I won't get my hopes up, as I don't think the following suggestions are due to previous design or software choices but rather due to the incompetence of Apple in specific software departments.
Complete redesign of the Home App. Get your inspiration from Home+ 6 since you probably can't figure it out yourselves. Make automations actually useful: the conditions and their combinations (or rather, the lack of it) are so laughable weak. Again, if third party apps can do multiple, more complex conditions, then why can't your own App?
Delay conditions, logic functions, please.
Then Homepod: currently they are so frikkin unreliable when it comes to scenes with a Playlist. So many times it won't work, when Homepods are supposed to start playing a Playlist via scenes.
And before some of you start screaming network issues, let me assure you, that I can normally select them and start playing the same Playlist manually. Or use the The remote app to play the same Playlist on the same network and stream to the same Homepods.
2 days ago: the other way around had issues. I wanted to play a Playlist on my iMac and 5 Homepods (which usually works. Not always but most of the time). But not so much last weekend. One Homepods was not on the list of available Speakers or Homepods via the remote App. So I chose a scene, which plays the same Playlist on all my Homepods minus the iMac. The one Homepod, which was not available earlier started playing, but went on full rampage with 100% volume and couldn't be controlled manually afterwards. Even physically touching it, didn't bring the volume down.
Looking at the article about Siri and the internal mess about its continous development (or lack of it), I don't think we will see any significant improvements.
Apple is a company which builds pretty hardware. The software has been lacking substance and reliability. Personally I don't think any of Apple's Homekit software engineers are actually their own creations. They are incompetent. I am convinced of that.
Complete redesign of the Home App. Get your inspiration from Home+ 6 since you probably can't figure it out yourselves. Make automations actually useful: the conditions and their combinations (or rather, the lack of it) are so laughable weak. Again, if third party apps can do multiple, more complex conditions, then why can't your own App?
Delay conditions, logic functions, please.
Then Homepod: currently they are so frikkin unreliable when it comes to scenes with a Playlist. So many times it won't work, when Homepods are supposed to start playing a Playlist via scenes.
And before some of you start screaming network issues, let me assure you, that I can normally select them and start playing the same Playlist manually. Or use the The remote app to play the same Playlist on the same network and stream to the same Homepods.
2 days ago: the other way around had issues. I wanted to play a Playlist on my iMac and 5 Homepods (which usually works. Not always but most of the time). But not so much last weekend. One Homepods was not on the list of available Speakers or Homepods via the remote App. So I chose a scene, which plays the same Playlist on all my Homepods minus the iMac. The one Homepod, which was not available earlier started playing, but went on full rampage with 100% volume and couldn't be controlled manually afterwards. Even physically touching it, didn't bring the volume down.
Looking at the article about Siri and the internal mess about its continous development (or lack of it), I don't think we will see any significant improvements.
Apple is a company which builds pretty hardware. The software has been lacking substance and reliability. Personally I don't think any of Apple's Homekit software engineers are actually their own creations. They are incompetent. I am convinced of that.
