hmurchison

LOL.  April 1st has already come and gone. 

Most of Tile's patents seem to have been filed quite recently and I'm unsure of whether they've actually litigated against them. 

https://patents.justia.com/assignee/tile-inc ;

Apple may license Tile technology but it's unclear if Tile's patents would withstand prior art challenges.  

Charging is simply not a pain point. for the average consumer.   AirPower was a device for and hyped up by Apple Sheep.  Let's be real the rank and file consumer wasn't going to walk into a store and spend 200 dollars for a charging mat. 

I thought the article was good.    It's basically a "claim chowder" article in which we retroactively look at the claims coming from the usual nattering nabobs and compare with reality. 

Siri is not perfect and Apple realized this and pivoted.   Shortcuts is future and when it's mature its going to be far more sophisticated than Alexa or Google Assistant. 
The best way to understand a shortcut is to deconstruct a ready made one.   We have some with If Statements and Conditionals.   There's a lot of power lurking under the surface.   The are clearly some changes that need to happen. 

1.  The ability to record or step through actions to build workflows is going to be essential for people that get dizzy when the programming terms come up. 
2.  The UI of Shortcuts isn't up to Apple standard yet.   Hell I can't even name my shortcut without going to another page. 
3. Shortcuts on the Mac as a replacement for Automator - This is a given. 
4. Need better Help and training materials.  Clear explanations of features is essential 
5. More plug in languages.  We've got Javascript but I'd love to see Python support. 

At WWDC we'll see how important the Siri/Shortcut combo is.  I'm guessing that Apple will show "significant" updates to Shortcuts to make it more approachable.  Once it comes to the Mac I'll build a bunch of Shortcuts and sell off my Google Home spycrap. 

There's plenty of systems that purport to do the same 

Audessy 
Dirac 
REW - Room EQ Wizard 

People don't expect miracles in speakers at $299.   HomePod simply needs to 
support the Apple ecosystem,  improve Siri and offer voice recognition and it's 
likely most people would be happy.