Apple HomePod 2nd Generation • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#71

Post by ubermonkey » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:52 PM UTC

perardi wrote: post #46

Is it time to complain about Siri again? Sure is! I am an old-school Apple fanboy. I learned HyperCard on a Macintosh SE/30—I am that old. I still appreciate the Apple ecosystem, and I do like certain aspects of my HomePod mini…but Siri. C’mon. Get it together. It just fails at the absolute basics. https://imgur.com/q0H788Y The basics being: please add stuff to my shopping list when I yell it into the aether while in…

We have an original large-size HomePod in the kitchen. Its MAIN job is music-in-the-kitchen, and it excels at that. It's secondary job is "Siri portal" for random information or timers or whatever (btw, did you know you can set multiple timers and give then names, like "set a pasta timer for 10 minutes" and then also "set a simmer timer for 30 minutes" and ask it for status on those by name?).

I have an ongoing sort-of faux-competition with my wife about how to ask Siri for things. She asks questions and gets frustrating replies, but when I ask them slightly differently I get good data.

I think my history with software make me subconsciously better able to formulate a question for Siri in a way that produces an answer other than "I found some web results...".

I SUSPECT it's mostly specificity, or asking for simple facts ("when was King Charles born?") and not derived facts ("how old is King Charles?"), but it comes up a LOT.

That same history of software means that I don't even ATTEMPT some of the stuff Siri is notionally capable of, like maintaining a shopping list. (Though I routinely use Siri on my watch or phone to add appointments or reminders.)

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#72

Post by Karunamon » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #14

Seems like Apple executed the way Google should have with their Google Home Max. They've added stereo pairing, so you can have two of them sync up together and then connect them to an Apple TV 4k and you basically get a pretty nice wireless sound bar with Dolby Atmos enabled. Still, at $300 per pod, I really need Siri to do better than the "dumber than a bag of rocks" vibe she currently gives off for this to be at al…

I would go so far as to describe Siri as "aggressively useless".

I try to squelch my alarm in the morning and she replies with "sorry you'll need to continue in the app" (silencing the alarm anyways but not actually dismissing it). If I wake up before my alarm and want to stop it from sounding, I tell her to turn it off, she says she has done so (with a follow-up question confirming that I have no alarms enabled)… And then the god damn alarm goes off at the usual time anyways.

Most recently she has started replying to my requests to send text messages and start phone calls with "who is speaking?" I don't know maybe the only person who matters on this single user device? If I don't say my name to her satisfaction then the call doesn't get made. I never did any kind of voice training or enabled any kind of restriction based on voice matching so what the fuck?

The last straw which led to me unplugging my home pod was when both it and the phone started triggering at nearly the same time with the result that the speech of one started interfering with the requests to the other one.

Bonus points: the speech recognition tech is bad enough that I tend to wait for acknowledgment before speaking a command. The "Boop" that you get from Alexa and Google. Not only does Siri not have this, it triggers, waits for a moment, and then says something. One of these responses is a annoyed sounding teenager "yeah?" that has more than once had me fantasizing about the immediate defenestration of the speaker.

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#73

Post by davidy123 » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #14

Seems like Apple executed the way Google should have with their Google Home Max. They've added stereo pairing, so you can have two of them sync up together and then connect them to an Apple TV 4k and you basically get a pretty nice wireless sound bar with Dolby Atmos enabled. Still, at $300 per pod, I really need Siri to do better than the "dumber than a bag of rocks" vibe she currently gives off for this to be at al…

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but Google smart speakers have had stereo pairing for a while. https://support.google.com/googlenest/answer/7559493?hl=en-C...

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#74

Post by ubermonkey » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:53 PM UTC

kybernetyk wrote: post #55

perardi wrote: post #46

Is it time to complain about Siri again? Sure is! I am an old-school Apple fanboy. I learned HyperCard on a Macintosh SE/30—I am that old. I still appreciate the Apple ecosystem, and I do like certain aspects of my HomePod mini…but Siri. C’mon. Get it together. It just fails at the absolute basics. https://imgur.com/q0H788Y The basics being: please add stuff to my shopping list when I yell it into the aether while in…

Siri complain time? Well, my newest problem with Siri is: Let's say I want to play some classic song (like Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd). So I say "hey siri, play sweet home alabama" - and what I get is not the original one but some newish remake/remix/reinterpretation. Why on earth would you play some unknown version over the popular original? Oh also ... what's the "next song pls" command in German? With Al…

I've also been baffled by this. Some syntax helps (".. by $band"), especially when an album and a track have the same name (which is a related issue for me).

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#75

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

ZeroCool2u wrote: post #14

Seems like Apple executed the way Google should have with their Google Home Max. They've added stereo pairing, so you can have two of them sync up together and then connect them to an Apple TV 4k and you basically get a pretty nice wireless sound bar with Dolby Atmos enabled. Still, at $300 per pod, I really need Siri to do better than the "dumber than a bag of rocks" vibe she currently gives off for this to be at al…

[deleted]

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#76

Post by jsjohnst » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

perardi wrote: post #46

Is it time to complain about Siri again? Sure is! I am an old-school Apple fanboy. I learned HyperCard on a Macintosh SE/30—I am that old. I still appreciate the Apple ecosystem, and I do like certain aspects of my HomePod mini…but Siri. C’mon. Get it together. It just fails at the absolute basics. https://imgur.com/q0H788Y The basics being: please add stuff to my shopping list when I yell it into the aether while in…

> Buy $299 or something that has artificial stupidity like Siri?

Well, in fairness, it’s designed first as a music device, the Siri seems like almost an afterthought. That said,

Spend $299 on a wireless speaker where the stereo pairing often fails, has random Wi-Fi connection issues (that no other Apple device has), and is otherwise hindered by issues?

Nah, fooled me on the first gen, fooled me again on the HomePod minis, think I’ll pass this time.

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#77

Post by lancesells » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

perardi wrote: post #46

Is it time to complain about Siri again? Sure is! I am an old-school Apple fanboy. I learned HyperCard on a Macintosh SE/30—I am that old. I still appreciate the Apple ecosystem, and I do like certain aspects of my HomePod mini…but Siri. C’mon. Get it together. It just fails at the absolute basics. https://imgur.com/q0H788Y The basics being: please add stuff to my shopping list when I yell it into the aether while in…

"Hey Siri, set a timer for 10 minutes."

"I'm sorry, I'm having trouble connecting to the internet. Please try again later."

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#78

Post by sneak » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:55 PM UTC

Dachande663 wrote: post #58

Does it work with Spotify yet? I remember the first one could only be AirPlayed to (if I'm recalling correctly).

To answer your question the way you meant it, no. You can use Spotify on a mac or iPhone/iPad and then set the AirPlay output device to the homepod, playing Spotify music out of them just fine. I literally do this every day.

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#79

Post by ra7 » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

I really wish Apple released a soundbar + Apple TV + FaceTime camera combo product. All I want is to be able to do FaceTime calls on my TV with my parents who live halfway across the world and have the camera track me around the room (like Facebook Portal TV).

Re: Apple HomePod 2nd Generation

#80

Post by ubermonkey » Wed, Jan 18, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

highwaylights wrote: post #49

selykg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stereo pairing was available on the 1st generation. I have three of the 1st gen models, they're fantastic. I think I paid $200 for each. At that price they're a steal.

Yeah, I'm a little confused as to what's actually new here from the video? I assume a newer chipset but it's not really clear what else has changed?

The size.

Apple discontinued the OG size HomePod a while back, and sold only the tiny baseball-sized ones. This is a re-introduction of a larger-size, better-sounding device that I assume is essentially the same form factor as the original one.