Like Google Home and Amazon Echo, Apple HomePod did not enter the Chinese and other language markets in the first wave. Only the United States, Britain and Australia, which mainly use English, took the lead in listing. Although many people question that Apple has added many national languages to Siri, it is used in the same way as Google Now and Google Assistant, because voice commands are compared in different ways. For example, the previous comparison method was to translate what users said into words, and then analyze the actual needs of users through the text comparison method, and then find the appropriate response content from the database. However, HomePod's Siri is based on deep learning mode, so many interactive modes must be trained from the basics. Therefore, at first, Apple only entered the market with an English interface used by more people. Once a more mature semantic analysis learning model is established, it will expand to more language markets.
The same thing happened on Google Home. Although Google Now can understand Chinese responses in the past, it only corresponds to English and German in Google Assistant, and even started to support Japanese, Korean, Italian and Spanish last year. As for Chinese support, even Google, which has relatively rich comparative data, thinks that it is not easy for digital assistants to "understand" Chinese semantics, which involves more complicated accents, expressions and even different nouns in different regions. Therefore, it is not easy for Google Assistant to understand Chinese and understand the meaning of Chinese sentences.
However, compared with western countries' understanding of Chinese sentence patterns based on English, the Xiaomi AI speaker built by Orion Star and Xiaomi is equipped with digital assistant service-Tmall Elf built by Xiao Ai or Alibaba, which can easily set trigger conditions according to specific sentence patterns and keywords in the program architecture, and continue training through deep learning. Furthermore, it can completely correspond to the normal interactive mode, such as playing songs that users may prefer to listen to, or accurately recommending nearby restaurants that meet the user's budget, but the overall semantic understanding still focuses on data comparison, which does not necessarily mean that the digital assistant has fully understood the user's operational needs.
At present, Apple HomePod, Google Home, Amazon Echo, Xiaomi AI speakers or Tmall Elf still need to wake up digital assistants and "listen" through keyword sentences. In addition, it seems that besides Google Home, it is possible to give further answers to specific questions. For example, after asking who Obama is, you can continue to ask who his wife is. You don't need to wake up with the "Ok, Google" command, and you don't need to repeat the previous questions. However, at this stage, HomePod, Echo or Xiaomi AI speakers cannot achieve such an application mode, but it is expected to join in the future.
Difficulties in setting up, privacy issues
Judging from the difficulty of setting up after unpacking, Apple HomePod should be the simplest smart speaker that can complete pairing, but at present it can only be set through iPhone or iPad, unlike other digital speakers that can correspond to iOS and Android platform devices at the same time, but in theory, many people who usually buy HomePod should be Apple product lovers, perhaps the difficulty is not too high. The setup process of other digital speakers is actually not too complicated, but when I set Amazon Echo, the connection is always unstable. Finally, all the settings were reset successfully, and Google Home and Xiaomi AI speakers cooperated with the App. You can successfully complete the setup.
In terms of personal privacy, at present, both Google Home and Echo have begun to join a learning mode that can recognize the voices of users with different identities. However, Apple HomePod does not support this function at this stage, so all data identification and judgment will be based on the iOS device that originally set up the HomePod user. As for Apple's previous explanation, it is emphasized that HomePod will not monitor users' daily life at any time when users are in standby state, but at this stage, the content of "personalized demand" may make it easy for anyone to read the data stored on iPhone or iPad after setting up HomePod through voice control commands, but it is expected that Apple will adjust this part in the future.
Music playing
As far as smart speakers are concerned, it is natural to play music through the built-in power amplifier and read it aloud to answer users' questions or inquiries. Among the smart speakers at hand, it is undeniable that the sound quality of HomePod is relatively good. After all, Apple has placed seven sets of tweeters and a set of 4-inch high-dynamic woofers with beamforming technology inside, making the overall weight of HomePod as high as 2.5 kg. Compared with Google Home and Echo, it is much heavier and larger. In order to pack more components into the compact internal space, Apple also introduced special conductive screws in HomePod to reduce unnecessary circuit space, but it also increased the difficulty of disassembly and maintenance of HomePod. No wonder the overall maintenance cost is much higher.
As far as the music playing experience is concerned, HomePod does have a good match with Apple Music. In addition to automatically importing the Apple ID and Apple Music on the user's iPhone or iPad during the setup process, HomePod can also specify to play songs of specific singers through Siri. However, at this stage, it is still necessary to issue instructions in English, so if the singers and songs are both in Chinese, it may not be possible to judge correctly. In addition, users can post "Play Romantic Music" or "Play Music of Some Hard Rock Bands", and the system will choose according to the user's Apple Music song list and favorite content.
As for other third-party App songs, can they be played? As far as Apple's open resources are concerned, it is actually possible, but it mainly depends on whether the third-party App manufacturers optimize the usage mode of HomePod, otherwise the content can only be played through AirPlay (HomePod cannot be connected as an ordinary Bluetooth speaker).
The main functions of HomePod when it was released last year-pairing output of two HomePods and multi-room streaming media playback, may have to wait a little longer at this stage, but the function of playing news content is not a big problem, which is roughly the same as Google Home and Echo, so we can only pay attention to American news first. This part is also the same as the case that the anchor content of Tmall Elf and Xiaomi AI speakers are all from domestic resources.
In contrast, the overall performance of HomePod is indeed better than that of Google Home, Echo and Xiaomi AI speakers, but from the evaluation results of Consumer Report, it is pointed out that the sound quality performance of HomePod is not better than that of Google Home Max and Sonos One, because HomePod puts too much emphasis on low-frequency output and ignores the details of high-pitched performance, but from the author's actual listening sense, unless the ears are particularly picky or you prefer to listen to music with specific vocals and instrumental sounds, the overall listening sense of HomePod can make
Digital assistant interaction
At present, HomePod's built-in six-group array microphones can really improve the usage mode of waking Siri from any direction, but compared with Echo's built-in seven-group array microphones, the radio reception effect is worse from the top, and it is better than Google Home with only two-group array microphones. However, unless the home space is very wide, as far as I know, voice control commands can be received normally in more than 20 ping spaces.
Apart from the differences in semantic understanding mentioned above, HomePod's Siri can basically query the local weather, translate the results, set the alarm clock and send text messages in English through the iPhone, but it can't directly connect with the complete local information of Taiwan Province Province for the time being. The form is more like "foreigners travel to Taiwan Province with sightseeing books", such as saying "Happy New Year" to Siri. On the contrary, you will be called "The New Year begins with 1 month 1", and even if you ask Siri to tell a joke, you will be questioned whether you can understand English jokes.
But if you ask what restaurants are recommended nearby, Siri can actually catch local restaurants in Taiwan Province Province, but the recommended content is probably not the kind of expensive restaurants that ordinary locals will go to. In fact, this situation will also happen on Amazon Echo, because it is not connected in series with local services and databases.
Similarly, Google Home can successfully connect to the user's personal Google account, so the content of recommendation and reply is not outrageous, and even webpage information can be found. Therefore, if Google sells Google Home in Taiwan Province in the future, it may not be too difficult to connect. As for Xiaomi AI speakers who can speak Chinese, although they can look up all kinds of materials or play specific songs smoothly in Chinese, the database still needs to be connected back to China, so there may be a need to play specific music today, but it will take a few days to play it correctly. The reason may be that the command execution and actual response time are too long due to network connection problems, and the service content can also be restricted for domestic use, which leads to the failure of normal operation.
[Embedded Content] Another key point of applying smart speakers in digital home is naturally the Internet of Things environment in series home. According to the usage mode of HomePod, it naturally belongs to one of HomeKit devices, so the overall setting is quite simple. At the same time, after setting up, it can replace Apple TV as a home connection hub, and add the function of voice control through Siri.
For example, in the past, it was necessary to use Apple TV as the hub and use Siri with iPhone. In the future, it can only be done through a set of HomePod. However, in the process of operation, it still means that instructions can be issued in English, and the name and position of the connected equipment must be adjusted to English to operate normally. For example, if the location of HomePod is "living room", the name of the operation interface must be changed to "living room".
As for the connection equipment, it can only support Apple's own HomeKit connection protocol equipment, which should not be difficult to find in Taiwan Province Province at present, but there may not be many items.
However, from the perspective of many smart speaker connection applications, it can actually reflect the reasons why the application of the Internet of Things is lagging behind. For example, Amazon Echo and Google Home, although many brand devices have joined the series of cooperation at present, it is difficult for users to wake up the devices connected to Google Home directly through Amazon Echo. Unless the connection is established around a big circle through cloud services, it may be too complicated for ordinary users. Including HomePod only supports Apple's own HomeKit connection protocol, Xiaomi AI speakers also have high connection compatibility with Xiaomi's eco-chain devices, and even only correspond to domestically sold devices. Therefore, it is not suitable to connect complete digital home applications through different smart speakers at this stage.
Having said that, which one should I buy?
In fact, this problem is hard to say now. After all, Apple HomePod, Google Home, Amazon Echo and Xiaomi AI speakers are connected in series with different application ecological chains, which also correspond to different service contents, so it mainly depends on the individual needs of users. However, if the home is dominated by iOS devices, it is naturally recommended to buy HomePod with high integration performance. However, if you want to have better application performance of the Internet of Things, it is still recommended to choose Google Home or Amazon Echo (although these two seem to be integrated with the Android platform at present). Good).
As for if you want to feel the affinity of Chinese (and don't mind the interaction of Beijing accent), Xiaomi AI speaker may be a good choice, but it may be troublesome to change many application services and connecting devices to China version.
HomePod simple unpacking