Posts tagged with "siri"

HomePod Review Roundup

Initial orders of Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker will arrive on doorsteps and in Apple stores beginning Friday in the US, UK, and Australia. Today, reviews were published by several media outlets that have had about a week to test the HomePod. Apple also invited several journalists for a tour of its audio labs in Cupertino with Phil Schiller, hardware VP Kate Bergeron, and senior director of audio design and engineering Gary Greaves.

The consensus of the first wave of reviews is that the HomePod sounds fantastic. Apple has brought its engineering expertise and computing power to bear in a way that reviewers say produces remarkable sound for the HomePod’s size and price.

However, Siri’s limitations and the lack of support for third-party music streaming services also mean that the HomePod’s voice assistant features lag behind those of the Amazon Echo and Google Home. As a result, the HomePod’s appeal will likely be limited to people who already subscribe to Apple Music, use iOS devices, and care about high-quality audio.

Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch:

Apple’s HomePod is easily the best sounding mainstream smart speaker ever. It’s got better separation and bass response than anything else in its size and boasts a nuance and subtlety of sound that pays off the 7 years Apple has been working on it.

As a smart speaker, it offers best-in-class voice recognition, vastly outstripping the ability of other smart speakers to hear you trying to trigger a command at a distance or while music is playing, but its overall flexibility is limited by the limited command sets that the Siri protocol offers.

Buy a HomePod if you already have Apple Music or you want to have it and you’re in the market for a single incredibly over-designed and radically impressive speaker that will give you really great sound with basically no tuning, fussing, measuring or tweaking.

Nilay Patel sums up what that means for everyone else:

The Apple engineers I talked to were very proud of how the HomePod sounds, and for good reason: Apple’s audio engineering team did something really clever and new with the HomePod, and it really works. I’m not sure there’s anything out there that sounds better for the price, or even several times the price.

Unfortunately, Apple’s audio engineering team wasn’t in charge of just putting out a speaker. It was in charge of the audio components of a smart speaker, one that simply isn’t as smart as its competitors.

That’s really the crux of it: the HomePod sounds incredible, but not so world-bendingly amazing that you should switch away from Spotify, or accept Siri’s frustrating limitations as compared to Alexa.

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iPad Diaries: ‘Type to Siri’ as a Smart Command Line

iPad Diaries is a regular series about using the iPad as a primary computer. You can find more installments here and subscribe to the dedicated RSS feed.

A couple of weeks ago, I shared a series of pictures on Twitter showing how I had been using iOS 11’s Type to Siri feature on my iPad Pro, which is always connected to an external keyboard when I’m working.

I did not expect that offhanded tweet – and its “smart command line” description – to be so interesting for readers who replied or emailed me with a variety of questions about Type to Siri. Thus, as is customary for tweets that end up generating more questions than retweets, it’s time to elaborate with a blog post.

In this week’s iPad Diaries column, I’ll be taking a closer look at Type to Siri, my keyboard setup, and the commands I frequently use for Siri on my iPad; I will also detail some features that didn’t work as expected along with wishes for future updates to Siri.

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Apple Shares First Series of HomePod Ads→

Joe Rossignol, writing for MacRumors:

Apple today shared its first series of HomePod ads on its official YouTube channel, titled Bass, Beat, Distortion, and Equalizer.
[…]
The music-focused ads are each set to their own song, including Ain’t I by Lizzo, DNA by Kendrick Lamar, Holy Water by Hembree, and All Night by Big Boi. Apple continues to position the HomePod as a “breakthrough speaker” first and “intelligent home assistant” second in the description of each video.

If there was any doubt on how Apple is trying to position the HomePod, these ads have no mention – visual or otherwise – of Siri functionalities at all. They’re just about music. (Personally, I love the style and animations.)

As someone who actually believes in the utility of smart speakers, I’m curious to see how this strategy will play out for Apple this year, and if they’re going to air “lifestyle” HomePod + Siri commercials at some point (as they did many times before).

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Apple Announces HomePod Available to Order This Friday, In Stores on February 9

Today in a press release, Apple announced that its HomePod device will be available to order beginning this Friday (January 26) for the previously announced price of $349, and will ship for a release date of Friday, February 9. HomePod will be available in two color options: White and Space Gray.

HomePod was first unveiled last June during Apple’s WWDC keynote, with an announced ship date of December. It wasn’t able to make that date, receiving a new ‘Early 2018’ estimated release in mid-November. Historically, that kind of designation has meant anytime up through April is possible. Fortunately, prospective HomePod buyers won’t have to wait quite that long.

As Apple’s first entry into the smart speaker market, HomePod is the company’s answer to popular products like the Amazon Echo and Google Home. Unlike those other devices, however, HomePod is being marketed more as a premium-quality speaker, primed for music playback, than as a digital assistant hub. Siri is certainly an important component of the device, but at least for now, its role is being somewhat downplayed. At WWDC Phil Schiller announced that at launch, the HomePod’s version of Siri will only support a limited number of domains.

While these domains cover the majority of Siri’s normal functionality on iOS devices, some notable categories missing that would make sense for the HomePod include calendars, audiobook playback using iBooks, and Notes. With the HomePod’s release so early in the year, it’s possible we’ll receive word on additional domains at WWDC this June. Until then, what you’re getting with HomePod is exactly what Apple announced onstage: a powerful home speaker with Apple Music integration, which also happens to be a HomeKit hub that includes Siri, but in limited capacity.

One standout piece of news in today’s announcement is that the HomePod’s multi-room audio capabilities won’t be available at launch, but instead will come later through a software update. This seemingly supports previous rumors that AirPlay 2’s development may have been what led to HomePod’s initial delay.

Update: The HomePod page on Apple’s website confirms that not only is AirPlay 2’s multi-room support delayed until later this year, but so is the previously demoed capability to have two HomePods pair together for offering stereo sound.

The HomePod website also provides new details on how users will be able to interact with HomePod in non-voice ways. In addition to using the ‘Hey Siri’ trigger phrase, you can also touch and hold the top of the HomePod and talk to Siri. There are also controls for audio playback tied to different sets of taps on the HomePod’s surface, as shown below.

Apple and the Alexa Ecosystem

I recently read two interesting takes on the ever-growing Alexa ecosystem as it relates to Apple that made me think about the future of Siri and HomeKit. Here’s M.G. Siegler on Amazon’s plan to put Alexa everywhere:

The Echo Dot was the number one selling device across all of Amazon during the holiday shopping season. (The Fire TV stick with the Alexa-enabled remote was the second-most popular product.) Again, no absolute sales numbers beyond “tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices” — more than we usually get, by the way — but no matter: tens of millions is impressive enough.

I’ve been thinking about this recently not just in the context of putting Echoes in hotels, but also relative to Apple. As we’re all well aware, Apple had to delay their foray into the space, the HomePod, into 2018. But not only did they miss the all-important holiday shopping season, I’m increasingly thinking that they may have missed the boat.

Believe me, I know how dangerous this line of thinking is with regard to Apple. Apple is almost never the first-mover in a market. Instead, they prefer to sit back and let markets mature enough to then swoop in with their effort, which more often than not is the best effort (this is both subjective in terms of my own taste, and often objective in terms of sales). But again, I increasingly don’t believe that this will be the case with their smart speaker.

Amazon has entered the speaker and home automation market with Alexa-enabled devices in two ways: first with their own Echo products, then with a growing roster of third-party manufacturers that are baking Alexa into their devices and almost treating Amazon’s assistant as a “standard” feature like WiFi or Bluetooth. There’s a fascinating parallel between Amazon Web Services – a suite of components embedded in the majority of modern websites and web apps – and Alexa Voice Service – a suite of voice APIs now embedded in hundreds of automation devices, general-purpose accessories and appliances, and web services.

Here’s Ben Bajarin on what Alexa’s presence at CES tells us about the ecosystem surrounding Apple:

While many Apple defenders want to dismiss the momentum we are observing with the Amazon ecosystem on display here at CES, while Amazon is similarly not present just like Apple, I believe it is a mistake to do so.

It is easy to say that because Apple was never present at CES that the show didn’t mean something to them or their ecosystem. It is easy, and correct to say that CES was not, or never was, a measure of the health of Apple’s products. It is, however, incorrect and dangerous to miss that CES had been, for some time, a barometer for the health of Apple’s ecosystem.

As I mentioned, our ability to measure any platforms ecosystem from what we observe at CES, is the main reason so many are paying attention to what is happening with Amazon’s Alexa platform. Google Assistant is certainly more present than it was last year, however, when you look at how third parties are talking about-and marketing-their support of these assistants they are putting significantly more effort into talking about Alexa than Google Assistant. Which is a telling signal. Again, to reiterate this point, third parties used to market, and spend energy talking about their integration with iOS or support of iPhone/iPad with the same rigor they are now talking about Amazon’s Alexa. This can not be ignored.

You could argue that most Apple-compatible gadgets and accessories announced at CES used to appear in tech blogs only to be forgotten a few months later because they were fads, vaporware, or ultimately not essential to the growth of the iOS ecosystem, and that the same will happen with Alexa-enabled devices we’ve seen this year. The difference, I think, is that this new generation of home automation products is an ecosystem in itself with higher value than, say, the iPad keyboards or stylii we used to see at CES. Alexa hasn’t “won”, but it has momentum among third-party companies making products that are or will soon be in our homes, sharing the same space of our TVs, routers, consoles, and mobile devices.

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SiriKit Support Will Be Included on HomePod for Certain Third-Party App Domains

In an update on its developer site today, Apple announced that SiriKit support will be included in the forthcoming HomePod device.

iOS 11.2 introduces SiriKit for HomePod, the powerful speaker that sounds amazing, adapts to wherever it’s playing, and provides instant access to Apple Music. HomePod is also a helpful home assistant for everyday questions and tasks. With the intelligence of Siri, users control HomePod through natural voice interaction. And with SiriKit, users can access iOS apps for Messaging, Lists, and Notes. Make sure your SiriKit integration is up to date and test your app’s voice-only experience today.

When the HomePod was first unveiled at WWDC in June, there was no word regarding whether it would support third-party apps through SiriKit. While some expected further details on HomePod to arrive in September’s keynote, that event came and went with no news. Today marks the first time we’ve learned anything new about HomePod from official sources since its initial introduction.

Messaging, Lists, and Notes are the only SiriKit domains that will work with HomePod at launch, but it’s likely we’ll see more added over time. This means the HomePod will be able to do things like send messages in Telegram, create tasks in Todoist or Things, and create notes in Evernote.

Information about how SiriKit on HomePod will work is included on Apple’s full SiriKit site, which contains the following detail:

Siri recognizes SiriKit requests made on HomePod and sends those requests to the user’s iOS device for processing.

This means SiriKit support on HomePod will take a fundamentally different path than that of competing products like the Amazon Echo. In most cases the Echo’s set of third-party Alexa skills can be operated completely independent of another device. For the time being at least, third-party support on HomePod will rely on a nearby iPhone or iPad.

There are still many HomePod details that remain unclear. For example, we don’t yet know if SiriKit requests or iCloud requests will be tied to a single user’s device, or if a family will be able to interact with the device in a user-specific way. Time will bring the full story into view, but for now, knowing that HomePod will launch with at least some third-party app support is good news.

Apple Defends Siri Explaining How Its Voice Assistant Works→

On the heels of a feature story in Wired last week, Apple executives and engineers opened up about how Siri works in interviews with Fast Company. As the publication explained it, a narrative has emerged that Apple’s AI work is behind other companies’ efforts because of its dedication to user privacy.

In an interview with Fast Company, Apple’s Greg Joswiak disagrees:

“I think it is a false narrative. It’s true that we like to keep the data as optimized as possible, that’s certainly something that I think a lot of users have come to expect, and they know that we’re treating their privacy maybe different than some others are.”

Joswiak argues that Siri can be every bit as helpful as other assistants without accumulating a lot of personal user data in the cloud, as companies like Facebook and Google are accustomed to doing. “We’re able to deliver a very personalized experience … without treating you as a product that keeps your information and sells it to the highest bidder. That’s just not the way we operate.”

The article provides concrete examples of how Siri works and the advances that have been made since it was introduced with a level of detail that has not been shared before.

The effectiveness of Siri and Apple’s machine learning research is an area where Apple’s culture of secrecy has hurt it. Apple seems to have recognized this and has made a concerted effort to turn perceptions around with interviews like the ones in Wired and Fast Company. Apple employees have also begun to engage in more public discussion of the company’s machine learning and AI initiatives through outlets like its recently-introduced journal and presentations made by Apple employees. Apple even enlisted The Rock to help it get the word out about Siri’s capabilities. Competition for virtual personal assistant supremacy has heated up, and Apple has signaled it has no intention of being left out or backing down.

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Making Siri More Human→

David Pierce has a feature story on WIRED today that’s all about Siri – especially the new Siri voice coming in iOS 11. It features a variety of interesting details concerning Siri’s history, the way Apple thinks about the digital assistant, and in-depth details on how new Siri languages are added.

One of my favorite bits involves a quote from Apple’s VP of product marketing, Greg Jozwiak, who said Apple focuses on Siri’s ability to get things done:

It drives him crazy that people compare virtual assistants by asking trivia questions, which always makes Siri look bad. “We didn’t engineer this thing to be Trivial Pursuit!” he says.

This explains Siri’s productivity-focused commercial starring The Rock, and also helps make sense of the fact that Siri is often embarrassingly clueless when it comes to current events or other simple queries. Though Apple’s awareness of the problem exacerbates its lack of a suitable response in beefing up Siri’s trivia knowledge.

Other interesting tidbits from the story include the fact that Siri now has a massive 375 million active monthly users, and that Siri’s new, more natural voice was inspired in part by the movie Her.

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Siri’s Co-Creator Shares His Vision for the Future of AI→

Earlier this year Tom Gruber, the co-creator of Siri and current member of Apple’s AI team, gave a TED talk focusing on his vision for the future of AI, which is rooted in a philosophy he calls “humanistic AI.” The video and full transcript for that talk recently became available, providing a broader audience with Gruber’s insights into the place of AI in our everyday lives. While he doesn’t offer any specifics regarding work Apple is doing in this space, it is clear that Gruber’s vision represents, at least in part, the vision of Apple for Siri and AI as a whole.

Gruber describes humanistic AI as “artificial intelligence designed to meet human needs by collaborating and augmenting people.” This theme of AI augmenting, complementing humans is fleshed out by Gruber in several ways; one example involves Siri serving as an accessibility tool, while another theorizes at the benefits AI can offer to the human memory. The full talk provides an interesting glimpse into how Apple sees AI evolving in the near future.

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