jony0

inplainview said:

Can wear these because of my job so I’ll stick with my Rolex Explorer II

And assuredly you make very sure it is always in plain view !

Wow, after reading the comments on this thread I double-checked to see if I was still at AI and not inadvertently redirected to MR.

The rather small 1980 upstart Apple Computer Inc was expanding in Europe. Building a plant closer to the actual targeted market is hardly an unusual logistics move, nor is it unusual for different jurisdictions to offer incentives, occasionally with real estate but usually financial and almost always with tax arrangements. That's just business as usual and unlikely the only tax offer they got.
I am obviously not privy to that specific decision process but can only imagine that the tax involved at the time was absolutely a factor —money always is and should be— but probably not a big one and orders of magnitude lower than today. From a less cynical approach and assuming that all incentive offers were rather equal, I would paraphrase Tim's statement that while looking for a foothold in Europe, they came to Ireland for the community … and stayed for the taxes.

A lot of people—guys especially—can’t seem to engage their brains when they’re around someone to whom they are sexually attracted.

And the explanation for that comes from the late great philosopher Robin Williams :
'The problem is, God gave man a brain and a penis and only enough blood to run one at a time.'

patchythepirate said:

I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer, and I’m sure I will use these new Siri features (and enjoy them), but this is exactly what I was afraid of, Apple tacking on a somewhat useful Siri feature without addressing its core, basic functionality, which is still horribly lacking. 

Given the state of Siri at this time, I was more hoping, rather than expecting, a significant overhaul, but it is still dissapointing after 7+ years in development. I hope Apple is hard at work right now on making Siri actually usable. People are going to run into the same frustrations using this feature as they have been with the current Siri. And let’s be honest, I doubt most “normal” consumers are going to bother setting up the shortcuts, as cool as they are.

The deficit in basic functionality is apparent to anyone that actually uses Siri regularly, except for those that make a concerted effort to adapt themselves to Siri’s strict limitations, which is wildly impractical for the average “normal” user.  This is particularly disappointing for a company that should be at the forefront and way ahead of the pack in anything related to the intersection of technology and the humanities. 

Here’s a list of the basic frustrations that have been pissing me off on a nearly daily basis, and I know I’m not the only one (fair warning, this list is a copy/paste from a previous post): 

-have halfway decent comprehension of what is said

-don't make things even worse by making wild, completely ridiculous guesses if siri doesn't understand what it said

-have a little bit of the context awareness promised at launch

-have at least a tiny bit of intelligence, for instance, don't cut me off when I'm halfway through dictating a phone number, then try to call "97354" and then tell me "this doesn't appear to be a working number." No shit. As another person mentioned, don't cut me off halfway through dictating a reminder. In 75% or more of my attempts to add reminders, I have to put them in or correct them with type.

-have a TINY bit of flexibility and humanism. for example, have more than one exact way to refer to something. should be common sense, but apparently not to the geniuses that have been in charge of siri for 6 years..for example, if I'm trying to play, hypothetically, Dancemix 4, allow the user to say "play Dancemix 4", or "play Dancemix album 4", or "play Dancemix volume 4". It's absurd that siri will only recognize one of those options.

-be able to do more than one task at one time, shouldn't be that difficult after 7 years

-use info from our own device and icloud to inform queries. don't give me an address that's 30-300 miles away when the actual address, which is in my contacts, is 5 miles away.

-if I ask siri to so something that requires the phone to be unlocked, DONT cancel the query and make me re-do it after I unlock the phone

-have a back-up, visual interface for idevices so you don't have to shout at siri for every little thing (e.g. I don't want to pause the music on my homepod when I want to know the details of the song I'm listening to or adjust the volume).

--and ffs, please allow us to shut siri up. I don't need some pseudo-clever reply EVERY SINGLE TIME.. just do the thing. I don't need to hear siri tell me over and over "I'll get right on that" "there you go" "home sweet home," on and on..

Wow, you do love living dangerously don’t you. Be careful what you wish for or you might end up regrettingly flipping back that switch and yearning for a TINY bit of flexibility and humanism after an unfortunate Alexa-ish just do the thing-ish blunder was sent at work.

_____
Edit : Sorry, that 'Heading 2' format sure got a lot louder from Edit to Live, this editor is clearly not WYSIWYG.

hawaiianshirtguy said:

randominternetperson said:

Nice video.  However it should be a punishable offense to have a pair of HomePods with mismatched colors.  Unless you're Melanie Martinez I suppose.

I suspect the point was to be able to easily distinguish between them for the purposes of testing and demonstrating. 

Yeah I think he just borrowed one from another room to demonstrate the multi-room feature which, as you say, easily distinguishes them. And then went on to demonstrate stereo, which then makes a great audio experience albeit a temporary awkward visual one, as randominternetperson observed.