Apple HomePod, Google Home or Amazon Echo: which would you choose?
What at first started out as slim pickings is now getting some traction: Digital and AI-equipped speakers are slowly but surely picking up with more alternatives landing on the market. Until now, only Amazon’s Echo and Google Home have been available, but by the end of 2017, Apple's HomePod, announced at WWDC, possibly Microsoft’s Cortana - in the form of the Harman Kardon Invoke - and most likely Samsung’s speaker, with its own native assistant Bixby, will appear, addition a healthy level of competition to the market.
End users will probably be faced with a great deal of digital assistants around Christmas time, all of which battling for a place in your humble abode. These digital assistants will have all the information you need ready at your beckoning, provide you with event reminders or even control your smart home components on demand, all via voice command. Useful, right? If you have ever dreamed of placing such a voice assistant in your home, then the end of this year will be a very exciting time for you. With that in mind, we already want to get an idea of what product you would go for. What digital butler would you give the honor of being part of your home life?
After you've made your choice in our poll, let us know the reason why you selected the system you did. If you didn't selected any of the systems, tell us and the rest of the community why nothing floated your boat. With that said, head down to the comments and let's discuss Google Home, Amazon Echo, HomePod, Invoke and Samsung Bixby.
The HomePod competes with Sonos, not with Google Home or Echo. Siri will never know enough about the user to be useful. That damn privacy mantra keeps handicapping Siri.
As to speaker sound, HomePod doesn't stand a chance to, "Hey Google, play Jazz on Family Room" and my Onkyo 7.1 sound system with Boston Acoustics speakers will turn on automatically and some great jazz will start playing via Chromecast. HomePod has already lost and the sad part is millions of Apple lemmings will still buy it thinking it's the best.