CheeseFreeze

Look at everybody frantically defending Apple here, while it’s clear they are just as ‘evil’ as any major company driven by profits and equipped with a whole team of lawyers. It’s a little childish honestly.

Alexa is useful for ordering stuff because it’s integrated with Amazon’s ecosystem.

Google Assistant is useful for asking information because of Google’s focus on search. It’s also good for autonomous assistance because of their ML and again their  integration into search. 

We often talk about the interface itself (the voice, the ability to understand the query) but this discussion should also be about the ecosystem the assistants can tap into. Apple has a problem there. It has no search tech like Google Search, or professional enterprise collaboration like GSuite, or a huge store like Amazon, so Siri is restricted in helping us, assisting us in useful daily tasks, unless they open it up to their competitor’s services through a truly open API. Unfortunately they are still stubborn. Spotify can’t even be controlled through Siri yet because it competes with Apple Music. That’s lawsuit material, but even more so that behavior leads to a useless assistant, even if it understands so well what I’m saying, which is something Siri to begin with is still very bad at. ML should hopefully allow to improve context, meaning, following up to previous queries, etc.

I don’t understand why the iOS remote app works by replicating a dumb traditional remote.

You literately have a fancy $1200 touch device in your hands, simulating a $20 device.
Why doesn’t the remote replicate a simplified view of the AppleTV’s view so you can directly tap on items with the convenience of a phone, instead of having to swipe up, left, right and down, swiping too far or not enough all the friggin’ time?

dewme said:

rockaw said:

AirPods with Hey Siri. This so-called feature escapes me. I have the old AirPods. Tap one of them and tell Siri what you want. Hey Siri is useful for HomePod, because it's across the room from me and out of my reach but AirPods are about as close as they can possibly be -- they're IN MY EARS.

Actually, I think the need to talk to my earphones is a major fail. The whole point of earphones is to be quiet and not bother other people. Here's a free tip, Apple: turn the AirPod stalk into a touch enabled volume slider.

I disagree. The "Hey Siri" feature is actually extremely useful when you don't want to physically tap the AirPods, for example, you are typing, painting, washing dishes, reclined on the couch, working on a hands-on hobby, reading a newspaper, gardening, making pottery, juggling, fishing, etc. Using the AirPod stalk as a volume control may have some utility, but at least for me, pressing on the stalk when the AirPod is inside my ear would make it feel like I'm trying to wedge the thing out of my ear. If the sensitivity was such that only a very light touch is needed it would then be susceptible to the slightest rub, say when you're wearing a hoodie, have long hair, wearing dangling earrings, or have a lanyard on your sunglasses.

In fact, if Apple were able to replicate what Amazon has done with "whisper mode" on its Echo devices (it's friggen awesome) the"Hey Siri" feature would also be noninvasive and completely appropriate in quiet environments. You really should check out Amazon's "whisper mode" on an Echo device before jumping to any conclusions about the appropriateness of voice interaction in quiet environments. It works even from across the room. I use it all of the time to cancel my wake-up alarm when I wake up before it goes off and I don't want to disturb my spouse. Amazon nailed it with this feature.

I’m more concerned by the fact my 1 year old is a more useful voice assistant than Siri. If Apple is adding Siri everywhere, they better up the ante. It’s absolutely horrible and I have disabled it on every device now.

entropys said:

The extortion of the price of RAM and SSD upgrades because Apple has designed these machines to make it too difficult for the average punter to do is depressing.

Extortion is the right nomenclature. It’s absurd.

Anyway, my hope is the next iMac will separate computer from monitor. In a way, a larger Mac Mini plus a beautiful Apple monitor. So that when the computer is replaced, the monitor can still be used.
A bit similar to Surface Studio 2 perhaps, which is an extraordinary combination of desktop computing and ‘desktop tablet use’ (only with the wrong operating system and ecosystem ;-).
Show us something exciting, Apple! The iMac is truly boring, the integrated design a waste and the Mac Mini is an overpriced, static brick.