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Apple Homepod Review: Locked In (theverge.com)
On Tuesday, the review embargo lifted for full reviews of Apple's new HomePod smart speaker. The Verge's Niley Patel shared his thoughts on Apple's new HomePod in video and written form. Patel found that while it offers best-in-class sound for the price, Siri is frustratingly limited and the voice controls only work with Apple Music. Furthermore, Siri can't tell different voices apart, therefore raising some privacy concerns as anyone can come up to the speaker and ask Siri to send and read text messages and other private information aloud. Here's an excerpt from the report: The HomePod, whether Apple likes it or not, is the company's answer to the wildly popular Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers. Apple is very insistent that the $349 HomePod has been in development for the past six years and that it's entirely focused on sound quality, but it's entering a market where Amazon is advertising Alexa as a lovable and well-known character during the Super Bowl instead of promoting its actual features. Our shared expectations about smart speakers are beginning to settle in, and outside of engineering labs and controlled listening tests, the HomePod has to measure up. And while it's true that the HomePod sounds incredible -- it sounds far better than any other speaker in its price range -- it also demands that you live entirely inside Apple's ecosystem in a way that even Apple's other products do not. The question is: is beautiful sound quality worth locking yourself even more tightly into a walled garden? As for technical specifications, the HomePod comes in at 6.8 inches high, 5.6 inches wide, and weights 5.5 pounds. It features a high-excursion woofer with custom amplifier, array of seven horn-loaded tweeters, each with its own custom amplifier, six-microphone array, internal low-frequency calibration microphone for automatic bass correction, direct and ambient audio beamforming, and transparent studio-level dynamic processing.
Not as much as Google or Amazon. Because all the reviews are saying how limited Siri is. And Siri is limited because Apple is holding it back. Siri is limited to simple on-device commands that are handled locally without cloud involvement, or when using the cloud, very limited engagements.
Apple's privacy policies are tough, and compartmentalized. The Siri team is blocked for requests to other user data not already given to Siri - as in they can ask, but they won't be able to get at it. Doesn't matter that Apple has that information, if the privacy policy says Siri cannot get at it, that data simply doesn't exist.
Why do you think Google/Alphabet harmonized data sharing so your data is shared freely by everyone at Alphabet? Because having access to all that data makes Google's assistant much better. Google Assistant knows you better, and can answer you better. Siri is basically limited to simple interactions only. The reviews show that while Siri listens well, it does not respond as well
Heck, knowing Apple, Siri probably is afraid to hit the cloud server and tries to do as much as possible on device. Less data Apple has is less data to give to the government, and is much easier to simply say "that is information we do not have because the devices never send it to us" than to have to fight the courts because you do have it, but because of reason X, the government can't get it. (See Microsoft's fight at not having to turn over cloud data stored in another country.). Better to not have that information and have the FBI bitching and whining about Apple not collecting that information than the FBI bitching and whining that Apple is deliberately obstructing justice by not turning over the data. Because eventually some event will happen that tugs at heart strings so much, everyone will just go and demand you release the information.
Anyhow, I'll wait for the HomePod version 2. The revision that Apple will do and will add audio input jacks to. It is classical Apple after all - release something that does a narrow thing very well, but has limitations, then revise it to have the missing features people want put back in. I'm sure a lot of this is simply in making sure the technology used is robust and works well.
And you know some third party will probably make a wireless adapter that takes audio in and plays it through the HomePod, too.