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Same here. I really wonder how these products sell. The most basic things dont work. And if they are confused, then for real. For about 2 years, when Siri h

Same here. I really wonder how these products sell. The most basic things dont work. And if they are confused, then for real. For about 2 years, when Siri happened to misunderstand the command "Call ..." it would answer "OK, calling you" and actually try to call my own number. This is so weird that it actually feels like someone wrote that piece of code to prank the user. If these things would actually work, I'd definitely use one regularily. However, whenever I visit an Alexa owner, I realize after a few interactions that I really couldn't be bothered with this stuff. I think the "taxi" problem is still around with Siri. Put any taxi organisation into your phonebook, and include "taxi" in the name. You will likely not be able to call it with siri, since it insists to search for taxis in your area. Its always the same bug. These things have absolutely no idea about the context. And some hand-crafted rules go haywire after a while, because apparently nobody reviews them. When I got my first iPhone (iOS 5) I put in my date of birth during configuration, and promptly noticed that the german speech synthesizers says Nineteenseventynine when I enter 1979. All aother 4-digit numbers are fine, only 1979 is pronounced english. So apparently someone put this exception in there for a completely bogus reason, and it stayed there. It is still there today, after 8 years.

jen729w 6y ago
> I really wonder how these products sell. Because they’re currently better than nothing. My HomePod works 90% of the time. I can create specific scenes for the things she can’t quite figure out. Being able to walk in to the kitchen and tell her to put the radio or the light or a specific album or a timer on is actually really amazing. Most of the time. Certainly amazing enough to suffer the times she doesn’t want to co-operate, because then I just do that myself which I would have done anyway. It helps that the HomePod is also a great speaker in its own right, and that it’s one single cylinder with one cord. It’s a very tidy device.
- mlang23 6y ago
  Well, I have a Sonos One SL, so I know why you like the HomePod form factor. but I explicitly got the SL version because I really dont see any use for a voice assistant. I think the success rate of playing specific artists or tracks might be related to how mainstream your choice of music is. In my experience, the success rate is very bad, actually beyond useable. The only use case I see which has an acceptable failure rate is asking for the time and setting a timer. And even asking for the time fails about 1/10 times with the Alexa system my gf has in her flat... And if asking for the time is the only thing which works decently, well, that is really telling about the state of the art...

jen729w 6y ago

> I really wonder how these products sell. Because they’re currently better than nothing. My HomePod works 90% of the time. I can create specific scenes for the things she can’t quite figure out. Being able to walk in to the kitchen and tell her to put the radio or the light or a specific album or a timer on is actually really amazing. Most of the time. Certainly amazing enough to suffer the times she doesn’t want to co-operate, because then I just do that myself which I would have done anyway. It helps that the HomePod is also a great speaker in its own right, and that it’s one single cylinder with one cord. It’s a very tidy device.

mlang23 6y ago
Well, I have a Sonos One SL, so I know why you like the HomePod form factor. but I explicitly got the SL version because I really dont see any use for a voice assistant. I think the success rate of playing specific artists or tracks might be related to how mainstream your choice of music is. In my experience, the success rate is very bad, actually beyond useable. The only use case I see which has an acceptable failure rate is asking for the time and setting a timer. And even asking for the time fails about 1/10 times with the Alexa system my gf has in her flat... And if asking for the time is the only thing which works decently, well, that is really telling about the state of the art...