DanielEran

gatorguy said:

Google's Android may well be just as secure as iOS, in fact the article author appears to admit as much, but the ecosystem as a whole still has a ways to go. 

The author presumably does not really understand what Project Treble is tho or he(she) would know why the old Nexus phones and Pixel C cannot be made compatible with it. 

The article does not even hint at "appearing to admit" your bizarre postulation that "may-be" Android is just as secure as iOS. 

The Android kernel is bad.
The HAL is bad (which is what Treble is trying to address almost a decade late).
The runtime is bad.
Every architecture of Android is generally pretty awful, to the point where its security lapses are not even a surprise.
Third party code is really bad. 
Android is like Windows without any adults running things. 

The reason Google's "old" Nexus phones (that shipped alongside iPhone 6s!) aren't getting future support is entirely Google's fault and choice. It's choosing not to support them because they didn't sell enough of them to matter, not because Google can't engineer a solution. New phones that ship with Oreo are supposed to support Treble but as we know from many years of history: new Androids don't ship with the latest OS. And just because there is some intention of improving things doesn't mean it will actually improve in the intended period. Being able to support Treble doesn't mean those phones will actually get updates, it just means that it could be easier for that to happen.

Everything you say doesn't have to be inaccurate so please work on being less devious.

speedgarage said:

Not all of the Alexa skills are frivolous.  I use the Sonos skill, as well as the Logitech harmony Skill.  When I get home, I say "Alexa turn on Sonos", she complies, then I say "Alexa play Jethro Tull in the Living Room" and she dutifully complies by streaming Tull via Spotify.  (The biggest shortcoming here BTW is Spotify - I'm relatively new to it, but compared to Apple Music, Spotify is a real dud.  It doesn't understand King Crimson, as well as many other "older" bands.  It also has a tendency to play the same handful of songs over and again if you just specify to listen to a particular artist.  But I digress).  Another cool Alexa skill is Anylist.  This is how we make our shopping list, and its remarkably good at understanding ingredients you wouldn't expect it to understand.  And with the new Alexa feature where you don't need to say the wake-word if you are already conversing with Alexa, then its even more natural to make a shopping list just by talking.

Playing music is certainly a "skill" built into Siri.

There are lots of other useful features that Alexa has pioneered, and many of those are linked to the fact that it's tied almost exclusively to an always-on appliance that is designed to take a series of requests, rather than Siri being historically available only from devices that you interact with for a single question, which often follows up with UI, not a voice conversation. Siri is invading the Echo world, while Alexa has made zero progress in establishing itself on mobile devices at all, despite that being the more valuable path (and the initial goal back in 2014).

If Apple actually sees HomePod as a strategic direction (and it promoted it as such, not just as a thing it casually sells via Beats) then it will be surprising if Siri features on HomePod don't quickly catch up, and exceed in areas like Continuity, where Apple has capabilities for tight mobile integration that aren't even available to Alexa.

Commentators are often clear on the idea that everything Apple can innovate will be copied (Touch ID, TrueDepth, etc) but seem to lack the vision for how a better-financed company that's better at hardware, better at design, better at platform management, etc, could possibly catch up with features that are already released by Amazon. Siri learned Hey Siri from Google and HomePod has a mic array like Echo. Apple now has a growing installed base of HomePods, so its a matter of adding backend enhancements. 

canukstorm said:

"Siri’s development is one area where we need to watch closely from Apple in the post-Jobs era of Apple. There was a major concern that Apple would not be same, and their run on innovation would end. That certainly has not been the case, however, what I’m not sure we have seen is how Apple in the post Jobs era deals with failure or potentially impactful struggles to the companies future."

https://techpinions.com/apple-siri-and-dealing-with-failure/52484

"What do you anticipate WWDC 18 will introduce for Siri, Workflow, HomePod and Continuity?" => Given that the rumors point to iOS 12 / macOS 14 being a "Snow Leopard" type of release, I'm not expecting much this year.  

Given that Siri languished for many years under Eddy Cue's leadership (Federighi now being in charge of Siri) & how important Siri is to Apple's future, I am surprised he still around at Apple.

  The talk about Post Jobs seems to forget that when he passed, Apple was shipping iOS 5, iCloud was a hot mess, Maps was a year away from shipping with serious problems, Android looked credible in tablets and Windows Mobile was still around. 

It was well into the Post Jobs era that iOS 7 and the A7 shipped, that iCloud development was fixed and dramatically expanded, that Maps was made usable in most countries (enough to relegate Google Maps into a minor position on iOS) and where iPad crushed all tablets and no competition is left outside of Android placeholders shipping PC-like generic boxes with razor-thin margins. 

Also, Samsung's leadership is fresh out of jail and Google has experienced a wave of new managers. So the whole Jobs thing really needs to be put to bed.  

macapfel said:

I think, Siri on HomePod should at least be smart enough to understand the command ‘Play XXX next’. But something like ‘play next’ or ‘add to queue’ seems not to be in Siri’s HomePod vocabulary. Or has anyone been successful with this?

Yeah it should work like "Play Later" in the UI, but it appears it doesn't yet work from Siri yet.

mike scherer said:

That was quick: Siri brought up recipes for a Negroni when I just asked...

On an iOS device it will search google, but it doesn't offer to do anything on HomePod.