The new Sonos One has Amazon Alexa built-in.
Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous and David Pogue discuss the latest device.
I’m in love… Now they’ve built an Alexa into the Sonos. So I can ask Alexa, “What time is it in Paris?” And, more to the point, I can ask for any music I want. I can walk home, take off my jacket, throw my keys in the bowl, and say, “Play light jazz” or “Play cooking music.” It is exactly what you’r want and they’re not charging a penny more than the one that doesn’t have Alexa built in…
The Apple HomePod is the same idea, but is much bigger and much better sounding and much more expensive. That’ll be $350 and, by the way, delayed. It will not be out in time for Christmas. It’ll be out in 2018… so [the Sonos with Alexa] is half the price, Sonos has their act together… The Sonos understands both Amazon Echo commands an, shortly, when a software update comes, Google commands. So, this one device will understand both “Ok, Google” and “Alexa” [commands]… It’s platform agnostic. So, Apple’s thing with only work with Siri commands, Google’s thing will only work with Google commands, this will – well, it won’t work with Apple, but – it’ll work with everybody else. – David Pogue
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Direct link to video here.
MacDailyNews Take: We are watching — live in super slo-mo, right before our eyes — Apple squander an exceedingly important area where they had staked out a tremendous lead – voice-controlled personal assistants, home automation; basically, “the living room” — due to lack of focus, lack of vision, laziness, mismanagement, and/or ineptitude.
Apple led with Apple TV (released January 9, 2007) and Siri (acquired in April 2010), each by many years, and they’ve been flushing that lead down the crapper ever since, thanks to years of aimless, sloth-like dithering.
If you were to tell us that you’re tired of waiting for the world’s most valuable company with $260+ billion dollars on-hand to finally get their shit together and have decided to go with Roku and Sonos instead, we could hardly blame you.
The yawning gulf between visionary CEO and caretaker CEO is currently on impressive display.
Steve Jobs handed Tim Cook the keys to the personal assistant and content streaming kingdoms and Tim Cook promptly lost them. Hopefully, he can find them before it’s too late. Apple has a lot of catching up to do.
SEE ALSO:
Why Apple’s HomePod is three years behind Amazon’s Echo – November 21, 2017
Under ‘operations genius’ Tim Cook, product delays and other problems are no longer unusual for Apple – November 20, 2017
Apple delays HomePod release to early 2018 – November 17, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook: The ‘operations genius’ who never has enough products to sell at launch – October 23, 2017
Ars Technica reviews Apple TV 4K: Vision less than fully realized – October 9, 2017
Apple reveals HomePod smart home music speaker – June 5, 2017
Apple’s desperate Mac Pro damage control message hints at a confused, divided company – April 6, 2017
Apple’s new TV app shows just how painfully behind Apple is – December 14, 2016
Apple is misplaying the hand Steve Jobs left them – November 30, 2016
Apple has no idea what they’re doing in the TV space, and it’s embarrassing – November 3, 2016
Apple delays AirPod rollout – October 26, 2016
Taking on the $179 Apple TV 4K, Roku unveils $99 Roku Ultra with 4K HDR capability – October 2, 2017
Apple delays release of watchOS 2 due to bug – September 16, 2015
Apple delays HomeKit launch until autumn – May 14, 2015
Apple delays production of 12.9-inch ‘iPad Pro’ in face of overwhelming iPhone 6/Plus demand – October 9, 2014
Tim Cook’s mea culpa: iMac launch should have been postponed – April 24, 2013