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Comment by Nimsical | Hacker News Reader

There's no open API for this, right? And Siri is ~1-2 years behind Echo/Google Home. Only "innovation" is on aesthetic design.

Apple usually comes in when they know they can do something a lot better than the existing competition, but not recently. Not with Apple Watch & HomePod.

It's now about:

1) Apple has massive distribution 2) They can get a non-step-function revenue increment with that massive distribution, launching new products.

Which makes sense why it's music focused (lock-in with Apple Music)

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I think they are positioning as a Sonos killer (price is inline w/ that as well) rather than echo killer.

Thats probably a mistake but it does appear thats their strategy. The "smart" part of the speaker is a total afterthought it seems.

Historically, their strength is UI and maybe they don't know how to find their feet in voice. It would explain siris lack luster performance in comparison to Google and Amazon.

Very much disappointed w/ this offering.

Agreed, I bought an Echo because of Alexa, the speaker functionality is just a really nice bonus. I bought one of the original Apple Hi-Fi's, and still remember that being one of the most disappointing Apple products I bought. As a speaker, it wasn't bad, just so many other companies soon flooded that space with better offerings.

How do you like the music experience with the Echo? That's primarily what I'd use it for, but the skills are great (and I've even developed one myself, so I have a bit of an allegiance).

Siri's behind on a lot of stuff. They have issues gathering all parts of their organization and centralizing efforts for A.I. due to their org. structure, so it's going to be a while before Siri can catch.

On the pricing front – I'm not very surprised that there's a bump. They've always been on the high-end of everything they release (Apple TV is 2.5x-3.X other competitors from Google/Amazon).

I think the main reason they played down the "smart" part is because they know Siri is behind.

Sonos will have Alexa in it and most people can't tell the difference between a better speaker over another in terms of sound.

It just ...looks better.

They have an A8 in the thing though. It sounds like it will have enough processing snort inside that I imagine they can roll out new functionality pretty regularly.

It also sounds like there is a companion app of some kind (or maybe just for setup?), which could provide an alternative interface on a "pane of glass" that you already have -- your phone.

It seems like its straight out of their playbook. They've laid some groundwork, perhaps collect some data on things the device gets asked and next year release massive upgrades. I feel its a bit of too little to late, but it is their way.

Also the device ships in 6 months. Probably they don't want to give out all details in advance.

Quite sure this will eventually open up for developers, but I'm not sure how to provide a smooth user experience. Like how to handle the case when multiple apps would like to react to same voice command.

My guess is that they'll eventually open up SiriKit to the AppleTV and this speaker.

I wonder how Apple will handle the multi-user aspect though. Even with music multiple people in the same household will want to access their own playlists.

Normally I would agree... but my Apple TV sits there pretty much the same as it did a year or two ago.

In contrast, the Fire TV had a huge UI overhaul over the last year. Still a bit underpowered for the Stick, but nice to see it still getting some love.

Probably encroaching on the Sonos Play-1 and Play-3 space.

I have a hard time seeing this touching the Play-5 and the other Sonos products that stand out, the Sonos-Sub in particular.

That said, Airplay over Sonos is a massive pain, even with the Play-5 analog line-in, which requires an Apple Express router.

I hope this pushes Sonos to improve their interoperability.

I also hope it pushes Sonos to improve their app. It's been clunky and slow for years now and the primary reason I'll be swapping my Play 1 devices with HomePods as soon as they're available where I live.

Not the first-class solution you're looking for, but I've found running https://github.com/stephen/airsonos on a local server reliable.

Do you think they'll follow Amazon's lead and release a dot-like device also? It could be that their hi-fi, high-price strategy is only in the short term — and that they're planning on serving a broader market after they extract an extra $300 out of their die-hard fans.

I would have expected that, however, I think their "cheap" device is what a echo costs. What's dissapointing is that lots of small assistants in you house also opens up tons of possibilities. I think their are some interesting possibilities in the Apple TV that they haven't exploited.

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