[melling]

"Unlike Siri on iPhone, which operates close to the user’s mouth,"

I wish they wouldn't make this assumption. Siri would be much more useful sitting on my kitchen counter or coffee table. I now use the Echo for timers, music, weather, movie times, random questions, ...

[gnicholas]

I find that my iPhone is responsive to Siri requests if I'm within 8-10 feet. It's possible that training "Hey Siri" at this distance could help.

But at the end of the day, Apple won't optimize too much for this use case, since they want you to buy a HomePod, Apple Watch, or AirPods.

Also, there's power consumption to think about. The HomePod is plugged 24/7, whereas you want your iPhone battery to last a long time.

[endorphone]

As an aside, one neat side effect of hey Siri is that often multiple devices can hear you at the same time. In my office I have my XR, iPad, and for dev an iPhone 7 and 8. When I say hey Siri I often hear all of them start to respond, but then all but one cancels listening. I've never really paid attention to which one wins the battle, but it does usually seem to be the device closest to me.

Just thought it was interesting as something they had to accommodate -- multiple devices all phoning home to determine if there's a race, and if so who should field the request.

[saagarjha]

I think this is all done locally over Bluetooth: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208472

[eridius]

I believe it uses the same logic that Handoff does to determine what your "active" device is. If the "active" device hears the Siri request, it responds. Otherwise I think it prioritizes HomePod.

If multiple HomePods hear it, I'm not sure, possibly using volume to determine distance?

[icebraining]

Since they have an array of six mics, they could triangulate the sound to calculate the distances.

[eridius]

Wouldn't a strict volume check be better in general? If I'm physically closer to one HomePod but something is in the way, obscuring audio, then I probably want to talk to the HomePod that's further away but unobscured. Or to put it another way, if I'm standing in my living room next to the door to the Office, the Office HomePod might be physically closer, but I'm probably trying to talk to the Living Room one.

[athenot]

I use this when I need to locate my phone in a room.

"Hey Siri! Where are you?"

[azinman2]

Your iPhone is always listening for “hey Siri” in a power-optimized way. It’s just not doing all the fancy things the HomePod is doing because it’s use case (and hardware) is different.

[gnicholas]

Yep, and it seems that it's also primed to respond if there's been recent motion, versus sitting on the table.

[hammock]

iPhones are not optimized for far-field use, though (which typically requires a mic array different than what's on iPhone). Echo has seven highly directional mics pointed in all different directions, and software which detects and isolates the source of speech. iPhone has two omnidirectional mics[1], on the bottom of the phone optimized for how you hold it in your hand.

[1]I am ignoring the other two mics on iPhone, which are not relevant: one on the back for video recording, and one in the earpiece for noise cancellation

[melling]

Yes, I am aware of all this, and that's why I bought a couple of Echo Dots.

My point is that I wish Apple didn't assume I would be holding my iPhone in my hand. I have Xs, for example. It doesn't need to operate from a different room but unless I'm holding my phone, I just don't bother.

Adding an additional microphone, etc would make Siri more useful while it's nearby.

I'm really looking forward to yelling into my kitchen to start my Apple Music on my Echo in a few weeks.

[fastball]

Let me get this straight.

You want Apple to put more mics into the iPhone, so that it can better address a use-case that Apple is already addressing with a well-engineered product built expressly for that purpose?

OK.

[melling]

Let me clarify for you. I would like my $1300 phone to answer me when it’s sitting 3 feet away from me. I wanna start music, I want to pause music, I want to ask it questions, and I want it to work reliably.

When a timer stops, for example, I want to be able to say "hey Siri stop timer."

It’s perfectly acceptable if Apple doesn’t see this as a use case. I’ll simply take my business somewhere else to solve that problem. I'm simply throwing it out as a nice to have.

[DonaldPShimoda]

> I want my $1300 phone to answer me when it’s sitting 3 feet away from me.

Is this a problem you have? I'm able to reliably use Siri on my phone from up to maybe 2-3 feet away in a moderately noisy environment (casual conversation around a table) with almost no issue, and I can easily use it up to 10+ feet away in a quiet environment. I've had this success since the 7+ at least (when I tested it), but I've continued to see such performance on the X and XS Max.

[melling]

Try saying:

“Hey Siri, create a 10 second timer”

“Hey Siri, play some Rolling Stones”

Find yourself picking up the phone to stop these two actions?

[fastball]

So your next phone is going to be a non-iPhone if they don't improve "Hey Siri"?

I understand that you would like "Hey Siri" to be better. What is not clear to me is how you think Echo Dots are a "competitor" to your phone. Echo Dots are purpose-built Home Assistant hardware. Just like the HomePod. No phone is going to perform nearly as well as a purpose-built home assistant -- it's a hardware limitation. No matter how many mics you put in any phone, the far-field performance is not going to be great. It's like you want your sedan to be just as good at carry heavy loads as your pickup truck. That's ridiculous. And as far as Home Assistants go, the HomePod's mic/noise setup is hands down the best.

So if you find yourself constantly asking questions of your phone while its sat down in your living room or kitchen or bedroom or wherever it is you're setting timers and playing music (I'm going to bet it's the kitchen), buy a HomePod for your kitchen. That is the solution to your problem.

Or you could get Google Home products. They are also better than the Echo line. Sounds to me like you're just disappointed you bought the worst Home Assistant products on the market.

[toasterlovin]

Maybe your phone is malfunctioning? My iPhone 7 easily responds to Hey Siri from 10 or so feet away. It's not as good as HomePod, but seems to work well enough.

[mikestew]

Siri would be much more useful sitting on my kitchen counter or coffee table.

That's called "a HomePod".

I now use the Echo for timers, music, weather, movie times, random questions, ...

"Because the iPhone does not fill the role of 'smart speaker', instead of buying Apple's smart speaker I will purchase someone else's smart speaker."

To each their own, but to me it's like complaining how the Apple Watch makes for a shitty wireless speaker.

[zer0zzz]

I have a HomePod, a google home, several Echos, and a Sonos setup.

The HomePod is incredible for voice recognition of basic commands and that makes a lot of sense based on the work they describe in this blog post. HomeKit has also really shaped up and at this point I use the HomePod as a home hub. In the small apartment I live in I’m able to shout commands from another room for things like switching the lights.

That said, HomePod lacks integration with any services or devices outside of apples echo system (ignoring HomeKit). You pretty much have to use airplay for almost everything unless you want to use that god forsaken Apple Music; which is fine, airplay is the fantastic, and there are even some good open source implementations too but it just means the voice assistant aspect of HomePod is severely diminished. So I end up using the echo for almost everything because I can hook one up to a pair of speakers and boom I’ve turned them into Bluetooth speakers, or I can use the echo to control Spotify on my Sonos multi room audio setup (and no, airplay on the HomePod is still not as good for this use case imho).

The google home is a clever search engine in a speaker but for some real world queries it’ll do stupid things like read Wikipedia instead of telling you the thing you want. So at this point I only use the google home mini as a cheap bathroom speaker because it’s a better than the old gen echo dot (until my new echo dot 3 arrives). The google home overall is the least compelling of all of these.

Oh yeah, did I mention HomePod makes a fantastic speaker for an Apple TV (or iPhone/MacBook) connected to a tv for watching video? The low audio network latency of airplay makes it a great stand in soundbar replacement.

[melling]

I have a $400 speaker in my kitchen. I use it with my $30 Echo Dot and not my $1300 iPhone because the Dot is a much better experience.

[gok]

On an iOS device, Siri will still do its best to work from a distance but there are limits to what can be done with a tiny phone-sized microphone.

[intopieces]

You need far field microphones for that. Which is what Echo and HomePod have.

[webwielder2]

The article is literally about Apple's Echo competitor.

[s3r3nity]

That's a little reductionist - it's a paper in Apple's Machine Learning journal that has a lot of actual technical details, rather than an ad / marketing material.

[DonaldPShimoda]

Uhh I think "journal" is a little generous (if we compare to actual papers/journals), even if that is the term Apple chooses to use. This is a well-written scientific article (maybe short paper, but not a regular-length paper) published on Apple's Machine Learning-focused blog.

My point isn't to be nitpicky. I just think that the truth is that this article falls somewhere an accessible digest article (e.g., Ars Technica) and an actual paper (e.g., a publication in NeurIPS or EMNLP).