Apple HomePod – a missed opportunity | Hacker News Reader

Apple HomePod – a missed opportunity

bloomberg.com

40 pointsjhatax52 comments

> The HomePod will be mostly limited to playing tunes from Apple Music, controlling Apple-optimized smart home appliances and sending messages through an iPhone.

I have an Alexa and this is literally all I do with it - music, smart home stuff, and maybe the occasional timer - except for sending messages, which it can't do.

I briefly tried some of the "skills" but they're awkward as hell. You have to say something along the lines of "Tell <app name> to <command>". Yikes.

So I'm pretty excited about the HomePod. Improved audio quality for music playback is genuinely enough to convince me. The assistant parts are just software, Apple can improve that in the future.

Useless for anyone who listens to music through Spotify, though, which is still the majority of the streaming market.

Exactly! It's super annoying that Apple started discriminating 3rd party services in Siri support. I tried Apple Music, it's ok, but I support Spotify for a reason - I do not want to live in a world of conglomerates in power of every aspect of my life. And I have the right for that decision, so Apple could respect it and allow me to listen to music on my preferred service, since I already spent a lot of money on their devices and going to spend more, if they stop annoying me.

Just to be absolutely clear - Apple doesn't "discriminate" against 3rd party services, they just don't support whole classes of applications "yet" (in quotations marks because I honestly would have expected them to expand SiriKit to music and podcasts before... sending money)

Hard to know what goes on behind the scenes in any particular case but I think this "discrimination" goes both ways.

For content like that to be a first-class citizen on iOS/tvOS, the providers (Spotify, etc) would need to expose the relevant metadata, APIs, etc to Apple.

I know that on Apple TV, there were a lot of providers who balked at providing that information, preventing Apple from fully implementing relevantly simple features like system-wide content search.

I certainly don't blame the providers, because they wanted to maintain more branding and autonomy rather than being a faceless Yet Another Source of Content on AppleTV, because at that point they'd be essentially faceless interchangeable.

And in many cases the model Apple enforces is not particularly generalisable. For example, the Apple TV content search model only allows for TV shows to consist of x seasons of y episodes. The BBC hasn't been able to provide comprehensive metadata because many shows (such as soaps and current affairs, or un-numbered specials etc.) don't fit into this model.

What about Amazon Prime Video? That still isn't on the Apple TV but is available on every other device.

Not on the Chromecast.

At least Prime video has been announced to be coming to the ATV, although I'm not sure what the hold up is.

Spotify on iOS exposes metadata and basic commands. When music is playing, the track info and album art shows up on the lock screen, and you can pause or skip using the lock screen buttons. Apple makes a standard API available for that stuff, and apparently Spotify is happy to participate.

Seems to me that Apple could pretty easily let any app opt in to Siri integration too. All they'd really have to do is pass commands saying "play song/album/artist named X" to the app, and let the app handle it from there. Add a setting somewhere to let the user choose which music app they want to use for Siri, or make them specify it as part of the command, and off you go.

If Apple offered this and apps like Spotify refused to participate, then maybe we could talk about this going both ways.

Other than setting a default app, isn't the SiriKit SDK exactly what you describe?

Edit: Nevermind, looks like Music apps are explicitly not allowed.

Exactly! Apple has explicitly opened up Siri to certain kinds of third-party apps... but not music.

I wouldn't mind they kept me within Apple Music if Apple Music, iTunes were Great, or good, or at least half decent. But no they are a piece of crap. Every single part of the UX in Apple Music Sucks, iTunes has become an after thought. And to add insult to injury, the collection of Music is only good in UK or US, in Japan and SEA region it absolutely horrible.

So to me Apple Homepod is just another way to try and sell customers into the Apple Music Services Revenue, bound and pulled by the iPhone halo effect.

I presume you have sources backing the claim that Spotify is the majority of the streaming market. Be that as it may Apple Music is available in far more places that Spotify.

This is as of early last year : https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/apple-music-is-now-in...

And as far as I can google, Spotify still isn't available anywhere in Africa officially as of September 2017.

Spotify being a majority of the streaming market numerically doesn't matter too much if its market reach is limited.

Based on numbers [0] released by both companies over the summer, Spotify has twice as many subscribers as Apple Music does.

Surely their having achieved this with limited market reach is positive for them, and not for Apple?

[0]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/31/16070982/spotify-60-milli...

I think it shows they're both very strong competitors. Apple Music, despite being much younger and being 'less cool', has managed to obtain half the market share.

Spotify, despite being in less countries, has managed to go deep into the countries it does support.

> I presume you have sources backing the claim that Spotify is the majority of the streaming market. Be that as it may Apple Music is available in far more places that Spotify.

Yes, a very simple Google search for "music streaming market share".

The skills work well with Dish: "Alexa, tune to ESPN" or "Alexa, play The Big Bang Theory".

https://www.mydish.com/support/products/hopper/how-to/alexa-...

> I briefly tried some of the "skills" but they're awkward as hell. You have to say something along the lines of "Tell <app name> to <command>". Yikes.

That's a little like saying "some websites are rubbish" though. IME skills don't have to have cumbersome conversational UI - I use mine (in conjunction with a Logitech Harmony Hub) as a sometime replacement for a universal remote: say "Alexa, turn on Sky/Netflix/xbox" and on come three devices, all switched to the right inputs. And in the case of Netflix, it launches my TV's Netflix app too. The phrase feels natural to me.

That’s a special case as far as I’m aware. Alexa supports ‘Turn on <noun>’ inherently, the hub must be exposing endpoints in the right way for that to just work. 3rd party skills have to follow the more awkward syntax however.

Ah, I didn't know that. I thought the third party Yonomi skill had just somehow registered "turn on" as an invocation, but upon further reading it seems that's merely an implementation of the PowerController API†. Thanks for enlightening me.

† https://developer.amazon.com/docs/device-apis/alexa-powercon...

That sounds a lot like AppleScript. Which was not a Good Language.

The general problem with Alexa and skills (and really with voice interfaces generally) is that the voice recognition has gotten pretty good but conversational speech understanding really has not. As a result, commands are sort of like a wizard's incantation (or a CLI). You have to pretty much nail the exact syntax you need and there is very limited discoverability. That's fine for a few things but remembering syntax for a bunch of different seldom-used skills quickly breaks down.

This is something that I've never understood. This happens with Google Home too.

Something like Harmony uses native API's on Alexa, but third party API's on GHome. So on Alexa I can say "Alexa, turn the TV on" while GHome I have to say "Ok Google, tell Harmony to turn on the TV. Google Home will then reply "Ok, here's Harmony", pass the query to the Harmony "app", and Harmony will spit back "Ok, turning on the TV".

It's great for when I've lost the remote, but a terrible UX. What I don't understand is why can't I as a user determine what skills/intents get promoted. I understand the "Tell X to Y" for security measures, but if I could have a whitelist instead of a bunch of 1st/2nd party "power skills" it would make the entire experience more intuitive. I personally do not use skills just because of how clunky they are.

Doesn't it look like the very same playbook for every new Apple product?

Every single new product is behind the existing competition in so many ways (or going in such a different direction) at launch. Industry experts "don't understand" why.

But for a set of properties that are/become their distinctive anchors into people's mindset. So people can't really compare side-by-side: it looks/feels like a different thing.

Then Apple builds from that while the competition tries to copy/adjust their course.

The iPod and the iPhone had something new and significant to their credit at launch (the music store with a big collection on launch and the touch based interface, respectively). What pushes the HomeBox ahead of its competition? I don't see it.

iPod was first released in 2001, with an updated iTunes. On a technical ground, not that much different than the competition at the time (poor battery, not the biggest memory). The message focused on benefits, not on the technical details.

iTunes Store was a (huge) complement to it, released 16 months after that.

iPhone was significantly different, yes. Without 3G, just a barely good enough battery on first release. Those were a basic expectation for other market phones at the time.

As for HomePod, can't say before I see/touch it for real. Watch for complements too.

I really hope Apple is working on those glasses, and hard. This product category, the speaker, is a hard one for Apple, much because the Apple Watch basically is a wearable Siri. What however worries me, is that Apple has yet to be able to make Siri an attractive product. I mostly just use it to set timers.. Doing something with a virtual assistant seldomly will include only voice, except basic tasks such as setting reminders, timers etc. one-off commands, basically. Other things, more complex tasks, mostly require multiple actions, and a screen, like on the Apple Watch or iPhone will let you browse and select those tasks.

We have hailed the voice interface as “the next big thing”, but think about it; what are you actually doing through voice today? Not much. What have we historically been doing through voice? Getting information, browsing information, that might for instance lead to a purchase or other actions, mostly have been done either in person (in a shop), through some sort of purchasing form in a catalog, or more recently on a screen. Why? Because the voice is a low-bandwidth interface. One-off commands are fine, because they aren’t limited (as much) by the bandwidth of this interface, but anything more complex doesn’t really work.

Think about voice as an interface over a phone call, it’s not really good enough. It’s always better to meet someone in person, than just talking on the phone. Why? Because we get to use our eyes, and we get to express emotions. The interface has higher bandwidth. The screen is not the same thing, but it has much higher bandwidth than the voice alone. When you think about the phone or the watch, you can have both voice and the screen, whereas on a speaker you can not.

I’m not sure what I am trying to say, just thinking aloud, I guess.

Edit: Formatting

Instead of just downvoting me, I’d really appreciate any comments on why you disagree with this. Just looking to learn more. Thanks!

FYI, HN will mercilessly downvote you if you ask why you're being downvoted. :)

Here are the guidelines if you haven't already seen them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>What have we historically been doing through voice? Getting information, browsing information, that might for instance lead to a purchase or other actions, mostly have been done either in person (in a shop), through some sort of purchasing form in a catalog, or more recently on a screen. Why?

Because seeing a man talking with his phone is weird.

Firstly, Apple is rumoured to have acquired Vrvana which makes AR/VR headsets.

As for voice well it has been the next best thing for decades. And it still to this day does not work well. There is no fluidity to conversations, it doesn't completely understand accents, it fails to properly factor in context and the range of actions is limited.

For me it's at least another 20 years away from being what people expect if it is possible at all in our lifetimes. Also the far more interesting problem for me is how do you build an API for a voice system e.g. Siri without forcing it back into a 90s style voice actions system like it is today.

I used Siri pretty religiously since 2011 til 2015. There I bought my first smart speaker which then and in comparison made using Siri very frustrating so I stopped using it. Though with my iPhone 8 Siri has finally caught up to its voice assistant competitors and I use it constantly in my car to control what’s streaming in my car. Like Hey Siri play similar songs and boom she creates a pandora station and plays it. Hey Siri add this to my songs... hey Siri where are you (to find misplaced phone .., this one needs to be way more reliable though)

Wishlist for me would be.. hey Siri play recently added songs. Frustrating it doesn’t do this already, but maybe an Apple engineer will see this :)

Overall Siri in 2017 is pretty solid and Apple should release a more innovative HomePod. Like one where I ask “Siri show me the weather,” and boom I hear and also see a display beamed onto a wall. That Jibo has a perfect form factor and UX for projecting onto a wall.

> Wishlist for me would be.. hey Siri play recently added songs. Frustrating it doesn’t do this already, but maybe an Apple engineer will see this :)

She definitely already does this - “Hey siri, play recently added” does exactly what you want... looks like “play recently added songs” plays music by a band named Recently Added. Which IMO is what I should expect.

Not for me. See this screenshot.

https://imgur.com/a/yBqfm

It’s start playing recently played. Errgh... what are you seeing?

It will be interesting to see how well the HomePod will integrate with other devices. I have fiddled some with home automation and unfortunately, working with Apple products has been a miserable experience. I see no role of Apple devices in my or anyone else's setup unless they will open up their devices a bit.

For example, as far as I know, if I want to use Alexa to play something on an Apple TV, I need to use libraries which have reverse engineered the IR remote. Why can't I stream video to a specific URL and be done with it?

If it takes Apple this long to ship a smart speaker, how do they think to keep up with integrating (or producing their own proprietary) building blocks for the smart home vertical? If their devices on the smart home vertical continue to be as closed as the Apple TV, people will be completely locked-in Apple's ability to produce new devices, which certainly hasn't seem to be in their recent past interest.

Chinese companies like Xiaomi have shown far better judgment for the future by implementing MQTT protocols for their devices.

I just think Apple's take as of now is a lost cause if they seek to dominate the space with the same sort of walled-garden approach as they did with apps. Applying gardens to physical devices space as wide as a smart home will take much more effort than it does for software.

It will be interesting to see how well the HomePod will integrate with other devices.

It will most likely integrate perfectly and seamlessly with other Apple devices, and maybe not so much with other manufacturers.

I have fiddled some with home automation and unfortunately, working with Apple products has been a miserable experience.

Really? They are generally considered to be the UX/UI standard and have, arguably, built their entire company on optimizing these two things.

If it takes Apple this long to ship a smart speaker, how do they think to keep up with integrating (or producing their own proprietary) building blocks for the smart home vertical?

Apple generally releases products with a more narrow scope, and then iterates on those products. This has been their general approach, and it seems to be working well for them.

If their devices on the smart home vertical continue to be as closed as the Apple TV, people will be completely locked-in Apple's ability to produce new devices, which certainly hasn't seem to be in their recent past interest.

People have been "locked in" into their services and devices for years now, yet they keep coming back.

I just think Apple's take as of now is a lost cause if they seek to dominate the space with the same sort of walled-garden approach

Every single reasonable business metric (stock price, sales, growth, etc.) would indicate that you are wrong and those folks in Cupertino must be doing something right, but hey I guess this could be the thing that dooms Apple to mediocrity.

If the HomePod is able to play audio from local (Home sharing) iTunes libraries, I'll buy two.

Unfortunately and inexplicably, the marketing so far says it will only play songs from Apple Music. If true, I will buy none.

I've long thought that the end-game for voice control is an omnipresent interaction. For example, using Siri across my watch, phone, computer, or speaker seamlessly and with shared context. Whether that is achieved through device-to-device communication (most likely Apple's approach) or device-cloud-device interaction is pretty irrelevant to the end game of voice control.

I actually agree with Phil Schiller's comment that most of the use cases for voice control aren't facilitated by a device without a screen. [1] Apple's advantage is that the design of a HomePod can basically assume that a nearby iPhone or iPad is available without having to launch an app.

Somewhat ironically, Nest actually seems to have one of the best approaches I've seen to architecting a platform for such omnipresent interactions to take place on, with Nest OpenWeave[2].

[1] - https://gadgets.ndtv.com/apps/features/phil-schiller-upgrade... [2] - https://github.com/openweave/openweave-core

Personally I wish they'd just combine the HomePod and the Apple TV into a single product. Throw in wireless router capabilities and you have the ultimate home device.

I agree that this is where the market will eventually go but you have a conflict of use. Most people are going to hide Apple TV in a cabinet somewhere which is not so great for the speaker and microphone of the HomePod.

> Amazon offers thousands of “skills” (voice-activated apps) that let users do a range of things (including buy stuff from Amazon). The Google Home Mini, which debuted earlier this year, is similarly endowed.

Is there a store for Google Home apps? I have been trying for last couple of days with no luck.

Based on what I’m finding in “best Google Home Skills” articles, the “store” can only be accessed from mobile:

https://beebom.com/best-google-assistant-skills-actions/

> Just long press on the home button to summon the Google Assistant and then tap on the button at the top-right corner. That should take you to the “Explore” page where you can explore all the skills and actions that Google Assistant has to offer you, categorised into various handy categories.

https://lifehacker.com/the-best-google-assistant-skills-to-u...

> you can find a list in the Google Home app. To find it, tap the menu button in the top left corner, tap “More settings” and then “Services.” Here you’ll find a list of services you can try. Tap one of them to get a description and some sample commands you can use.

Beamforming in a device of HomePod size is a joke. Yamaha builds sound projectors (as they brand them) for years and "smaller" models still can't do this. Their first model in lineup that actually has beamforming capabilities that works is a bigass soundbar more than a meter long with 20+ speakers of all sizes and fancy algos to calculate spatial configuration. And it requires that it should be put in a specific room size and plan, in a specific position. Next model has like 50 speakers and is even bigger. This HomePod is just another small wireless speaker, I don't think it is possible to do any high quality music with it or beamforming.

Do we have any reason to suspect that Apple is lying?

It's lucky that Apple don't listen to the millions of internet commenters telling them that their products can't work.

Typical dialog on the internet:

xxx: Apple devices specific function Z won't work properly because of this and that.

yyy: so you say Apple device "can't work", you are "one of the millions"

> I don't think it is possible to do any high quality music with it or beamforming.

Define "high quality".

Apple isn't in the audiophile market (a sham in itself), or in the professional audio market. It's in the consumer market.

And for the consumer market you need a reasonably good sounding speaker. Which is quite doable in the form factor they announced (hell, Sonos is quite capable of making nice-sounding speakers that are much smaller)

Easy. Quote "It directs sound to specific places in a room, creating immersive 3-D audio." end quote.

I say a) this is exactly what an audiophile would want, and b) HomePod very likely can't do it (simply because it is a physically small device).

Also please notice I didn't dispute that HomePod won't "sound nice". I dispute a) "high quality" and b) "beamforming" capabilities directly mentioned in the linked article.

And as a reminder, another direct quote from the article: "The engineers wanted a product that would pass muster with audiophiles."

Edit: Fixed a typo in the title.

Why anyone would have such a device in their home is still beyond me. I can turn on my lights, play music and manage my calendar just fine without the direct line to the NSA in my living room.

You mean like a smartphone, tablet, smart tv, and laptop? They all have the same capacities and most of them are always on.

yes, not to the extreme of smartphones tables and laptops (since all of them are more or less capable of running on linux) but smart tv for me fall into the same category as these "smart home" aka mass surveillance devices, especially because it has been proven that they have been used for surveillance.

I agree with laptops but I’d say smartphones are worse because they are always on, always tracking your location (the smartphone via its location service and your cell carrier). I’d say smartphones have an even worse track record because of how they manage to circumvent location service restrictions (through your WiFi SSID, cellular triangulation) as well as asking for almost all of the permissions you have available.

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