Tag: homepod

Daniel Jalkut’s HomePod Experience.

The Nosiest Assistant (bitsplitting.org)

What I didn’t expect was how incredibly sensitive Siri on the HomePod would be, and how obnoxiously persistent it would be about responding to my requests, no matter how far I am from the device, nor how unsuited it is for the task at hand.

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Any attempt to “Hey Siri” another device is met by a loud interruption by Siri either of the music or of the silence of the room. It’s bad enough that it assumes all requests are being made to it, but it’s even worse that it insists on chiming in even when it isn’t capable of serving the request.

I have two iOS devices near me most of the time, my iPhone 7 and my iPad Pro. It's frustrating trying to use "Hey Siri" when both devices are present. Both devices are listening and both will activate. However, Apple has some sort of algorithm that senses this and only one device will actually complete the request. The frustrating part is not knowing which one. I sometimes resort to pushing the home button for Siri activations.

My iPad Pro is not always connected to a wireless network1. It’s frustrating when my iPad Pro responds only for Siri to tell me that the request can’t be completed because the device is not connected to the Internet.

How could Apple solve this problem?

  1. There is public Wi-Fi available at work but the network drops unused connections after 15 minutes. ↩