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Siri on HomePod Correctly Answered 52.3% of Queries in New AI Test
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Siri is a woman (most of the time). Women don't want you to try and solve their problems. They care about you listening to them. You learn this once you get married. Siri is just like most women - superior listening skills but no answers or solutions. Google Assistant is all about solving your problems. But, if you b!tch about something while playing loud music, it may not be able to hear you.
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iPhone is a version 10 system, but yet Siri is still dumb on it. This is typical Apple. They conceive a new idea and implement it often before others, but then others copy the idea, work hard on it, catch up and surpass Apple. This has happened so many times already in the past 10 years that I lost count. Siri, CarPlay, iCloud storage, cloud photo sync, Apple Maps, and HomeKit are just a few examples. Apple is behind competition in all of these technologies. Mind you, these are the services that are supposed to make up the Apple ecosystem and be the glue that keeps customers wanting to continue to buy Apple. The ecosystem is crumbling down. I hope they ask Tim to retire soon. The bean counter only knows how to milk the iPhone cow.
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There is certainly a lot of filtering that goes on when we perceive sound and probably even more so with tasting and smelling. It is easy to find guides on how to improve your ability to taste and distinguish the various types of fine wine by learning to focus both your taste and sense of smell. I think the same would apply to appreciating sound, maybe perhaps not as much though. So I would agree with the notion that ours senses are trainable, taste and sound more so that sight.
Siri has come so far. Remember when it was in Beta, despite being a key selling point on the iPhone 4S? And here we are now six or seven iPhones later, and it's no longer in Beta. Such progress.
I was goint to wait on the HomePod to use for my home automation.
I received a google home mini for Christmas, and only recently did I open it and make it part of my system. The integration was quite seamless and I couldn’t be happier. All of my HomeKit products were compatible with google home, which was a bonus.
Google assistant is leaps and bounds better than Siri (aka Sori). I turned off Siri and downloaded google assistant on my phone; I haven’t looked back since.
I received a google home mini for Christmas, and only recently did I open it and make it part of my system. The integration was quite seamless and I couldn’t be happier. All of my HomeKit products were compatible with google home, which was a bonus.
Google assistant is leaps and bounds better than Siri (aka Sori). I turned off Siri and downloaded google assistant on my phone; I haven’t looked back since.
In a new test shared today by Loup Ventures, Apple's HomePod was put through its paces in categories including Siri, sound quality, and ease of use. For Siri, Loup Ventures' Gene Munster reported that while the AI assistant understood 99.4 percent of queries asked of it, it answered only 52.3 percent of them correctly. Loup Ventures tested three separate HomePods and asked 782 queries total.
Compared to previous tests of rival speakers, HomePod is "at the bottom of the totem pole" in the AI assistant performance category. Google Home answered 81 percent correctly, Amazon's Alexa answered 64 percent correctly, and Microsoft's Cortana answered 57 percent correctly.
Munster broke this information down further, stating that Siri is good for "local" and "commerce" queries, like asking about nearby coffee shops or assisting in buying new shoes. In this area, Siri beats Alexa and Cortana but still falls behind Google Assistant on Google Home.
Despite the low percentage of correctly answering the 782 total queries asked of it, Munster said Siri's overall performance rose above expectations "given the limited scope of HomePod's music focus."
The researchers explained that over time HomePod and Siri should grow to match, or surpass, rival assistants by simply adding query domains like calendar, email, calling, and navigation.
As discovered in the research, where HomePod excelled was its "superior" listening skills. The HomePod allows users to speak at a normal volume, even when music from the speaker is particularly loud, and Siri will pick up on the voice and hear the user. "This was HomePod's most stellar feature," according to Munster.
Loup Ventures also favored HomePod's sound quality, saying that "it sounds incredible." Like other reviews and impressions of the device, Munster's enjoyment of the HomePod's audio quality was countered with the speaker's lackluster Siri performance, which he thinks will be changing fairly soon.
Visit Loup Ventures to read more of the information gathered from the HomePod "smart speaker gauntlet," including the publication's prediction for demand and market share of HomePod through the rest of 2018.
Article Link: Siri on HomePod Correctly Answered 52.3% of Queries in New AI Test
Why, what’s so bad about adding an always on device with superior listening skills that answers 1 out of every 2 questions correctly?
Well, yes. The first Sonos equipment I bought over 10 years ago is still getting updates, and the first Sonos speakers that I bought, initial Play:5s, are still getting updates.
I'm nearly all Sonos, but I have bought a HomePod too. I'm looking forward to trying it out and expect it will be a great little speaker - but it's not the only one that can/will improve with age.
None of your 10 year old sonos equipment is 'smart', and there's not a software update in the world that can change that..
Don't "hate" Apple. I am simply no longer able to justify being locked deeper and deeper into their proprietary stuff.
They could make it all with a web interface and loose none of the functionality.
And as for data, it is MY data, MY information MY documents be there photo's, spreadsheets, word-processing , CAD files, databases or what ever and I am not willing to let anyone locked me out of MY stuff by having proprietary formats.
Why can the HomePod not work with MY iTunes home sharing ?
No I don't want to subscribe to any Apple services just so I can listen to MY music.
And NO, I am not about to let Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Google, Amazon or whom ever lock me out of MY files if I stop paying them their monthly protection racket fees.
They may think its good, that regular income coming in, but I think it sucks and it was MUCH better when I bought and paid for things, not rented them
If you're content (and apparently desire) accessing every aspect of the service from a web browser, you're pretty much Google's ideal customer. Most of us don't share your view on the matter, and increasingly people have given up keeping their own MP3 collections in favor of convenient (and legal) subscription services. Amazon even retired the option to upload your own music in December.
I don't think $25/year is unreasonable, but yes Google offers a similar service for free (until they decide to axe it like Amazon did).
Why they chose to omit home sharing from HomePod, I don't know - but no feature like that exists on any competing device either, you have to have your music uploaded to their services online and I don't see much outrage about that.
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From one fossil to another, that was not lost on me, eitherI think I already dated myself with my username.
Uhhh, this is why.
"Hey Google, how long will it take me to get to work?"
"With heavy traffic, it will take you x minutes to get to work if you take so-and-so road. I have sent the directions to your phone."
You can do this on HomePod as well, using the exact same question.
Ok I have a question. I have a iPhone X and got rid of my house landline. I am hard of hearing so when I go to bed at night I take my hearing aids out. I am afraid I will not hear a call if one comes in and if I need to make an emergency call, I would not be able to hear. Would homepod work if I say “hey “Siri” answer call.? Or perhaps make a call? Or would I be better off to get a Bose bluetooth speaker and use that?
Why are you bringing up machine learning or artificial intelligence when talking about beamforming? Machine learning and artificial intelligence are broad generic terms that can have countless applications. Beamforming has a very specific definition. If I were to summarize it into a single sentence it would be something like....
"Beamforming is the process whereby an array of multiple, identical and equally spaced drivers are fed the exact same audio signal at different phase in order to change the level of audio at a desired location through constructive or destructive interference." To break that down:
- Array: As in the group of drivers.
- Multiple: You can't achieve beamforming with a single driver. You need a minimum of 2 drivers.
- Identical: You can't do beamforming with different drivers. A speaker with a woofer, midrange and tweeter can't do beamforming even though it has 3 drivers. The drivers need to be identical so they cover the exact same frequency range and have the same dispersion pattern.
- Equally Spaced: While you could technically achieve beamforming with drivers that aren't equally spaced, it's easier to do when they are. Phase is nothing more than time delay, so you need to know the distance between the drivers to calculate the desired time delay (phase).
- Exact Same Signal: You need to have identical signals going to the drivers to perform beamforming. We don't know how Apple does this or how it divides the audio to the tweeters, but to do beamforming it would need to send the same signal to a minimum of 2 tweeters.
- Different Phase: Already mentioned, this is simply time delay. Beamforming is impossible without the ability to alter the time delay (phase) of each signal.
- Desired Location: Pretty self explanatory. You want to control the level at a specific location within your room.
- Constructive Interference: When two audio signals (sine waves) of a specific amplitude meet together the resulting amplitude will be greater than each individual wave (the sound is louder).
- Destructive Interference: Opposite of above. If those waves meet aad are out of phase they will cancel each other out (the sound is much quieter or non-existent).
And this is why the HomePod cannot be a 7.1 speaker (using your definition of 7.1). The 7 channels are not all unique individual audio signals. Multiple tweeters will each get the same audio signal, albeit out of phase. So the HomePod (using your definition) could only be operating as a 2.1, 3.1 or 4.1 speaker.
And no, I didn't Google this.