Ondrej Holzman After Amazon's success with its Echo speaker, in which it has inserted the smart assistant Alexa, it has been a lot lately he speculates about whether Apple will follow him in a similar fashion with its own Siri artificial intelligence. Google anyway he did. But the iPhone manufacturer apparently has slightly different plans.
According to analyst Tim Bajarin, who wrote for a magazine Time article "Why Apple isn't creating a competitor for Amazon Echo", Apple does have similar plans with Siri as Amazon, so that its assistant can control as many things as possible, but in a slightly different form.
Despite Amazon's success, Apple has no apparent interest in copying the Echo. From my conversations with Apple executives, I've come to the conclusion that they're more interested in transforming Siri into a ubiquitous AI assistant across devices than creating a single product to serve as a device for Siri. Apple is also very interested in Siri as a control center for the smart home, as evidenced by the latest impressive HomeKit demo.
Tim Bajarin links here to the new Home section on the Apple website, where Apple shows the capabilities of HomeKit and how it can automate the entire home. In the attached video, even Siri plays a role in the smart home, which is present both on the iPhone and, for example, on the iPad - that is, where it is needed.
Apple has updated the Home section of its website to introduce HomeKit and smart home options with the Home app. https://t.co/NYbygj1P2y pic.twitter.com/0KsNSqU116
— Jablíčkář.cz (@Jablickar) March 2, 2017
It is true that creating a product similar to Amazon's Echo or perhaps Google's Home, in which there is an Assistant instead of Alexa, just so that Apple also has a representative in this category, does not make sense. Against Amazon, the Californian giant is in a completely different position, where it does not need a similar product to expand its assistant among customers.
Siri is already on millions and millions of iPhones, iPads, indirectly also on the Watch, and for a shorter period of time also on the Mac. The idea of an omnipresent assistant that is not embodied by a single product, e.g. on the kitchen counter, but is actually everywhere you need it, is already a reality. You don't even need to pick up the latest iPhones anymore, you just need to call out the command "Hey, Siri" and the apple phone will respond to you just like the Echo.
For Apple, the next logical step is not a new "Siri product", but the advancement of the existing ecosystem in the sense of improving the voice assistant, her abilities and the possibility of interacting with her in all products. The smart home, as presented by Apple in its video, led by HomeKit, the Home app and the ubiquitous Siri, is the scenario where Apple is heading.
The whole thing should be viewed as a complex matter, not just that Amazon is now scoring here with a smart speaker and Apple is sleeping. Whether Alexa is more capable than Siri in some respects is another debate. In addition, Sonos could have a say in this fight.
Dieter Bohn in extremely interesting interview at The Verge interviewed the new executive director of Sonos, Patrick Spence, who spoke, among other things, about the current situation in the field of smart assistants and various services, which are supported by today's biggest technological players: Amazon, Google and Apple.
Sonos pays for the top in the field of wireless speakers and so-called multiroom systems, where customers can rely on great wireless communication and excellent sound. This is, of course, a well-known thing on which the brand has built its reputation. That's why it's more interesting to see how recently Sonos has been dealing with competing not only streaming services.
You can easily play songs from Apple Music, Google Play Music or Spotify in Sonos speakers. The last-named service is extra can control the entire system from its own application. What's remarkable about all of this is that Sonos has managed to lure all the competing services together. Patrick Spence has this to say:
I think we are doing very well in this regard. (…) Apple Music on Sonos, I think that was a surprise to a lot of people, then we added Spotify, Google Play Music. I think we're in a unique position where we have an amazing user base that we can build on.
Look, when you're Amazon, you need to be on as many devices as possible to get orders, right? You have to think about what the main motivation is. For Google, if you're not on every device to search through you, it's a missed opportunity. When you think about the people who have Sonos today, that's why it was interesting for Apple Music. This is why I believe it is interesting to have all the voice services available.
That's why Sonos has been working with Amazon since the beginning to get Alexa on its products. So far, according to Spence, this has not happened due to the fact that Sonos and Amazon are working on the best possible integration that will be able to do more than just basic commands. In the future, Google Assistant will certainly be interesting for Sonos.
According to the new head of Sonos, who has been with the company for many years, there should not be an obstacle if one user wants to communicate with Alexa and the other with Google. And this is the ideal future of Sonos - one device on which the user will be able to play music from anywhere and ask any assistant.
As for multi-service support, I think it's very important for people. When you think about the household, there are different preferences. My kids use Spotify, I use Apple Music, I use Google Play Music, my wife uses Pandora. You need something to support all these services. I think this is a situation where not everyone will use Alexa. Not everyone will use Google Assistant. I can use one service, my wife another. This is where we are uniquely positioned in the industry.
Sonos wants to continue to focus on high-end hardware and certainly has no urge to launch its own streaming services or smart assistants. The company sees the point in using available tools that compete strongly elsewhere, but could simply coexist in Sonos products in the future.
Sonos could then suddenly open itself up to a much larger number of users, because while its presentation is still mainly high-end products with a corresponding price tag, if it functions as a universal speaker with access to all the otherwise competing services and assistants, it could become interesting player in this area as well.
Classic questions
WHEN WILL SIRI KNOW CZECH?
When will Apple launch Apple Pay for the Czech Republic?
When will the keyboard offer logical word suggestions?
When will Siri be able to offer local information?
When will Apple Maps be competitive?
That's enough - when I know that we basically pay the most for Apple products and have the most limited services and functions... Apple could at least give us Siri.
Year
when will Siri be able to speak Czech and when will Apple Pay be available in the Czech Republic?!
Apple Pay is uninteresting to me, I have a credit/debit card (also contactless), as well as a contactless sticker. Ideally, he gives me back 1% of the purchase :-).
My keyboard makes suggestions and checks (I have CZ and EN).
I tried Siri for a while, but then it's a dead end. As long as it doesn't work like on the DEMO video, which is fake, then it sucks. I see an interesting future in it, but if I tap the display and do something with it, or if I tell Siri, it doesn't even matter a bit ;-). The important thing is that it can be done wirelessly.
Apple Maps has improved a lot and I don't use them anyway. Why should they do them at all? Currently, there is huge competition in this field and Apple could start something that will be more profitable for me (the homekit video needs to be not fake and it won't make a million).
The competition in maps, if there is one, is Apple. I, on the other hand, only use Apple maps because it has happened to me more than once that google either worked very slowly or had incomplete information. The list of maps is almost the best, but they don't work within the system.
Precisely Apple maps are nicely integrated, but for the Czech Republic like ten years ago. I still have HERE, there is a great download of maps – at least this if Apple offered it.
I don't use maps much on my mobile. When you're done, write the navigation and I have Sygick. However, I used Apple maps just for the sake of integration and they were more unusual in color, but otherwise OK.
Otherwise, as you write, I use the Seznamacka application for bike trails and hikes, they are the best for that, and integration is not needed for that.
Sygic isn't bad, but I've been using Apple's navigation since the beginning, and it's never let me down. The current notification of lane closures or accidents also works very well. But the truth is that some features are still missing. On the contrary, in my opinion, clarity is much better than Sygic.
My point is that mit is offline and then Sygic works for me. In addition, Sygic has the whole world + all features, including radar, traffic, detours, etc.
Well, Apple maps or Google also have the whole world, online transport. There really aren't any radars :)
Do you really care if it can also use offline maps? In the summer, my data plan is often completely exhausted.
this is not important for me, because I use mobile data sporadically, more or less only for navigation, and in addition, if the tariff is exhausted, the net is only slowed down, which is sufficient for navigation, if there is no place without a signal, the map will still be loaded, so if the route does not have to be recalculated, the route can be loaded even at home on wifi and go offline without data :)
This just happened to me once, I came across a detour and my data plan still ran out :-).
In my opinion, aPay will not be here until there is a brick-and-mortar Apple Store, and sir, I think it will be the very last one (if there will be one at all) - it's not so much about the Czech language as it is about the local data.
it would be ok if apple products cost less in CR than elsewhere, because I sell an incomplete product here :)
google must be able to do it with android, why not apple? (because apple is a marketing company, IT is on the second track)
All of this is their fault in that they do not make their DAUGHTERS take care of these services, content, etc. in the states where they sell their products. Today, only large statues are interesting to them.
Siri is mostly pretty stupid...
It's clear that Sonos knows what it's doing. And thanks to the fact that he wants to support all services, it's one of the things where you don't have to worry that you will need to change it with the replacement of the building mobile phone or the OS.
Definitely thumbs up.