Apple pushes Siri to the fore at annual developer conference

“They seem to be using it to drive superior user experience, sound quality and privacy”, he said. Initially, HomePod is prepped for a short list of topics that include music, traffic, weather, stock quotes, unit conversions and translating between a small set of language pairs.

We will have to wait until the tail end of 2017 to see if Apple’s HomePod will be a must have for homes and if its can steal back an early lead from its rivals. Apple announced this $350 smart speaker at WWDC to go up against Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Sonos Play 3.

“This is a smart move because Siri is not that bright and is easily outperformed by Google Assistant while being on a par with Amazon’s Alexa”.

Another key aspect is Apple’s Siri software, able to give you intelligence on track titles and other information you’d like to find out. Sounds like, literally, a friend from future. It’s not an AI-equipped smart speaker but a relatively bold evolution of the Wi-Fi speaker that now comes with a still-in-development virtual assistant. With over two years in public development and many more behind closed doors, Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant are going to be smarter, more clever and more intuitive than anything Apple puts into the HomePod. The HomePod weighs over 5lbs (Google Home weighs just over 1lb), features a large woofer, 7 tweets, 7 microphones, and ac WiFi. The only drawback between Siri on an iPhone and the HomePod is that you can’t expect visual answers on the HomePod.

Custom array of seven beam-forming tweeters, each with its own amplifier. It’s a speaker, and a powerful, high-performance one at that.

The Cupertino giant updated it’s iMac, Macbook and Macbook Pro lineups, integrating Kaby Lake processors, more GPU and expanded memory options.

Apple HomePod offers users to stream music from the Apple Music which is populated with over 40 million songs and growing. In its update on the next operating system to hit iPhones – iOS 11 – new tools will be given to developers to create AR apps. The HomePod is available in two hues, such as Black and White; and stands nearly 7-inches tall, with a 4-inch woofer placed at the top, and seven tweeters at the bottom, enabled with auto bass EQ.

There was a veritable feast of announcements at Apple’s developer conference and we’ve rounded up the best.

“You can not connect multiple Alexa devices to each other and play the same requested audio at the same time”, the retail colossus states on its website.

Notes is also getting a built-in scanner, meaning users will now be able to scan printed documents, import them into Notes, and then add their signatures or other handwritten content. Compared with Google and Amazon, HomeKit device support is extremely limited. The speaker can automatically tune the audio depending on the space you are in.