Amaya Toman Although Apple is not participating in the annual consumer electronics trade show CES 2019, it is associated with the event in some way. In this context, this year was mainly characterized by AirPlay 2 and the HomeKit platform, with which an increasingly wider range of products from various companies is compatible.
If we stay with the already mentioned smart TVs, companies such as Sony, LG, Vizio and Samsung joined the HomeKit family this year. In the field of smart home products, it was IKEA or GE. Among the manufacturers of accessories for smart devices, we can mention Belkin and TP-Link. There are more and more manufacturers enabling the integration of their products into the HomeKit platform. And it is HomeKit that makes Apple a relatively strong player in the smart home field. But to really score, it needs one essential thing – Siri. Functional, reliable, competitive Siri.
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Dan Pražák For example, the affordable smart Wi-Fi socket Kasa from TP-Link now offers HomeKit integration. When the respective application was released, users could test its control via the iPhone and the Home application. In the early days of HomeKit, owners of cheaper smart lighting and other smart home electronics had virtually no chance to take full advantage of this platform. But now it is clear that not only the users but also Apple itself are interested in the greatest possible expansion.
MacWorld aptly he remarked, that Siri represents a certain brake. Google boasted this week that its Assistant is available on more than a billion devices worldwide, Amazon is talking about a hundred million devices with Alexa. Apple has not joined the public statements in this case, but according to the estimates of the editors of MacWorld, it may be similar to Google. Siri can be part of a huge number of electronic devices together with HomeKit, but in many cases it can remain quietly unused. There is still something missing for her to be perfect.
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It is worth noting that the work Apple is doing to improve it is known. Siri has become faster, more multi-functional and more capable over time. However, it still did not receive mass active popularity among users. Both Alexa and Google Assistant are able to perform much more complex settings than Siri, and are therefore more popular in the field of voice control of smart homes. Despite (or perhaps because) Siri is "older" than some of its competitors, it may seem that Apple is resting on its laurels in this regard.
A virtual assistant powered by artificial intelligence should be able to do more than just talk. MacWorld editor Michael Simon points out that while Google Assistant can answer a phone call and Amazon's Alexa can tell his young son good night and turn off the lights, Siri simply isn't good enough for these tasks and is beyond her capabilities. One of the other obstacles is a certain closure to third-party applications or the support of multi-user mode. But it's never too late. In addition, Apple became famous for the fact that although it came up with a number of improvements only after the competition introduced them, its solution was often more sophisticated. Siri has a long way to go. Let's be surprised if Apple goes for it.
