I probably use Siri on my first generation Home Pod a dozen or more times each day and it usually works. It's generally good at setting timers and alarms, it can find places to eat and shop and knows whether a store is open or not. It can find information (bios, ages, etc.) on famous people. It knows a lot about movies (but not TV). It offers weather forecasts and can give information on cities and geography. And, it can play music, although its matching to artists and song titles can sometimes be embarrassingly bad (like playing a song that is nothing near to what you asked for, by name or other characteristic). I also listen to podcasts on the Home Pod and it usually (but not always) does a good job of matching my request to the podcast that I want.
There may be a few other abilities that I've missed or seldom use and unfortunately if you try to go much beyond any of the above Siri will generally reply with the dreaded, "I found some web results, I can show them if you ask again from your iPhone."
However, for the last several months it has been having problems telling time. It often exchanges PM and AM, saying that it is 2:34AM when it is actually PM. It also has problems saying the time, so instead of 2:00 PM it might say two hundred PM. Quite frankly, I can't see how such a simple bug has gone months without a fix and I'm somewhat at a loss as to how something like this could even be coded (in error).
So, yes. Siri is kind of a disappointment but it can still be useful. But, to be fair I've tried other home appliances over the years, like Google Home -- but not recently, and in direct comparisons on a range of questions Siri tends to offer just as good of answers although sometimes somewhat worse or better and I could find no clear winner between Siri and Google. But, that was more than two years ago so maybe Google has gotten much better while Siri has stayed largely the same (or in some cases gotten worse).
All the above said, I see much, much worse behavior from my T-Mobile 5G Home Internet Gateway. The service is often unusably slow (measured in kilobits rather than megabits) and I have to restart the Gateway probably at least once per week. T-Mobile has no explanation or solution and I've already had the Gateway replaced so it's not a one-off issue (the Gateways seem to have bugs and the service is vastly overloaded).
HERE IS AN UPDATE:
I just tried using my Google Home Mini for the first time in years (required a reset and new setup) and I did a comparison to the quality of answers it provides against my Home Pod. The results were basically the same, both provided similar answers to a range of questions with Siri being a little more verbose or detailed in several cases. However, I did find at least one question where Google provided an answer while the Home Pod could not. But, that was one item out of MANY that I tried and even Google couldn't answer all of my questions and on the few occasions where the Home Pod failed so did Google (and vice versa).
However, it looks like both services now have a lot of information on TV programs which is something I hadn't tried on the Home Pod for a year or more, thus it looks like the Home Pod has added TV info to its fairly extensive movie Q&A.
In any case, it looks like both services rely heavily on Wikipedia and I'm sure that both Apple and Google are paying for that access.
Lastly, I think that some of the problems I've been having with the time of day as spoken by the Home Pod were perhaps caused by my use of an English language voice with an Indian accent. I won't know for a week or more whether my switch to an American English voice will fix those problems but I noticed that when I changed voices the time (after sunset) was spoken without the "PM" but it did include "AM" when after midnight. I think that's a change from when I was using the Indian accent voice since that always included the "PM" or "AM." Plus, it looks like the Indian accent voice handles the speaking of numbers differently than the American voice, so maybe the accent type determine things like number separators and formats and its possible that some bugs only exist in certain accents (voices).
There may be a few other abilities that I've missed or seldom use and unfortunately if you try to go much beyond any of the above Siri will generally reply with the dreaded, "I found some web results, I can show them if you ask again from your iPhone."
However, for the last several months it has been having problems telling time. It often exchanges PM and AM, saying that it is 2:34AM when it is actually PM. It also has problems saying the time, so instead of 2:00 PM it might say two hundred PM. Quite frankly, I can't see how such a simple bug has gone months without a fix and I'm somewhat at a loss as to how something like this could even be coded (in error).
So, yes. Siri is kind of a disappointment but it can still be useful. But, to be fair I've tried other home appliances over the years, like Google Home -- but not recently, and in direct comparisons on a range of questions Siri tends to offer just as good of answers although sometimes somewhat worse or better and I could find no clear winner between Siri and Google. But, that was more than two years ago so maybe Google has gotten much better while Siri has stayed largely the same (or in some cases gotten worse).
All the above said, I see much, much worse behavior from my T-Mobile 5G Home Internet Gateway. The service is often unusably slow (measured in kilobits rather than megabits) and I have to restart the Gateway probably at least once per week. T-Mobile has no explanation or solution and I've already had the Gateway replaced so it's not a one-off issue (the Gateways seem to have bugs and the service is vastly overloaded).
HERE IS AN UPDATE:
I just tried using my Google Home Mini for the first time in years (required a reset and new setup) and I did a comparison to the quality of answers it provides against my Home Pod. The results were basically the same, both provided similar answers to a range of questions with Siri being a little more verbose or detailed in several cases. However, I did find at least one question where Google provided an answer while the Home Pod could not. But, that was one item out of MANY that I tried and even Google couldn't answer all of my questions and on the few occasions where the Home Pod failed so did Google (and vice versa).
However, it looks like both services now have a lot of information on TV programs which is something I hadn't tried on the Home Pod for a year or more, thus it looks like the Home Pod has added TV info to its fairly extensive movie Q&A.
In any case, it looks like both services rely heavily on Wikipedia and I'm sure that both Apple and Google are paying for that access.
Lastly, I think that some of the problems I've been having with the time of day as spoken by the Home Pod were perhaps caused by my use of an English language voice with an Indian accent. I won't know for a week or more whether my switch to an American English voice will fix those problems but I noticed that when I changed voices the time (after sunset) was spoken without the "PM" but it did include "AM" when after midnight. I think that's a change from when I was using the Indian accent voice since that always included the "PM" or "AM." Plus, it looks like the Indian accent voice handles the speaking of numbers differently than the American voice, so maybe the accent type determine things like number separators and formats and its possible that some bugs only exist in certain accents (voices).
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