Apple Introduces its home assistant HomePod

[kyteflyer]

ROFL! Did the band thing as a youngster (also solo) and I guess I just dont need a Homepod.

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

ROFL! Did the band thing as a youngster (also solo) and I guess I just dont need a Homepod.

I hear you. I've got an Amazon Echo and a Dot, but after the first few weeks I quickly discovered that I really don't use them much. Anything they can do in the home assistant area I can accomplish with my iPhone or iPad, and often I get better results via the iPhone and iPad. And since I don't use Apple Music, there really is no reason to spend $350 for large, butt ugly paperweight!

[Dylrob]

The cynic in me wonders if this was originally developed as a Echo competitor, but they ultimately decided to emphasize the speaker aspects more simply because, well, Siri crap compared to Alexa.

I suspect it was always intended as a speaker system for Apple Music rather than an Echo home assistant device. To be honest, my Echo sounds like crap when playing music, no real competion there. And TBH again, Alexa is pretty dumb at present. Bottom line is that these home assistant devices being produced by various companies are designed to sell that company's digital content. Even if Amazon allows the Echo to play Spotify, Pandora, and other music services, they still try to sell you music, audio books, and anything that is sold on Amazon.com. Apple is doing the same except their emphasis is on selling Apple Music. I personally wouldn't call Siri crap. It is at least as good as Alexa.

[Dylrob]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I suspect it was always intended as a speaker system for Apple Music rather than an Echo home assistant device. To be honest, my Echo sounds like crap when playing music, no real competion there. And TBH again, Alexa is pretty dumb at present. Bottom line is that these home assistant devices being produced by various companies are designed to sell that company's digital content. Even if Amazon allows the Echo to play Spotify, Pandora, and other music services, they still try to sell you music, audio books, and anything that is sold on Amazon.com. Apple is doing the same except their emphasis is on selling Apple Music. I personally wouldn't call Siri crap. It is at least as good as Alexa.

Siri doesn't have anything like Alexa's skills, and might never given Apple's privacy restrictions.

[JMikeD]

I have an Echo, Google Assistant on my iPhone 6, and of course Siri. I've used all three a lot and done comparisons. To my mind, here's not a clear winner here.
Siri is better at giving you answers to questions that don't have a single, clear-cut answer, whereas the Echo and Google Assistant (presumably the same software as Google Home) will offer only a single answer.

One of my tests is to ask for the following conversion: "Convert 40 miles per gallon to liters per one hundred kilometers." Siri offers a selection of web sites that will do conversions if I go there and enter the information, the Echo says it doesn't know that, and Google Assistant (GA) gives the correct answer: 5.88 liters per one hundred kilometers.

Echo will turn on/off all my Insteon home automation devices. Google and Siri won't.

Siri will go everywhere with me (so will the GA for iPhone). Siri has secure encrypted communications. Echo doesn't seem to encrypt, but doesn't communicate with Amazon until the wake word is spoken (you can toggle a beep that sounds at the beginning and end of the communication, but of course that could be faked). It's unknown to me whether the GA encrypts. It doesn't seem to do anything until you launch the app, so it's unlikely to be listening all the time.

So none of these things are where I'd like to see a good home assistant device. I'm treating the Apple HomePod the same as Siri. I don't need an expensive speaker, I already have a nice 7.1 surround system to listen to. So I'm not the market that Apple is going after with the HomePod.