhone. Same Microphone. GA understands perfectly what at times Siri fails to after a dozen or so attempts.
Yes, they need to really encourage manufacturers to adopt HomeKit compatibility the same way they did with devs and Mac OS X back when few big devs wanted to bother with Mac. Also Apple needs to make its own case for a HomeKit-centric home rather than relying on manufactures promoting there own products. But Apple's marketing and ads these days are rather lackluster consisting of 15 min spots basically saying "my toy is better than yours." So not sure it's up to the task or that it's really motivated to making HomeKit competitive.
I get your point here and I agree they are behind, but I am not sure they are refusing to be a serious player. The issue is privacy in my eyes. Take away all of the privacy controls Apple has implemented and they would have more data than they would know what to do with. The challenge is expanding on the use of AI without compromising their customers' data. For me, that is more valuable then what I have seen from the Echo/Home. I think the next step is a personal AI assistant built into a secure enclave on the chip of the phone. It houses all of your info, does not get transferred to and from the cloud, and can be wiped clean by the user.
"Sorry, applebreed, I'm not sure I understand."
Personally I have Siri's voice set to UK female so at least when "she" tells me that it's in a charming accent and I don't get as pissed. Heh.
Completely agree. And although it is very unlike Apple, they need to reduce any costs associated with creating a HomeKit compatible device. Make it completely free. Encourage developers to support it. Don't make it harder. Sacrifice a tiny bit of revenue for the greater good.
If it's like the Google Home / Amazon Echo, it's intended for other rooms (eg: your kitchen), not the living room. The main point of these devices is the speech interface, and the integration with other devices around your home. It's not intended to replace your TV speakers, that's not the point.
That's the surprising part with the lack of seeing anything like this from Apple. They were already focused on the home, and looking at ways to use iOS to automate the house. The snail's pace of homekit adoption is such that I'm not sold they'll be able to market this in a way that causes them to leap frog over Amazon or Google, but I've been wrong before.
Fair enough, I'll need to wait and see then. From what I read, sound quality was going to be a major selling point of the product.
Each to their own, I guess. I don't think it's faulty, there's lots of similar complaints about the Home's sound quality online.
I'm in two minds whether to return it because in terms of functionality and looks, it really is a great device. I just wish it sounded better! Comparing to a Sonos Play 1 (admittedly £50 more) is like night and day - the Home sounds like garbage, especially at low-to-mid volumes.
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I hope so. I may replace my Google Home with Apple's device if it has better sound quality.
Agreed. I can't see the reason for one. Also Siri is handy for some stuff but is hardly out of this world useful.