OK, so who's goes to see if they can eat one? #HomePodChallenge -or- HomePod Challenge: Trying to get it to work with other music services besides Apple Music.
It accepts airplay streams so it will work with other music services. Or do you mean something else.
You may have a point that Amazon is marketing Alexa better than Apple Sire, but that doesn't change the fact I find 99% of those "skills" useless and Alexa seems more like a marketing success than a usability success, which usually spells more like fad and like a long term plan.
And, yes, I've tried it (some friend lent 2 to me to try them out) and after 3-4 weeks I still don't get why anyone would think they're actually better on the whole to Siri. They have some use cases that are better, but most of those are related to being better at picking up the voices from afar. This for me is not an issue cause of the Apple Watch.
So, I'm left with essentially nothing. Of course, for someone who doesn't have a Apple Watch on their wrist and only have $50 bucks to spend, I'm sure they're much better than nothing at all (that's the ultimate comparison in this case), just like the 85% who buy Android (which I find horrendous) are still better served by Android than nothing at all...
OK, so who's goes to see if they can eat one? #HomePodChallenge -or- HomePod Challenge: Trying to get it to work with other music services besides Apple Music.
It accepts airplay streams so it will work with other music services. Or do you mean something else.
I thought we had this discussion last week. Maybe it was someone else.
While my post is an attempt at humour, I do mean specifically being able to say "Hey Siri, play SiriusXM channel 100" or "Hey Siri, play Dagny" while having it default to Spotify since that's my preferred streaming music service choice. Both or which are exactly how it works with Alexa. For me, those are dealbreakers, but I assume they're coming because they are available on their competitor's devices.
PS: I'd love to have Spotify and SiriusXM on my Apple Watch. If that happens then I will be able to keep my iPhone off my person even more than I do now with the cellular-connected Series 3 Apple Watch.
You may have a point that Amazon is marketing Alexa better than Apple Sire, but that doesn't change the fact I find 99% of those "skills" useless and Alexa seems more like a marketing success than a usabiliy succes, which usually spells more like fad and like a long term plan for .
And, yes, I've tried it (some friend lend 2 to me to try them out) and after 3-4 weeks I still don't get why anyone would think they're actually better on the whole to Siri. They have some use cases that are better, but most of those are related to being better at picking up the voices from afar. This for me is not an issue cause of the Apple Watch.
So, I'm left with essentially nothing. Of course, for someone who doesn't have a Apple Watch on their wrist and only have $50 bucks to spend, I'm sure they're much better than nothing at all (that's the ultimate comparaison in this case), just like the 85% who buy Android (which I find horrendous) are still better served by Android than nothing at all…
That sounds an awful lot like when people said the iPhone was crap because 99% of the apps on the App Store were useless. What does it matter how many or what percentage of apps you don't find useful if there are apps that do fit your needs and wants. I only use a handful of Skills, but I wouldn't want to go without the ones that I have.
As to why you couldn't find a single thing about Alexa that is better than Siri is not something I can answer. I love the having music throughout the entire house with my quality BT connected speakers.
I like that the far-field mics not only understand what I say better than Siri on my Watch, iPhone, and Mac, but that I don't have to yell, even over music or when in another room (which is why I have to use Alexa and Echo as wake words so the wrong one doesn't run with the command). I love that it gets my queries right more often (likely a result of the far-field mics, which is something I've argued for for years as being the primary reason Alexa is so highly rated) and answers so fast that it almost feels like it's answering before I finish making my request—which you can compare to Siri's far too frequent "Hold on…" and other statements of where it's not ready (again, something I don't expect will be an issue with HomePod for reasons previously stated).
Going without the SiriusXM or Spotify skill are dealbreakers for me, but many other skills, like a white-noise generator where I can say "Echo, open Thunderstorm Sounds and play for one hour" or playing Jeopardy while cooking in the kitchen. Playing Jeopardy whilst cooking certainly isn't on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but it sure is enjoyable.
OK, so who's goes to see if they can eat one? #HomePodChallenge -or- HomePod Challenge: Trying to get it to work with other music services besides Apple Music.
It accepts airplay streams so it will work with other music services. Or do you mean something else.
I thought we had this discussion last week. Maybe it was someone else.
While my post is an attempt at humour, I do mean specifically being able to say "Hey Siri, play SiriusXM channel 100" or "Hey Siri, play Dagny" while having it default to Spotify since that's my preferred streaming music service choice. Both or which are exactly how it works with Alexa. For me, those are dealbreakers, but I assume they're coming because they are available on their competitor's devices.
PS: I'd love to have Spotify and SiriusXM on my Apple Watch. If that happens then I will be able to keep my iPhone off my person even more than I do now with the cellular-connected Series 3 Apple Watch.
You may have a point that Amazon is marketing Alexa better than Apple Sire, but that doesn't change the fact I find 99% of those "skills" useless and Alexa seems more like a marketing success than a usabiliy succes, which usually spells more like fad and like a long term plan for .
And, yes, I've tried it (some friend lend 2 to me to try them out) and after 3-4 weeks I still don't get why anyone would think they're actually better on the whole to Siri. They have some use cases that are better, but most of those are related to being better at picking up the voices from afar. This for me is not an issue cause of the Apple Watch.
So, I'm left with essentially nothing. Of course, for someone who doesn't have a Apple Watch on their wrist and only have $50 bucks to spend, I'm sure they're much better than nothing at all (that's the ultimate comparaison in this case), just like the 85% who buy Android (which I find horrendous) are still better served by Android than nothing at all…
That sounds an awful lot like when people said the iPhone was crap because 99% of the apps on the App Store were useless. What does it matter how many or what percentage of apps you don't find useful if there are apps that do fit your needs and wants. I only use a handful of Skills, but I wouldn't want to go without the ones that I have.
As to why you couldn't find a single thing about Alexa that is better than Siri is not something I can answer. I love the having music throughout the entire house with my quality BT connected speakers.
I like that the far-field mics not only understand what I say better than Siri on my Watch, iPhone, and Mac, but that I don't have to yell, even over music or when in another room (which is why I have to use Alexa and Echo as wake words so the wrong one doesn't run with the command). I love that it gets my queries right more often (likely a result of the far-field mics, which is something I've argued for for years as being the primary reason Alexa is so highly rated) and answers so fast that it almost feels like it's answering before I finish making my request—which you can compare to Siri's far too frequent "Hold on…" and other statements of where it's not ready (again, something I don't expect will be an issue with HomePod for reasons previously stated).
Going without the SiriusXM or Spotify skill are dealbreakers for me, but many other skills, like a white-noise generator where I can say "Echo, open Thunderstorm Sounds and play for one hour" or playing Jeopardy while cooking in the kitchen. Playing Jeopardy whilst cooking certainly isn't on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but it sure is enjoyable.
I told you that for me it is terrible, what on earth are you arguing with? I used I all over the place in what I said, should I preface this with "in my humble opinion too".
Good for you that it understands YOUR VOICE, mine it is very bad in all situations. Go online and see that I'm not the only one that has mucho issues getting understood by Alexa. I'm not the only one in that regard. How many are my situation? Who knows really. Only long term sales of those product will tell the tale.
English is my second language, yet I don't have much of an accent, yet like I said, near zero.
For every other language than English, I'd gather Siri would generally ahead.
That's the thing, despite YOU saying there is a huge advantage to Siri, I don't see it; what I see is that Alexa gets into the same niche as Android, covering the mass market with an inexpensive device that adds just enough value over nothing to be worth spending that money. A chromecast device that has also sold in bucketload would also enter in that same realm.
Notice I never say it is useless to everyone, or that it offers no value.
I find assistant speakers very very bad in general, that's it. Alexa is just better of a very bad lot to me (see I again prefaced it).
But, it is funny how people seemingly disregard that hundreds and hundreds of millions have access to Siri on a huge amount of devices, yet I should all bother because Alexa has sold in 30M houses. Just the Apple Watch is likely in 10-15M houses in the US alone.
OK, so who's goes to see if they can eat one? #HomePodChallenge -or- HomePod Challenge: Trying to get it to work with other music services besides Apple Music.
It accepts airplay streams so it will work with other music services. Or do you mean something else.
I thought we had this discussion last week. Maybe it was someone else.
While my post is an attempt at humour, I do mean specifically being able to say "Hey Siri, play SiriusXM channel 100" or "Hey Siri, play Dagny" while having it default to Spotify since that's my preferred streaming music service choice. Both or which are exactly how it works with Alexa. For me, those are dealbreakers, but I assume they're coming because they are available on their competitor's devices.
PS: I'd love to have Spotify and SiriusXM on my Apple Watch. If that happens then I will be able to keep my iPhone off my person even more than I do now with the cellular-connected Series 3 Apple Watch.
You may have a point that Amazon is marketing Alexa better than Apple Sire, but that doesn't change the fact I find 99% of those "skills" useless and Alexa seems more like a marketing success than a usabiliy succes, which usually spells more like fad and like a long term plan for .
And, yes, I've tried it (some friend lend 2 to me to try them out) and after 3-4 weeks I still don't get why anyone would think they're actually better on the whole to Siri. They have some use cases that are better, but most of those are related to being better at picking up the voices from afar. This for me is not an issue cause of the Apple Watch.
So, I'm left with essentially nothing. Of course, for someone who doesn't have a Apple Watch on their wrist and only have $50 bucks to spend, I'm sure they're much better than nothing at all (that's the ultimate comparaison in this case), just like the 85% who buy Android (which I find horrendous) are still better served by Android than nothing at all…
That sounds an awful lot like when people said the iPhone was crap because 99% of the apps on the App Store were useless. What does it matter how many or what percentage of apps you don't find useful if there are apps that do fit your needs and wants. I only use a handful of Skills, but I wouldn't want to go without the ones that I have.
As to why you couldn't find a single thing about Alexa that is better than Siri is not something I can answer. I love the having music throughout the entire house with my quality BT connected speakers.
I like that the far-field mics not only understand what I say better than Siri on my Watch, iPhone, and Mac, but that I don't have to yell, even over music or when in another room (which is why I have to use Alexa and Echo as wake words so the wrong one doesn't run with the command). I love that it gets my queries right more often (likely a result of the far-field mics, which is something I've argued for for years as being the primary reason Alexa is so highly rated) and answers so fast that it almost feels like it's answering before I finish making my request—which you can compare to Siri's far too frequent "Hold on…" and other statements of where it's not ready (again, something I don't expect will be an issue with HomePod for reasons previously stated).
Going without the SiriusXM or Spotify skill are dealbreakers for me, but many other skills, like a white-noise generator where I can say "Echo, open Thunderstorm Sounds and play for one hour" or playing Jeopardy while cooking in the kitchen. Playing Jeopardy whilst cooking certainly isn't on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but it sure is enjoyable.
I told you that for me it is terrible, what on earth are you arguing with? I used I all over the place in what I said, should I preface this with "in my humble opinion too".
Good for you that it understands YOUR VOICE, mine it is very bad in all situations. Go online and see that I'm not the only one that has mucho issues getting understood by Alexa. I'm not the only one in that regard. How many are my situation? Who knows really. Only long term sales of those product will tell the tale.
English is my second language, yet I don't have much of an accent, yet like I said, near zero.
For every other language than English, I'd gather Siri would generally ahead.
That's the thing, despite YOU saying there is a huge advantage to Siri, I don't see it; what I see is that Alexa gets into the same niche as Android, covering the mass market with an inexpensive device that adds just enough value over nothing to be worth spending that money. A chromecast device that has also sold in bucketload would also enter in that same realm.
Notice I never say it is useless to everyone, or that it offers no value.
I find assistant speakers very very bad in general, that's it. Alexa is just better of a very bad lot to me (see I again prefaced it).
But, it is funny how people seemingly disregard that hundreds and hundreds of millions have access to Siri on a huge amount of devices, yet I should all bother because Alexa has sold in 30M houses. Just the Apple Watch is likely in 10-15M houses in the US alone.
1) Where did I say that your actual experience was in any wrong with my anecdotes about my longterm use of Siri and Alexa?
2) You not seeing an advantage to apps for Alexa is really you just being in an Apple bubble. Once Siri gets 3rd-party app support for the HomePod I'm pretty sure you'll change your tune. I'm guessing you were one of the countless people that said that a home-based digital personal assistant was dumb and that if it was a good idea Apple would've already had one on the market before the HomePod was announced.
3) The weirdest argument I've ever seen is making some undefined comment about disregarding hundreds of millions of people with access to Siri and then implying that tends of millions of Echo devices aren't a big enough market for users to determine if it's good enough for them or not. Then you compound the oddity with a mention about the Apple Watch. You do understand that every single Echo uses Alexa as the primary UI, right, yet Siri is just a feature of Apple's devices. Siri has been on the Mac for a few years now and may outnumber the number of Echos sold and yet how many people are using Siri to interact with their Mac? I'm not even talking about as their main UI as that's impossible—I only just using occasionally, but go ahead and slam Amazon for that, too, since you see more value in Siri on the Mac that never gets used over a device where it's the UI.
4) You honestly see no value in being able to see a history of previous queries and being able to submit them back to the company if they're woefully incorrect so the system can improve?
PS: You can install Alexa on any Android and iOS, so in your silly counting of devices in which a personal digital assistant can be used as a feature then Siri falls well behind Alexa, OK Google, and countless other cross platform options that you've never even heard of.
This situation reminds me of the time Airpods pre-launched. Lot's of noises, doubts and questions. But eventually that product remains the best seller in its category until today.
Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:
Christina Warren (@film_girl) 1/23/18, 11:37 AM Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features.
Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software.
I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
Christina Warren also works for Microsoft. Take it for what it's worth.
Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:
Christina Warren (@film_girl) 1/23/18, 11:37 AM Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features.
Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software.
I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
Please, Ben Bajarin is a covert pro-troll. He rarely gets Apple despite covering them so often.
I'm saying it almost every post, but the HP is almost what I paid for my big "dumb" iHome AirPlay shelf speaker when it launched. All it does is wireless AirPlay and sounds poor. If I can get an Apple product that sounds great, and does some other stuff on top, it's an improvement to my house.
What do you mean he doesn’t “get” Apple? Rene Ritchie had someone on a recent podcast who was very down on Apple and Siri/voice. Does that mean Rene doesn’t “get” Apple either?
Rene Richie gets apple. Bajarin, from his incessant complaining on Gruber’s talk show, doesn’t.
So if someone's an Apple cheerleader, they get Apple, and if someone complains about Apple, they don't get Apple? Technically speaking, Ben Bajarin is not an Apple analyst but a consumer electronics industry analyst and he's been pro-Apple for many years. Rene Ritchie, as great of a guy as he is, is not exactly objective.
Note there’s a mixup, Ben Thompson is the frequent Gruber guest.
But no you’ve completely missed the point. It isn’t the complaining about what Apple does that exposes Ben Thompson, it’s the clear lack of understanding why Apple does what it does. Some people, typically PC or MS guys (now happily Androiders) just don’t get the things Apple values in product design. Listening to hours of Ben Thompson speak makes it pretty clear he’s in that same bucket. He just doesn’t get Apple and makes typical “But I’m a power user and I wish it did this!” types of crits. Cool dude, get a knockoff and have at it.
Thanks for the clarification. But you do realize that Ben Thompson used to work for Apple, right? He actually worked in the Apple University division. Given that, I would think, more than any other analyst, he would understand Apple best.
Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:
Christina Warren (@film_girl) 1/23/18, 11:37 AM Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features.
Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software.
I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
Please, Ben Bajarin is a covert pro-troll. He rarely gets Apple despite covering them so often.
I'm saying it almost every post, but the HP is almost what I paid for my big "dumb" iHome AirPlay shelf speaker when it launched. All it does is wireless AirPlay and sounds poor. If I can get an Apple product that sounds great, and does some other stuff on top, it's an improvement to my house.
What do you mean he doesn’t “get” Apple? Rene Ritchie had someone on a recent podcast who was very down on Apple and Siri/voice. Does that mean Rene doesn’t “get” Apple either?
Rene Richie gets apple. Bajarin, from his incessant complaining on Gruber’s talk show, doesn’t.
So if someone's an Apple cheerleader, they get Apple, and if someone complains about Apple, they don't get Apple? Technically speaking, Ben Bajarin is not an Apple analyst but a consumer electronics industry analyst and he's been pro-Apple for many years. Rene Ritchie, as great of a guy as he is, is not exactly objective.
Note there’s a mixup, Ben Thompson is the frequent Gruber guest.
But no you’ve completely missed the point. It isn’t the complaining about what Apple does that exposes Ben Thompson, it’s the clear lack of understanding why Apple does what it does. Some people, typically PC or MS guys (now happily Androiders) just don’t get the things Apple values in product design. Listening to hours of Ben Thompson speak makes it pretty clear he’s in that same bucket. He just doesn’t get Apple and makes typical “But I’m a power user and I wish it did this!” types of crits. Cool dude, get a knockoff and have at it.
Wow, you and I must be listening to a different Ben Thompson. I think he gets it more than others. To me Marco Arment and the ATP crew are the whiny power users not Ben.
The comment about Amazon "updating" their fracking speakers via the cloud and not software is so stupid that I'll just assume the guy had a god damn stroke.
There are things you can't do via "da cloud".
I'm buying one anyway since I'm not buying more than that it won't bother me one bit to wait a while.
1) As @rogifan_new stated, Alexa Skills are all in the “cloud.” The same goes for Alexa’s (and Siri) “brain” being updated.
2) There are device-level updates that get pushed to the Echos, and those are sent “via ‘da cloud’” just like all those Apple OS updates we saw today.
According to Ben Bajarin a lot of the Siri updates come via OS updates (like what we got today) vs Amazon and Google who are updating their voice assistants weekly via the cloud.
I know Apple likes to present their new Siri commands and features with major OS updates, but I don't think that's the case since so much of Siri is still server-based. I know things are changing as they move to AL and ML in the A-series chip, but that's still very minor. I bet if I disabled data on my iPhone and tried to use Siri to start a timer, set an alarm, or call a contact—just like we could do before Siri was introduced as these are requests that only need to stay local to the device—that it would fail*.
Personally, I think it's one of the biggest follies of Siri compared to Alexa (as I've described many times over the years). Not only is Amazon adding new things you can do, but they also send you an email every Friday to give you things to try, which include new Skills (Alexa's 3rd-party apps). I use Siri every day but there are probably tonnes of great Siri commands I could be using but I don't know what they are, or I tried them when they were first launched but the experience was subpar that I have completely forgotten they exist.
* Doing update so I can't check at this moment.
I don’t know only going by what Ben tweeted. Perhaps he’s misinformed. But if Apple is regularly adding capabilities to Siri outside of OS updates it would be nice if they surfaced those to customers like Amazon does.
OK, so who's goes to see if they can eat one? #HomePodChallenge -or- HomePod Challenge: Trying to get it to work with other music services besides Apple Music.
It accepts airplay streams so it will work with other music services. Or do you mean something else.
I thought we had this discussion last week. Maybe it was someone else.
While my post is an attempt at humour, I do mean specifically being able to say "Hey Siri, play SiriusXM channel 100" or "Hey Siri, play Dagny" while having it default to Spotify since that's my preferred streaming music service choice. Both or which are exactly how it works with Alexa. For me, those are dealbreakers, but I assume they're coming because they are available on their competitor's devices.
PS: I'd love to have Spotify and SiriusXM on my Apple Watch. If that happens then I will be able to keep my iPhone off my person even more than I do now with the cellular-connected Series 3 Apple Watch.
You may have a point that Amazon is marketing Alexa better than Apple Sire, but that doesn't change the fact I find 99% of those "skills" useless and Alexa seems more like a marketing success than a usabiliy succes, which usually spells more like fad and like a long term plan for .
And, yes, I've tried it (some friend lend 2 to me to try them out) and after 3-4 weeks I still don't get why anyone would think they're actually better on the whole to Siri. They have some use cases that are better, but most of those are related to being better at picking up the voices from afar. This for me is not an issue cause of the Apple Watch.
So, I'm left with essentially nothing. Of course, for someone who doesn't have a Apple Watch on their wrist and only have $50 bucks to spend, I'm sure they're much better than nothing at all (that's the ultimate comparaison in this case), just like the 85% who buy Android (which I find horrendous) are still better served by Android than nothing at all…
That sounds an awful lot like when people said the iPhone was crap because 99% of the apps on the App Store were useless. What does it matter how many or what percentage of apps you don't find useful if there are apps that do fit your needs and wants. I only use a handful of Skills, but I wouldn't want to go without the ones that I have.
As to why you couldn't find a single thing about Alexa that is better than Siri is not something I can answer. I love the having music throughout the entire house with my quality BT connected speakers.
I like that the far-field mics not only understand what I say better than Siri on my Watch, iPhone, and Mac, but that I don't have to yell, even over music or when in another room (which is why I have to use Alexa and Echo as wake words so the wrong one doesn't run with the command). I love that it gets my queries right more often (likely a result of the far-field mics, which is something I've argued for for years as being the primary reason Alexa is so highly rated) and answers so fast that it almost feels like it's answering before I finish making my request—which you can compare to Siri's far too frequent "Hold on…" and other statements of where it's not ready (again, something I don't expect will be an issue with HomePod for reasons previously stated).
Going without the SiriusXM or Spotify skill are dealbreakers for me, but many other skills, like a white-noise generator where I can say "Echo, open Thunderstorm Sounds and play for one hour" or playing Jeopardy while cooking in the kitchen. Playing Jeopardy whilst cooking certainly isn't on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but it sure is enjoyable.
I wouldn’t assume Siri integration with competing music services will come any time soon. It takes away an advantage Apple Music currently has. I’m not saying I agree but that’s probably Apple’s logic.
Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:
Christina Warren (@film_girl) 1/23/18, 11:37 AM Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features.
Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software.
I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
Please, Ben Bajarin is a covert pro-troll. He rarely gets Apple despite covering them so often.
I'm saying it almost every post, but the HP is almost what I paid for my big "dumb" iHome AirPlay shelf speaker when it launched. All it does is wireless AirPlay and sounds poor. If I can get an Apple product that sounds great, and does some other stuff on top, it's an improvement to my house.
What do you mean he doesn’t “get” Apple? Rene Ritchie had someone on a recent podcast who was very down on Apple and Siri/voice. Does that mean Rene doesn’t “get” Apple either?
Rene Richie gets apple. Bajarin, from his incessant complaining on Gruber’s talk show, doesn’t.
So if someone's an Apple cheerleader, they get Apple, and if someone complains about Apple, they don't get Apple? Technically speaking, Ben Bajarin is not an Apple analyst but a consumer electronics industry analyst and he's been pro-Apple for many years. Rene Ritchie, as great of a guy as he is, is not exactly objective.
Note there’s a mixup, Ben Thompson is the frequent Gruber guest.
But no you’ve completely missed the point. It isn’t the complaining about what Apple does that exposes Ben Thompson, it’s the clear lack of understanding why Apple does what it does. Some people, typically PC or MS guys (now happily Androiders) just don’t get the things Apple values in product design. Listening to hours of Ben Thompson speak makes it pretty clear he’s in that same bucket. He just doesn’t get Apple and makes typical “But I’m a power user and I wish it did this!” types of crits. Cool dude, get a knockoff and have at it.
Thanks for the clarification. But you do realize that Ben Thompson used to work for Apple, right? He actually worked in the Apple University division. Given that, I would think, more than any other analyst, he would understand Apple best.
I believe he interned at Apple. Did he ever have a full time job there? I believe he worked at Microsoft for a while too. I think he’s incredibly smart and isn’t knee-jerk anti Apple but thoughtful when ever he criticizes.
Christina Warren, who is a pretty big Apple fangirl, tweeted this:
Christina Warren (@film_girl) 1/23/18, 11:37 AM Last HomePod thought for now: the price is why it will fail. You can have a feature-limited, inexpensive product. You can have a feature-rich, expensive product. It is very difficult to find success in an established market when you are both overpriced and under-featured.
I tend to agree. The other troubling thing is how much “software updating” is going to be necessary to make it better/release new features.
Amazon and Google’s speakers get better and smarter (almost weekly) via cloud backend and you don’t have to update their software.
I think HomePod will sell well enough because Apple has a dedicated fan base that will buy new products it puts on the market but I don’t think it will sell as well as it could because of price and lack of features compared to competition.
Christina Warren also works for Microsoft. Take it for what it's worth.
I would tend to agree that her employment status influences the credibility of her comments on the subject, however in this case it may not be a factor since Microsoft doesn't have a product in this category. That means she has no vested interest in playing down the value of the HomePod. Her tweet may be sincere and genuine.
OK, so who's goes to see if they can eat one? #HomePodChallenge -or- HomePod Challenge: Trying to get it to work with other music services besides Apple Music.
It accepts airplay streams so it will work with other music services. Or do you mean something else.
I thought we had this discussion last week. Maybe it was someone else.
While my post is an attempt at humour, I do mean specifically being able to say "Hey Siri, play SiriusXM channel 100" or "Hey Siri, play Dagny" while having it default to Spotify since that's my preferred streaming music service choice. Both or which are exactly how it works with Alexa. For me, those are dealbreakers, but I assume they're coming because they are available on their competitor's devices.
PS: I'd love to have Spotify and SiriusXM on my Apple Watch. If that happens then I will be able to keep my iPhone off my person even more than I do now with the cellular-connected Series 3 Apple Watch.
You may have a point that Amazon is marketing Alexa better than Apple Sire, but that doesn't change the fact I find 99% of those "skills" useless and Alexa seems more like a marketing success than a usabiliy succes, which usually spells more like fad and like a long term plan for .
And, yes, I've tried it (some friend lend 2 to me to try them out) and after 3-4 weeks I still don't get why anyone would think they're actually better on the whole to Siri. They have some use cases that are better, but most of those are related to being better at picking up the voices from afar. This for me is not an issue cause of the Apple Watch.
So, I'm left with essentially nothing. Of course, for someone who doesn't have a Apple Watch on their wrist and only have $50 bucks to spend, I'm sure they're much better than nothing at all (that's the ultimate comparaison in this case), just like the 85% who buy Android (which I find horrendous) are still better served by Android than nothing at all…
That sounds an awful lot like when people said the iPhone was crap because 99% of the apps on the App Store were useless. What does it matter how many or what percentage of apps you don't find useful if there are apps that do fit your needs and wants. I only use a handful of Skills, but I wouldn't want to go without the ones that I have.
As to why you couldn't find a single thing about Alexa that is better than Siri is not something I can answer. I love the having music throughout the entire house with my quality BT connected speakers.
I like that the far-field mics not only understand what I say better than Siri on my Watch, iPhone, and Mac, but that I don't have to yell, even over music or when in another room (which is why I have to use Alexa and Echo as wake words so the wrong one doesn't run with the command). I love that it gets my queries right more often (likely a result of the far-field mics, which is something I've argued for for years as being the primary reason Alexa is so highly rated) and answers so fast that it almost feels like it's answering before I finish making my request—which you can compare to Siri's far too frequent "Hold on…" and other statements of where it's not ready (again, something I don't expect will be an issue with HomePod for reasons previously stated).
Going without the SiriusXM or Spotify skill are dealbreakers for me, but many other skills, like a white-noise generator where I can say "Echo, open Thunderstorm Sounds and play for one hour" or playing Jeopardy while cooking in the kitchen. Playing Jeopardy whilst cooking certainly isn't on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but it sure is enjoyable.
I wouldn’t assume Siri integration with competing music services will come any time soon. It takes away an advantage Apple Music currently has. I’m not saying I agree but that’s probably Apple’s logic.
You may very well be correct… but I hope you're not. They do allow for these services to be available on every on device (except the Watch, and I'm not sure if that's a limitation with the complexity currently allowed for 3rd-party apps).
Ultimately when it comes to Apple Music, just like with Alexa, it's about the service being available to users. For this reason I find Cook's statement about competition to be disingenuous since the digital personal assistance is the platform. Sonos One and TVs having Alexa (or FireTV) built-in are a boon for Amazon's ecosystem, not a hinderance. The same goes for Apple Music being available on other platforms… and it is on the Sonos One with Alexa support, of all things.
Amazon is great and my Echos have been great, but I'd gladly jump to a Siri-based ecosystem for my digital personal assistants if they can compete, but I'm not going to have a HomePod in every room at $350 a pop and it'll have to be very close to Alexa in terms of utility, which likely means a 3rd-party App Store.
I have audio equipment that sounds very good even if some of it is not highly specced. What would make me buy one of these apart from Siri interaction?
Based on what you've written, I would venture a guess there is no reason for you to buy this. It's probably targeted at people that have no high quality audio devices in their home, but want something that sounds really good and plays well with their Apple ecosystem. That doesn't seem to describe you.
I have audio equipment that sounds very good even if some of it is not highly specced. What would make me buy one of these apart from Siri interaction?
Based on what you've written, I would venture a guess there is no reason for you to buy this. It's probably targeted at people that have no high quality audio devices in their home, but want something that sounds really good and plays well with their Apple ecosystem. That doesn't seem to describe you.
Yes. I'm a bit of an oddball in this sense. I have some EPOS E11's, class A amps, Tascam pro gear, minidisc, some JVC DAT stuff, Cambridge Audio gear, excellent headphones etc and Cabasse for the TV (a Kuro that sounds great all on its own) but for a variety of reasons, I love my little JBL Charge 2 connected to my iPad. It's a little basy but has amazing battery life and moves around the flat with me. I was even thinking of getting a Charge 3. Weird.
The HomePod isn't on my radar so I can sit this one out a little and to see how people rate it when it gets released.
I am considering getting this instead of a sound bar for my tv, Sonos sound bars are like $699 so for half the cost, I am considering this and I can talk to it without pulling out my phone, and just say lets watch Deadpool, it will automatically do it. I doubt I would put one in each room, but for better audio for TV because the Samsung speakers sound awful especially when you turn them up or there is a lot of bass.
My big thing with any home assistant utility device is "Can it operate devices within the home when the Internet goes offline?" Sure it's a speaker but I'm hoping it can do much more with that A8, maybe with the help of a home mac server or even on it's own would be better. This fatal flaw for both Google and Alexia is these devices and all the smart lights, drapes, thermostats are fake tech, when the AI on the server farm in the cloud can't be reached. Imagine a fully automated house and not being able to turn on a switch or appliance without the Internet. Let's hope HOMEPOD lives up to it's name and is primarily "home based" for some rudimentary features onboard, with only minimal assist from the cloud, then it will be well worth the additional price tag.
I'm all-in Apple, but this is somewhat screwed up. We don't know the inside story, but it seems someone is going to be demoted or fired...
This is a long period of time from announce date, and to still not have some important features for another untold number of months is a major borking.
The hardware is there, as is most of the software.
Only Airplay 2 is missing, and there's no point to delay the HomePod even longer to wait on something that can be enabled with a software update later.
Looking at it from a business perspective, it makes no sense to have it sit there and wait.
It's more likely that they know people will buy it for what they hope it will become later, instead of what it is on delivery day. This is the Apple of Wall Street, not the Apple of product brilliance.
Buying pre-orders and promises is a standard logical error in buying computer industry product and the computer industry (many companies, from game developers to professional tools) has (have) countless times taken full advantage of consumer trust and failed to ultimately deliver on promises. Sometimes they say "those were forward-looking statements, not guarantees" and sometimes they just walk away with the money and are never held accountable or even brought to task on the promises.
People: stop pre-ordering! Buy things based on what they ARE, not what they might become later!
I'm all-in Apple, but this is somewhat screwed up. We don't know the inside story, but it seems someone is going to be demoted or fired...
This is a long period of time from announce date, and to still not have some important features for another untold number of months is a major borking.
The hardware is there, as is most of the software.
Only Airplay 2 is missing, and there's no point to delay the HomePod even longer to wait on something that can be enabled with a software update later.
Looking at it from a business perspective, it makes no sense to have it sit there and wait.
It's more likely that they know people will buy it for what they hope it will become later, instead of what it is on delivery day. This is the Apple of Wall Street, not the Apple of product brilliance.
Buying pre-orders and promises is a standard logical error in buying computer industry product and the computer industry (many companies, from game developers to professional tools) has (have) countless times taken full advantage of consumer trust and failed to ultimately deliver on promises. Sometimes they say "those were forward-looking statements, not guarantees" and sometimes they just walk away with the money and are never held accountable or even brought to task on the promises.
People: stop pre-ordering! Buy things based on what they ARE, not what they might become later!
I absolutely agree with what you say about making purchases based on promises about what a product will do in the future. I did that with an audio editing suite in the early '90s and wound up heavily invested in something that would only do half the job when the supplier later announced that the promised feature would not be added after all. In retrospect it's obvious how stupid I was, but here we are 25 years later and people are still taking the same risk I did! Not only is there a chance that the features will never actually be added (especially if people continue to buy the product without it), but pre-ordering actually encourages manufacturers to release products before they're finished.
That said, there are likely many potential HomePod buyers who have no interest in the "missing" features, so it doesn't matter if they come later (or are never added at all). Lots of people have purchased single-source audio playback devices like the Pill, Bose dock, and other Bluetooth amplified speakers. My own particular use case is not affected by what it doesn't yet do, since it will only be for playing music in the kitchen. It's possible that many of those pre-ordering the HomePod are doing so because, for their purposes, it's already finished.
In a related report the number of home assistant speakers in the US has more than doubled in the past 6 months or so, now close to 50M units, with Google Home the biggest mover in the 4th quarter. They somewhat surprisingly took a 40% share over the holidays with zero presence on the Amazon marketplace. That's according to CIRP. So yes there is a big interest in home assistants.
Comments
While my post is an attempt at humour, I do mean specifically being able to say "Hey Siri, play SiriusXM channel 100" or "Hey Siri, play Dagny" while having it default to Spotify since that's my preferred streaming music service choice. Both or which are exactly how it works with Alexa. For me, those are dealbreakers, but I assume they're coming because they are available on their competitor's devices.
PS: I'd love to have Spotify and SiriusXM on my Apple Watch. If that happens then I will be able to keep my iPhone off my person even more than I do now with the cellular-connected Series 3 Apple Watch.
As to why you couldn't find a single thing about Alexa that is better than Siri is not something I can answer. I love the having music throughout the entire house with my quality BT connected speakers.
I like that the far-field mics not only understand what I say better than Siri on my Watch, iPhone, and Mac, but that I don't have to yell, even over music or when in another room (which is why I have to use Alexa and Echo as wake words so the wrong one doesn't run with the command). I love that it gets my queries right more often (likely a result of the far-field mics, which is something I've argued for for years as being the primary reason Alexa is so highly rated) and answers so fast that it almost feels like it's answering before I finish making my request—which you can compare to Siri's far too frequent "Hold on…" and other statements of where it's not ready (again, something I don't expect will be an issue with HomePod for reasons previously stated).
Going without the SiriusXM or Spotify skill are dealbreakers for me, but many other skills, like a white-noise generator where I can say "Echo, open Thunderstorm Sounds and play for one hour" or playing Jeopardy while cooking in the kitchen. Playing Jeopardy whilst cooking certainly isn't on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but it sure is enjoyable.
2) You not seeing an advantage to apps for Alexa is really you just being in an Apple bubble. Once Siri gets 3rd-party app support for the HomePod I'm pretty sure you'll change your tune. I'm guessing you were one of the countless people that said that a home-based digital personal assistant was dumb and that if it was a good idea Apple would've already had one on the market before the HomePod was announced.
3) The weirdest argument I've ever seen is making some undefined comment about disregarding hundreds of millions of people with access to Siri and then implying that tends of millions of Echo devices aren't a big enough market for users to determine if it's good enough for them or not. Then you compound the oddity with a mention about the Apple Watch. You do understand that every single Echo uses Alexa as the primary UI, right, yet Siri is just a feature of Apple's devices. Siri has been on the Mac for a few years now and may outnumber the number of Echos sold and yet how many people are using Siri to interact with their Mac? I'm not even talking about as their main UI as that's impossible—I only just using occasionally, but go ahead and slam Amazon for that, too, since you see more value in Siri on the Mac that never gets used over a device where it's the UI.
4) You honestly see no value in being able to see a history of previous queries and being able to submit them back to the company if they're woefully incorrect so the system can improve?
PS: You can install Alexa on any Android and iOS, so in your silly counting of devices in which a personal digital assistant can be used as a feature then Siri falls well behind Alexa, OK Google, and countless other cross platform options that you've never even heard of.
Ultimately when it comes to Apple Music, just like with Alexa, it's about the service being available to users. For this reason I find Cook's statement about competition to be disingenuous since the digital personal assistance is the platform. Sonos One and TVs having Alexa (or FireTV) built-in are a boon for Amazon's ecosystem, not a hinderance. The same goes for Apple Music being available on other platforms… and it is on the Sonos One with Alexa support, of all things.
Amazon is great and my Echos have been great, but I'd gladly jump to a Siri-based ecosystem for my digital personal assistants if they can compete, but I'm not going to have a HomePod in every room at $350 a pop and it'll have to be very close to Alexa in terms of utility, which likely means a 3rd-party App Store.
The HomePod isn't on my radar so I can sit this one out a little and to see how people rate it when it gets released.
Buying pre-orders and promises is a standard logical error in buying computer industry product and the computer industry (many companies, from game developers to professional tools) has (have) countless times taken full advantage of consumer trust and failed to ultimately deliver on promises. Sometimes they say "those were forward-looking statements, not guarantees" and sometimes they just walk away with the money and are never held accountable or even brought to task on the promises.
People: stop pre-ordering! Buy things based on what they ARE, not what they might become later!
That said, there are likely many potential HomePod buyers who have no interest in the "missing" features, so it doesn't matter if they come later (or are never added at all). Lots of people have purchased single-source audio playback devices like the Pill, Bose dock, and other Bluetooth amplified speakers. My own particular use case is not affected by what it doesn't yet do, since it will only be for playing music in the kitchen. It's possible that many of those pre-ordering the HomePod are doing so because, for their purposes, it's already finished.