There’s a particular point I’ve been trying to articulate about HomePod vs Amazon Echo and all the others that I haven’t quite figured out how to express succinctly in a tweet. So I’m going to resort to charts.

If we wanted to compare HomePod and Echo as “Smart” devices, digital assistants—whatever term you want to use—I think most people will agree that Echo has an advantage. How much of an advantage is up for debate, but let’s be extremely generous to the Amazon fans and say that Echo is twice as good as HomePod in this area.^[1] That sounds like a big deal, right? Echo is soooo much better at being a voice assistant. Twice as good! Apple should be quaking in its boots.

But better is a relative term. You can be better and still not be good, right?

Let’s switch gears for a moment and compare the two devices as speakers. Here we get a different chart. Personal differences in taste aside, only a complete lunatic would say that HomePod isn’t significantly better than Echo at being a speaker. But again, how much better is up for debate. I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable to say that HomePod is twice as good as Echo at sound, though. ^[2]

So we’ll add that to our chart.

But we have the same problem again. We know one is better than the other, but we don’t have a sense of where “good” falls.

Without knowing where “good” is, anyone can wave either one of these comparisons away and chalk it up to priorities. Some people care more about the sound quality. Some people care more about the smart stuff. Sounds like a toss-up, right?

But there’s a threshold of quality where people consider something “good.” Where the general public—not just a niche of enthusiasts—agrees that a technology has gotten significantly good enough to make it ready for prime time.^[3]

We reached the “good” threshold for speakers decades ago. The subcategory of affordable bookshelf speakers got there sometime in the past few years.

But we’re nowhere near “good” yet when it comes to digital assistants.

I say this with no small amount of respect for how hard this technology is and how far it has come recently. I’m as excited as the next geek when it comes to the future of AI and voice recognition. I think it’s all super cool.^[4]

But it’s not good. Not for most people. It’s barely past the point of being a parlor trick, if we’re being honest. Answering trivia questions? Turning on the lights? There’s a reason even early adopters generally resort to using these devices for a small set of simple tasks. That’s about all they can do reliably.

I firmly believe we’ll get much better voice assistants eventually, but the fact of the matter is “good” is a long way off.

This is the reality of our chart.

There are a few things that have to happen before voice assistants are going to stop being the butt of an SNL skit. First and foremost, they need to learn when we’re actually talking to them.

Listen to any tech podcast hosted by a voice assistant fan (there are lots of them) and wait for hilarity to ensue as they say the word “Alexa” or “Siri” in conversation (or any word that sounds remotely like those trigger words), and their Echo or iPhone proceeds to respond as if a request were being made. This is followed by five seconds of “Alexa STOP!!!” And laughter from the co-host.^[5] Never mind the complaints that come later from listeners as all of their Echos and iPhones go off.

This happens so often that many hosts have resorted to substitute expressions. (Hey, Dingus!) It’s a running joke, even amongst the most enthusiastic of early adopters.

Have you ever noticed this never happens to Chief O’Brien on Star Trek? He can say “Computer, how long before the Dominion ship is within weapons range?” And he gets the appropriate response. But then he says “Captain, I’m going to need to tap into their central computer.” And the computer does nothing.

That’s because science fiction authors, unlike Alexa fans, understand that sensible people would not depend on voice control until this basic requirement was met.

Siri, Alexa—whatever name Google Home responds to^[6]—need to be that smart. Non-geek humans are going to laugh you out of the room in the meantime. The device can’t be simply listening for “magic” words. It needs to know when it is being spoken to and more importantly, when it is not. Human beings are very good at this, and we expect the same level of skill from anything we talk to.^[7] This is not an easy thing to get out of a computer, clearly. Because it hasn’t happened yet, and people have been working on it for decades. But until we resolve this, digital assistants are annoying more often than they are useful.

And that brings me to the next key word in this discussion—usefulness.

Here’s what I really want out of a virtual assistant: Assistance. Not trivia questions. Not timers. Utility. It needs to actually make my life significantly easier.^[8]

Let me give you an example. And there’s no doubt in my mind this will be possible someday.

“Alexa, book me a flight for Peers Conf.”

If I had a human personal assistant, that’s all I’d need to say to get this task done. They would go straight to work, and I’d get on with my day. But in order for Alexa to do this, all of the following would need to be in place:

• Alexa would need to be able to search the web and figure out that Peers Conf is a conference happening in April in Austin, TX. Not just to report that back to me, but to understand that this is the reason for my trip.
• She would need to figure out the dates for the conference, then take into account my usual preference to arrive a day early, and if the conference ends near a weekend, to stay through until Sunday evening.
• She would need to know my preferred flight times, the airlines where I have frequent flier accounts, that I fly nonstop whenever possible, that I’m starting in New York, but I hate Newark airport, and that I prefer an aisle seat.
• If she had any conflicts between any of my preferences, she’d have to follow up: “There’s no available flight after 6:30am on Sunday morning. Do you want to extend the trip to Monday or take that early flight?” (Also, if I’ve moved on and started watching TV or listening to music, or I’m just talking to another person in the room, she would need to be courteous and not interrupt me. Perhaps she would send me a quick text or push notification and wait for my response.)
• After settling all of this, she’d have to compile a summary and send it to me in an email or push notification to my phone so I could confirm. Once confirmed, she’d have to be able to book everything automatically with the correct credit card and send me the receipts via email and place the appropriate pass into my electronic wallet.

That is a digital assistant. And any device that could accomplish this reliably would be as popular as smart phones are today.

Wake me up when Alexa can do anything remotely this complex, and I’ll start to worry about Apple “falling behind” in this space.

Because here’s the thing: that level of complexity is not just a matter of gathering more data and training our AI models a little longer. It’s not a matter of third party apps. It’s not a matter of open vs. closed. It’s not a linear progression from where we are today to that. It’s going to take some major breakthroughs, deep connections into my life—financial, personal, and historical—that require user trust. (Amazon is never going to put this together by looking at my paper towel order history.) Not to mention the agreements between companies in several different industries required to have a digital assistant make purchases on my behalf. Heck, Amazon doesn’t really have a strong motivation to make something like this happen, because it would stand to gain nothing from the transaction.^[9]

So yes, other platforms may currently be “better” than Siri. But when none of the platforms is good, what difference does that make, except to a small niche of enthusiasts? By all means, enjoy the Echo if you want to live on the bleeding edge of voice assistants. But don’t try to convince me Apple is doomed in this space, or that I’m missing out big because I prefer to listen to a good speaker and set my timers with Siri.^[10]

That’s why even though it’s too early in the race to tell who will come out ahead—and there’s no reason one winner needs to take all in this field, by the way—I wouldn't count Apple out in the long term for digital assistants. At least Apple knows the difference between a tech demo and an actual product. More critically, it knows to prioritize features where it can actually deliver something good, rather than something better at bad.

Let’s do a quick thought experiment.

You’re Apple. You want to launch a smart speaker product, but you haven’t gotten one into the market yet. Years have passed, and some of the competitors (Amazon and Google) are making some headway, though their products are far from mainstream. Those products are both backed by what has become pretty refined voice recognition systems, however, ones that surpass your own Siri in some respects, at least. And the people who do have these devices are pretty tied to the functionality they bring to the table.

What do you do?

Do you launch an also-ran box at a similar price point, with crap sound and inferior voice recognition? Knowing that you don’t have the data (thanks to your focus on user privacy) to be superior on services, or the access to easy ordering of replacement paper towls through Amazon’s global retail operation?

Or do you try and find another angle on which to compete?

I have no idea if Apple’s strategy of doubling-down on speaker quality will succeed, but I know trying to beat Amazon or Google at the voice stuff alone will fail. You have to play to your strengths.

Whatever got us here, this is Apple’s only play. Enter into the market riding on a reputation for quality of music (thanks to the iPod, Apple Music, etc) and bring Siri functionality along over the next couple of years as the user base grows. Given that the vast majority of people have never owned a smart speaker, I don’t think it’s a crazy proposition to sell a great-sounding speaker (a benefit everyone understands) from the company that brings you all of your music. Oh, and you can do some cool home automation stuff with it, too.

Who cares if the people who have Echos and Google Home devices want to keep them? There are far more people out there who currently have nothing in this category.

In order for Apple to win, Amazon and Google don’t have to lose, in other words.

Reading the Twitter and App.net reactions to the mostly positive reviews of the iPad mini today, I’m left with the impression that many people wanted

• $199 price point
• Retina display
• 10-hours of battery
• aluminum case, and all the fit and finish you expect from Apple

And anyone who doesn’t criticize Apple for not having all of these is a shill.

But design is about compromise, remember?

There’s no physical way Apple could have kept its “legendary” battery life (Tim Cook’s word, not mine) with the mini without sacrificing the Retina screen. And there’s no way it would have that beautiful aluminum fit and finish for $200. So choices were made. And if you follow Apple at all, you know why they made the choices they did.

Now, you can say that you would have preferred the Retina display in a cheap plastic case, or that you could live with five hours of battery instead of ten. But you have to make choices yourself in your imaginary preferred device. No one can currently make a device with all four of those things.

That’s not to say that Apple doesn’t deserve to get dinged in a review a little for having a screen that’s sub par compared to its competition. But from what I’ve read, the mini has been getting that ding. Most reviewers, even those who tend to be Apple positive, are wishing the mini had Retina.

(I’ll agree that rationalizing, i.e. “most people don’t care about Retina” is silly. Of course they care. And they will notice. But I’m betting the mini will still win most of them over.)

Apple operates on the “all or nothing” principle when it comes to resolution. It’s quadruple the pixels, or it’s not. There’s no in-between resolutions, where none of your apps work right or everything is fuzzy. Obviously I’d rather have a Retina screen on my mini, as I think that would be my ideal iPad. And by next year, when that’s physically possible, thanks to more advancements in battery technology and power management in iOS, I’ll have that. But in the meantime, I absolutely think Apple made the right choice to go with non-Retina before sacrificing battery life or making it even more expensive. And I certainly wouldn’t want a screen with 1200 x 900, or some other in-between resolution that made my apps look like crap.

As far as price goes, I’m also hearing a lot of talk about how Apple could “crush” its competition if it just made the mini $200. Sure. It could crush it even faster if it made the mini $100. Or heck, why not give it away?

Take a look at Amazon’s latest earnings report if you want to know how the cheap tablet market is doing. I don’t think Apple needs to crush anything. Those cheap tablets are money pits. Wall Street may give Amazon a pass for losing money on everything they sell, but when Apple warns profit margins will be lower than their usual 35%, the stock takes a nose dive. I think Apple is right to wait it out until it can make a profitable tablet at that price.

Are people still seriously thinking Apple needs to get into the razor-thin margins game? Because that’s how Apple got to be the world’s largest company, right, by competing on price?

Didn’t we learn anything from Netbooks?

I was as surprised as everyone else when I saw that $329 starting price. But mostly because it’s such a goofy, Marketing un-friendly number. Once I thought about it for a minute, I figured, “Well, that must be the compromise that went along with the manufacturing process.” This is what Apple does. Rounded corners, when squared corners are cheaper. Aluminum, when plastic is cheaper. Glass, when a plastic screen is cheaper. They build a great product, then price it as cheap as they can, not the other way around.

Anyone who takes a look at an iPad mini and a Kindle Fire will immediately know why the mini is more expensive. And they’ll choose according to what suits them best. Apple is happy to let them make that choice. They don’t cater to cheapskates.

But what about the iPod? I can hear some arguing. What about it? It was several years before Apple made an iPod that was cheap enough to not leave the “price umbrella” under it, and that iPod didn’t have a screen.

I have no doubt the umbrella will be gone in a few years. But that will take time, technological advancement, and a lot more creative thinking. Remember, this is the iPad mini, not the iPad shuffle. That’ll come later. In the meantime, let the competitors lose money for a while. Market share is not remotely important compared to making profits and keeping your reputation for best-in-class products.

You can’t beat Amazon in a pricing war. Why would you pick that fight, knowing you’re going to lose?

Apple bashes Amazon and proposed ebook settlement — paidContent:

“In all, the Government met with at least fourteen Amazon employees—yet not once under oath. The Government required that Amazon turn over a mere 4,500 documents, a fraction of what was required of others.”

(Via. paidcontent.org)

Remember back in April, when I said the DOJ case against Apple regarding eBooks seemed like it was authored by Amazon? Yeah, looks like it just about was.

And now they’re trying to force Apple into a settlement, though Apple wants to go to trial. So much for due process.

There’s some seriously screwed up stuff going on lately with our justice system here in the U.S.

How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking | Gadget Lab | Wired.com: “In many ways, this was all my fault. My accounts were daisy-chained together. Getting into Amazon let my hackers get into my Apple ID account, which helped them get into Gmail, which gave them access to Twitter. Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened, because their ultimate goal was always to take over my Twitter account and wreak havoc. Lulz.

Had I been regularly backing up the data on my MacBook, I wouldn’t have had to worry about losing more than a year’s worth of photos, covering the entire lifespan of my daughter, or documents and e-mails that I had stored in no other location.

Those security lapses are my fault, and I deeply, deeply regret them.”

(Via. Wired)

While it’s tempting to say he’s right here, that it really is his own dumb behavior that led to this, it’s also important to remember that this is a nerd with major street cred we’re talking about. Compared to the average computer user, this guy is way ahead of the curve when it comes to security. And he still got hacked.

Worse yet, he didn’t get hacked by some brilliant but malicious programmer who figured out a secret path through the back door via sharp technical skills. The guy just called Amazon and Apple and was handed the keys to the kingdom.

Remember that next time your customer support rep doesn’t believe you’re you, and won’t let you in without proper identification.

The bottom line is that we have a broken system. Period. Tech companies (I’m looking at you Apple and Amazon) need to be innovating in this area more. The whole username/password thing is way past its expiration date. We’re storing our lives on these machines. We’re trusting companies with our most precious data and private information. We need a better way for the computer to know who it’s talking to.

No matter how many times you tell people to turn on two-factor authentication, use better passwords with numbers, letters, and symbols, use different passwords for all your accounts, etc., it’s not going to happen. 90% of people are still using their dog’s name with a 1 or 2 tacked on the end. It’s human nature.

So while I applaud Google for having a better authentication system than Apple on this one, it still puts the burden on the user, and thus is essentially useless. The vast majority of people, even if they were scared into turning two-factor on by this story, will turn it back off again after two weeks of being inconvenienced by it.

In other words, don’t tell me I have to type a 16-character password every time I want to use my phone. Make a better phone that knows the difference between me and a stranger without me having to do anything.

The thing that’s made Apple products better than everyone else’s over the last few decades is that they always put the user’s needs ahead of the designer or programmer. It’s time Apple stepped up and did that again, this time with an authentication system that works with near zero effort on the user’s part. Yes, that’s hard. Too bad. It’s the only way we’re going to fix this.

And meanwhile, Apple, stop using the last four digits of a credit card number as proof of anything. Wow. Talk about bone-headed. That’s worse than the bank using your mother’s maiden name.

Amazon Low Prices Disguise a High Cost – NYTimes.com:

““It is breathtaking to stand back and look at this and believe that this is in the public interest,” he said. “The only rationale is e-book prices will go down, for how long? What happens when there is no one left to compete with them?””

(Via The New York Times.)

This article sums up my feelings about this weird eBook DOJ case. Sure, in the short term prices may go down, but once Amazon has 100% of the market, where will the prices go? The short-sightedness of this whole thing is jaw-dropping.

This case has nothing to do with preserving competition. The government is guaranteeing the opposite by giving the already de facto monopolist Amazon an even bigger upper hand. When I read the official complaint, my first gut reaction was that someone at Amazon had actually written it and handed it over to the DOJ to copy verbatim. I guess Amazon has stronger lobbyists than Apple and the book publishers do.

Apple rejects iBook with links to Amazon’s store:

Before anyone starts yelling about censorship, keep in mind that this is Apple’s playground, and it can take its ball home whenever it wants, no matter how inane the reason. But this reason seems particularly inane — Apple can’t really be worried about one link in a ebook promoting a competitor’s sales, right? Not to mention that the book in question was a hardcover copy, and unless I’m mistaken, wasn’t even sold on Apple’s iBooks store anyway.

(Via TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog)

Well, actually, it’s several links to Amazon’s store, not one. And I don’t find that an inane reason at all. I don’t remember ever going into a Target and buying a product there that gave me several tips on how to buy things at Wal Mart.

This argument is silly to me. It’s simply bad form to try and sell a product in one store that repeatedly refers customers to another competing store. End of story.

Spurred by the recently announced Amazon Kindle Fire and its $199 price, Apple is rumored to be exploring a new low-cost iPad for release in the first few months of 2012.

Analyst Brian White with Ticonderoga Securities has been touring China and Taiwan and meeting with component suppliers, where he has heard rumblings of a so-called “iPad mini” arriving next year. The “mini” name doesn’t necessarily refer to the size of the device, he said, but a lower entry-level price.

He said such a device is expected to arrive in the first few months of 2012, allowing Apple to tap into a “more price sensitive consumer segment,” and also fend off the Amazon Kindle Fire, the retailer’s first entrance into the touchscreen tablet market.

via AppleInsider

This sort of thing is so stupid I don’t even know where to start.

Or maybe I do. First and foremost, Apple doesn’t build new products because it’s “spurred” by someone else’s products. If there were a lower-cost iPad coming next year, it would have been in development for some time.

Knee-jerk reaction is what other companies do.

Second, rumors like this always assume that price is something that companies simply pluck out thin air, as if making things for less than you sell them weren’t important. Believe me, if Apple could make the current iPad cheaper without sacrificing quality, it would. But it can’t, so it won’t.

The Fire will sell quite well, I’m sure, but not because it’s any threat to the iPad.

Amazon can make cheap tablets until it’s blue in the face, because Amazon is fine with losing money on every tablet sold. They make it up on the content you buy. While Apple makes a small profit on the content, its main source of income has always been on the hardware itself. It can’t afford to lose money on cheap iPads in the hopes that you buy lots of iBooks and music. And it wouldn’t want to, because that would mean selling cheap crap, which is antithetical to everything Apple is.

So, maybe, maybe, we could see a small price drop on the entry level iPad next year. Maybe they’ll continue to sell the iPad 2 at a cheaper rate when they release the iPad 3, like they do with iPhones. But don’t expect a $199 iPad from Apple next year. It’s just not in the cards. And it doesn’t have to be, because Kindle Fire buyers aren’t going to take away any sales from potential iPad owners.

The only companies that will suffer from the Kindle Fire are all the other Android makers. (And suffer they will.)

My guess is that Amazon was worried about Apple for a while; they just haven’t come up with a solution yet. Clearly, they could give up the hardware altogether and just make Kindle software available on every and all devices it can. But they seem to want to dominate the entire book world, including hardware sales. I’m just not sure that’s feasible, given who they are up against.