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Things Apple's $350 HomePod Smart-Speaker Can't Do: Answer Random Questions, Check Calendar, Work With an Android Phone, and More (businessinsider.com)
In June last year, Apple announced the HomePod, its first smart-speaker which will battle Amazon's sleeper hit Echo speakers and Google's Home speakers. Apple being late to enter a product category is nothing new, but the HomePod has a few other strange things about it. Apple said it won't begin shipping the HomePod until December that year, in a departure of its own tradition. Then the device's shipment was delayed till "early 2018" -- February 9 is the current shipping date. Bloomberg has reported about the difficulties Apple engineers faced over the years to come up with the HomePod.
At any rate, Business Insider now has more information about the device, and is reporting the things that Apple's first smart-speaker won't be able to do. From the report (condensed): 1. HomePod can't pair with Android phones.
2. HomePod doesn't recognize different people's voices.
3. HomePod can't check your calendar.
4. HomePod doesn't work well with other streaming services besides Apple Music. (Spotify, Tindal, and Pandora users won't be able to use Siri.)
5. HomePod can't hook up to another device using an auxiliary cord.
6. HomePod can't make calls on its own. (In order to make a call using HomePod, you have to dial the person's number on your iPhone, then manually select that the call play through HomePod.)
7. The HomePod version of Siri isn't prepared to answer random questions like Alexa and Google Assistant.
At any rate, Business Insider now has more information about the device, and is reporting the things that Apple's first smart-speaker won't be able to do. From the report (condensed): 1. HomePod can't pair with Android phones.
2. HomePod doesn't recognize different people's voices.
3. HomePod can't check your calendar.
4. HomePod doesn't work well with other streaming services besides Apple Music. (Spotify, Tindal, and Pandora users won't be able to use Siri.)
5. HomePod can't hook up to another device using an auxiliary cord.
6. HomePod can't make calls on its own. (In order to make a call using HomePod, you have to dial the person's number on your iPhone, then manually select that the call play through HomePod.)
7. The HomePod version of Siri isn't prepared to answer random questions like Alexa and Google Assistant.
...is now limited to bonzais and flower pots only.
Dialectician. Archology.
Lame, late, and going to take over the world.
...forward anything it hears to a permanent, centralized store to be forever associated with you and rescanned on a regular basis to mine new information. Just like any of these devices.
I think Apple's privacy claims are a joke just to cover up their inability to scale and provide personalized services, but... Don't I read on Slashdot every damn day how terrible it is to have "the cloud" snooping through all my shit? And now we're going to have a discussion about why HomePod sucks because it doesn't offer many of the features that require snooping through all my shit. What's it going to be?
This feels like Apple did this product simply to have something out there. I hate to say it, but Jobs would of NEVER allowed this product to go out unless it was as good or better than the competition.
So I assume Tindal is the abomination resulted from the marriage of Tinder and Tidal? What does it do? You get to Tindal and chill when you swipe right on the same playlist?
Oddly, Ford parts don't fit into my Chevy either!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
What it can do though, is priceless.
-It comes in a nice shiny case
-It comes in any color you like, so long as it's "Apple White"
-It has an Apple Logo
-It "just works"(tm), for a very limited definition of works.
It is AirPlay compatible, so it will work with any app that supports Airplay (including Android). It also works with iCloud Match. Works great, and sound great! You should buy two.
This just continues the tradition of other, similar gimmicks: beyond grins and giggles, and party games, their usefulness is very limited. What they can do, you can, for the most part, do just as efficiently with a keyboard. On the other hand, there are lots of tasks that you can do very easily with a keyboard, that seem to be beyond their grasp. Finally, they understand very, very little - command any of them NOT to give you the weather forecast for the weekend, and it will, unhesitatingly, give you the weather forecast for the weekend. These things will one day no doubt be very useful; for the time being, they are just toys, and not very entertaining ones, at that.
I never got into the smart speaker technology anyways. I just never liked talking to machines.
But in general for tech involving apple I see the following.
Haters: They judge how apple does on all the things it doesn't do well. The things it does do well are just not important.
Lovers: They judge on what Apple does on things it does do well. The things it fails are are just not that important.
Both sides are just giving an emotional reaction to the product. You can be an Apple Sheep and Love all things apple however that isn't any more idiotic then being an Apple Troll who hates everything with that Apple Logo on it.
(You can replace "Apple" with other brands, and the point is still the same, however currently Apple is sparking a lot of emotion)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The HomePod exists solely as a placeholder product for Apple to position themselves in the home assistant market, for the large pool of buyers already commited to the Apple brand - not much unlike the Apple TV, the Mac Mini, the MacBook Air, among others. Apple has a history of taking long to get in the game because when they do get in the game, they have their name to make it sell, then just market that specific characteristic as being reason for everything else being better. "When we decide to enter a segment, we do it with the best product/feature polish available".
The only difference being that, this time around, it is oh-so-much easier to make the device un-interoperable with third parties. The only interaction with such a device is sound - people just won't notice many of the flaws, on a system which's user experience is minimized to spoken or aloud interaction. or to a level, will excuse them much more easily. It's a lot like the Kindle Fire devices - make one device for exacty 2 or 3 features (buy ebook, read ebook, keep it closed to Amazon's ecosystem for experience/quality assurance "purposes", which are simply euphemisms for monetization), and make those solid enough so you can tell people they can do them instead of using "brand X" of the same feature. Maybe some time after you can add a browser or other non-trivialities that should have been there in the first place, but were simply too expensive or would take too long to produce. Macs moving to Intel and finally supporting Windows comes to mind...
A four-hundred dollar appliance heralded as a breakthrough on apples site but that cant interface with anything outside its ecosystem and struggles to deliver basic services its competitors have all managed to perfect by now. Comes with paradoxical features like "7 tweeters" and "deep bass" but without boom?
its also making its debut 3 years after Alexa, so does this mean Apple is officially wading into microsofts 'day late dollar short' release schedule?
Good people go to bed earlier.
I've been waiting to hear that it isn't compatible with iTunes Home Sharing either (streaming from iTunes on your LAN). They have already created an in-home streaming solution, but they would be the first to allow it from a smart speaker. Everyone requires your music to be on a cloud service.
It's just one more nail in the coffin before it even hits a ship date.
I believe the phrase you are looking for is "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. "
Those are worship words handed down by the forefathers in the mists of time.
and always-on Microphones are now "Speakers" -- huzzah.
But it just works... all by itself. More non-genius from Tim's boys.
Since it won't react to other people's voices, there is no way for South Park to play jokes on it.
"Business Insider" isn't a real news source. This is just some hack opinion piece from someone who has never used the product.
I'm not getting a HomePod (I'm invested in Sonos speakers) but I suspect that Apple's speaker will work great with Apple devices in the Apple ecosystem and will sound better than anything else on the market. If that's what you want, then buy it, and if not, don't.
My Sonos One speakers all have Alexa support, and I keep it turned off on all of them. I hate the idea of something listening at all times in my house. Surely I can't be the only one?
- Vincit qui patitur.
"It just works."
Yeeeeeaaaaah.....
It works. We just need to redefine what "work" is
5. HomePod can't hook up to another device using an auxiliary cord.
It have a lot of courage!|
Elok
This feels like Apple did this product simply to have something out there.
Probably true but the real question is how fast they will iterate and improve it. The original iPhone was a game changer but the first version didn't include a lot of features their competition had at the time. It succeeded on the improvements of later versions. There were MP3 players that were better than the iPod when it was introduced. Apple rarely is first into a market but they usually come with something decent and then keep improving it until it gains major market share. I recommend people never buy version 1.0 of a new Apple product because it takes them a few tries to work out the kinks even if they have the broad strokes more or less right.
hate to say it, but Jobs would of NEVER allowed this product to go out unless it was as good or better than the competition.
Jobs did exactly that with some regularity. Apple products are generally good quality but often are not best in class and more than a few have been quite deficient. Apple has some big hits but they aren't anywhere close to a perfect batting average even when Jobs was in charge.
But not when they are connected back to the mother ships.
Stand alone, fire walled, etc. NO communication back to anyone one. No logs, except those kept locally.
Unfortunately, I believe these all still rely heavily on the Hardware and Databases back at the mother ships.
Unless these devices can stand on their own or there is some iron clad Federal regulation on privacy of data (with jail time for violators), not happening in my home.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
For that price? What a piece of crap!
I'm not sure why anyone cares. Apple is clearly marketing this against products like those from Bose and Sonos, not a sub-$100 echo / echo dot / google home. They clearly spent time on a product that they thought would have great sound quality to compliment their Amazon Music service. Sure, it will probably connect to more services over time and become more useful for the home automation / information services that many have come to respect the Echo / Google Home products for, but I don't think that's their short game. Apple's products have always been about the not-so-subtle-hand-in-your-back push toward using only their services, so I'm not surprised they don't integrate well with Pandora/Spotify, etc. However, it also doesn't do it any worse than their current system (start playback -> set playback to airplay compatible device -> done). They will sell plenty of these, don't waste your time comparing it to products half its price, and don't buy one if it doesn't suit your needs.
I have 5 Echo products and love them, but they could still sound way better than they currently do, but I've also spent less than $500 to have devices throughout my house, so I can't complain about what I've achieved for the price.
And really, who asks their smart device about their calendar?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Then these clearly are not products targeted at you. All the best functionality of these devices relies on communication back to the "mother ships". Asking for the latest news, weather, sports scores, streaming music, etc... Explain to me how something firewalled on your local network would be able to do any of that.
It's just wearisome to hear these same comments trotted out every time a smart speaker is discussed on the site.
How do you expect these devices to do anything useful without being connected to anything? This is what they are. Google voice command. And unless you take them off the internet entirely, you'll never really know if they are phoning home (or the NSA) or not.
You'd think Slashdotters would be tired of being wrong about Apple products ;-)
iPod - "Lame, Nomad does it better"
iPhone - "Lame, no physical keyboard"
iPad - "Lame, no file system"
AirPods - "Lame, look like toothbrushes in your ears"
HomePod - "Lame, can't order new sheets"
$350 is more than worth it for a high-quality bluetooth speaker. I'll listen to music 100x more often than I'll buy Tide Pods.
I have a Pixel, she has a recent iPhone model. Very occasionally we still ask siri a question, to see if she's up to answering a question, but mostly to see if anything has improved. Basically we use Ok Google for everything.
We've always been really impressed with Ok Google's question answering capabilities, from odd ways to ask the weather to the color of a specific type of bird, cooking instructions etc etc. Siri just chokes on 99% of questions. Alexa will generally get the words right and tell you it can't search for XYZ but at least it gets that right.
At this point we would consider a google or possibly an Alexa device (my girlfriend likes it's integration with our Fire TV, amazon orders, etc) but we both agree that Siri is Completely Fucking Useless. If we're waiting for an uber to go home some times we'll amuse ourselves to see how badly Siri mangles our request. Siri's basically just a first generation toy, whereas Ok Google is almost to the point where you could go voice-only for performing 95% of your daily searches. Alexa fits somewhere in the middle but closer to google than apple's offerings.
moox. for a new generation.
Be a speaker. Seriously, itâ(TM)s way, way better at this than any of the other options. If thatâ(TM)s not important to you, then this product isnâ(TM)t for you.
E pluribus unum
Talking to Apple, logging queries, etc., is not the same as querying the web.
If I could ask a question or have some task performed and there be no record what-so-ever at the "mother ship", then I'd go for it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
They could switch on the lights, change the temperature etc. without leaving traces outside of the home.
You should be able to set up DuckDuckGo as your search engine without the Q&A's being read by the manufacturer.
With proper (I.e. non USofA) privacy regulation this could all be feasible, you could even order a pizza or dildo with only you and the seller keeping records.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
You're assuming nobody is handicapped in any way, and forgetting that people have strokes, aneurysms and car accidents.
A partially paralyzed auto accident survivor facing a grueling years-long recovery process is usually very willing to talk to a computer. Not least for streaming music - "Alexa, play 'Live from the Mars Hotel'" - while engaged in difficult or humiliating processes essential to therapy.
I wish these things had been available while my father was in the last stages of Parkinson's disease. Amazon Alexa would have enriched his life immeasurably.
But does it blend?
You can bet he would never let garbage like this see the light of day.
And when you look at how Apple does improve these products, it's mostly by paying other companies to do it for them.
That depends on the product and you have cherry picked a couple of examples convenient to your point and left out the ones that aren't. Not saying your point isn't valid but I disagree with the word "mostly" in your argument. It might be a fair argument that Apple falls behind when they do outsource instead of building products in house. When Apple gets it right they tend to REALLY get it right. But they don't have a perfect batting average and their record for integrating purchased technology is a bit spotty like most big companies.
They can take Target's slogan and turn it around.
Expect less, pay more!
These all do the speech recognition in the cloud at the moment (AFAIK). That part will need done there until it can be moved to a higher-powered local device, and it's debatable whether or not that's completely feasible today (I think it probably is, since I could do speech recognition in realtime on an old 200MHz x86 cpu, though the current state of the art is better).
That said, none of items you noted require communication through a single broker (ie. Amazon's Alexa sending all queries through Alexa; Google sending all queries through their service; etc etc).
I'm most familiar with Amazon's Alexa. It already has "skills", which are 3rd party things that it can tie into. The skills get the text version of the request, and reply with their own string of text, which gets sent back down to the speaker and spoken. If the speech-to-text was done locally, that communication to and from the skills could be done directly. Skills could be created for each of those items you noted (news, weather, sports scores, music, etc)... there are already more advances skills in place, so that's not the issue.
The only hurdle right now is that the speech-to-text is done server-side ("in the cloud"). That is by design, and at least partially to aid in lock in (prevents the devices from being used without their service). Since that's done on the server, managing all the 3rd party skills and that communication is also far easier to do server-side, so that's how it was implemented... but that's just a side effect, and is not a direct limitation.
It's not the connection to the mother ship that's the problem. It's the mother ship's insistence on saving every interaction that you have with it - whether it improves the service or not. They don't even know what they want it for - they just figure that they might want it in the future. While I might not pay for an ad-free life, I might consider paying for an anonymous one. Where my online interactions, if saved at all, are only ever saved in aggregate form - to improve the overall service without intruding on my privacy.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
A connection to the mother ship is the only reason those devices exist. your use case for them is pretty much just ancillary to their goals. (machine learning training and advertising)
Except for not being able to take an AUX input, the HomePod is basically exactly what I want. I don't want something to answer my questions or order things off of Amazon for me. If I wanted those things, I'd've already bought an Echo or Google Home.
I want a nice speaker with good quality that plays my music library. Currently, I have wired speakers set up in my kitchen, and I plug my phone or iPad in when I want to listen to music or podcasts. Add in the ability to set a timer and I'm basically set.
I will be the first to admit that sometimes even Apple doesn't understand minimalism properly: they either go too far (hi MacBook keyboards), or they throw in way too much (hi Touchbar MacBook Pro). I think the HomePod is serendipitously the device that I want the most (again, excepting the lack of an external input), and not because Apple designed it to be effectively minimal, just because they couldn't get all the features that I plan to ignore in by the time it ships.
I already have a phone and iPad that wake up and answer questions when I talk to them and I honestly don't need yet another. I think there's a market for a high quality speaker that integrates with the rest of your Apple stuff, and if Apple can keep their eyes on the ball and not throw the privacy angle out the window, they might just have a hit on their hands.
2) Recognize other people's voices? Seriously? The last thing you want to do is allow other people and their lousy musical taste to pick the music during a party.
From TFA: While HomePod will answer to anyone's commands [emphasis added], it isn't capable of recognizing individual voices. This means you can't set up user profiles or tailor the device to different members of a household.
So, The "last thing you want to do" is exactly what HomePod does.
These all do the speech recognition in the cloud at the moment (AFAIK). That part will need done there until it can be moved to a higher-powered local device, and it's debatable whether or not that's completely feasible today (I think it probably is, since I could do speech recognition in realtime on an old 200MHz x86 cpu, though the current state of the art is better).
If they're anything like Siri then they do the speech recognition locally and forward the transcript to the cloud for natural language processing (and AmaAppGoogl intrusion into your lives). You can see this for yourself - ask Siri anything and it displays the transcript of your request on the screen while asking the cloud what to do about it.
Devices could also do the natural language processing themselves (one could argue that requires less computing power than speaker-indepedent speech recognition) except that the vendors like the lock-in (and intrusion into your lives).
If they're anything like Siri then they do the speech recognition locally ... You can see this for yourself - ask Siri anything and it displays the transcript of your request on the screen while asking the cloud what to do about it.
Seeing the text on screen does not mean that it does the speech-to-text locally. It might, but it could have sent the audio out and got back the text and displayed it. Furthermore, what Siri (or OK Google or Amazon Alexa) does on your phone/tablet/computer does not mean that's what it does on the smart speaker.
FWIW, the Amazon Echo sends the audio to Amazon, as can be seen in packet captures on the network. AFAICT, they're all designing them that way, such that the speaker hardware cost is kept to a minimum (very low hardware requirements). I'm not sure what's known about the Apple HomePod specs yet, but it's 5.5lb and $350, so it could easily have the speech processing on board.
I love it when people don't want their devices to connect back to the mothership.. and yet want the ultimate mothership (the federal government) to be in charge of that.
The only hurdle right now is that the speech-to-text is done server-side ("in the cloud"). That is by design, and at least partially to aid in lock in (prevents the devices from being used without their service).
The main reason for doing that is the ability to learn from the interactions to not only improve the speech recognition but also about understanding the intent of the language so you don't just have a canned set of speech commands to say. Sure, as you said the speech recognition component of basic commands is relatively easy (insofar as it has been done many times for a long time) and can be done on device but the understanding of the intent and range of language used to express that intent is the more complicated piece. There's a very important difference between working what you said (speech-to-text) and what you meant.
I read /. at -1.
Years ago I compared it to driving through CrackTown in a convertible with the roof open and being stuck in first gear.
Trolling is a art,
Stand alone, fire walled, etc. NO communication back to anyone one. No logs, except those kept locally.
Most of the random questions you ask are answered using search results. Most of the other questions (i.e. weather, "skills") can't feasibly work without connectivity for reasons ranging from not enough CPU power on the speaker to needing live information to needing to communicate with other devices.
I didn't have to create groups with Google Home. I have both Home and Echo. With Home I just say, "turn off all the lights in the living room" and it does so, or I ask, "What lights are on?" and it tells me. When setting up the Home it asks what room each device is in and automatically groups them. I also have the Echo but find myself using Google Home much more frequently because it generally works better.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
If this sounds as good as nearly all initial reviews mention, I can imagine buying a pair to replace my ok but bulky floorstanding speakers.
However it looks like it can only handle Airplay for external input, next to streaming apple music directly. So that is ok for my apple tv for netflix (I think), ios devices and mac.
But I also would like to stream the sound of tv, blu ray and eventually a game consol for my kids through them. It looks like the only way to make it work would be with a gadget that converts analog or hdmi sound from my AV preamp to an airplay stream. An Airport express will NOT work since it is an airplay receiver. I can’t find such a device or raspberry pi project. Conceivably i think that with some software one could use a mac mini to capture the audio and then stream it but that would really be overkill. I don’t want to switch on and connect my main mac laptop whenever I want to watch tv either
Hence does anyone know of an airplay transmitter?
> asking for the news, the news, the news, stream music
Nonsense, I "stream" my music files all the time.
I suppose you make up your own news, weather, and sports scores, as well? And already know everything, of course, so there's no need to connect to the internet to look stuff up?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
"What do you get when you multiply six by nine?" Google gave the correct answer, 42, whereas Alexa gave 54
Math ?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
I have a Google Home, and was shocked to discover it can't access my Google Calendar! I have a G Suite (Google Apps) account, and apparently for "security" they disallow access to G Suite calendars from Home. Which is weird because apparently Alexa has no trouble with it at all. Hundreds of messages on the Google Home support forum: https://productforums.google.c...