Launching in competition to both Google Home and Amazon Echo, Apple’s long-rumored Siri speaker has finally entered the production stage, reports Bloomberg. It is currently being reported that the speaker can potentially be debuted at Cupertino’s annual WWDC’17 (Worldwide Developers Conference), which kicks off the coming Monday.
Citing sources familiar with the developments, the report suggests that the speaker powered by Siri’s smarts has been advanced to the manufacturing stage. While an unveiling (as well as the announcement of developer initiatives) at WWDC’17 is possible, the device isn’t expected to ship to the consumer until later this year.
The details about the upcoming Siri-powered speaker are surely scarce and we’re direly expecting the same to be confirmed in the coming few days. We already know that the speaker is expected to sport a Mac Pro-like cylindrical design, with a concave top and mesh covering all around the outsides of the speaker. It is being reported that AirPods-maker Inventec has yet again been hired by the Cupertino giant to manufacture the speaker, which has been under rigorous testing at Apple employees’ homes for months.
There is currently no information on what operating system will power the speaker, but it is being speculated that Apple will try to differentiate itself from the competition by debuting a tighter integration with its own products. Google and Amazon do not exactly support Apple products, so that’s a huge win, but Andy Rubin’s Essential Home is all for interoperability and can one day frame the future of electronic devices.
Bloomberg’s report continues to talk about the same saying Apple is introducing a Siri-powered speaker for two hugely prominent purposes:
[It will be] providing a hub to automate appliances and lights via Apple’s HomeKit system, and establishing a bulwark inside the home to lock customers more tightly into Apple’s network of services.
The Siri speaker is also expected to lay immense emphasis on ‘superior’ sound quality to sell its competitive product in the market. It will bring along a virtual surround sound technology, as mentioned in the reports, to produce louder and crisper sound than any of the devices available in the market. Apple may be looking to integrate sensors into the speaker to measure a room’s acoustics and adjusting audio levels automatically during use.
While Apple is trying to step foot in the fledgling smart home speaker market, its competitors — ahem Google! — are vying for a piece of virtual assistance on the smartphone itself. During its developer keynote at Google I/O 2017, the search giant announced that its uber-quirky AI-powered assistant will make its way to the iPhone and it already has.
Though you do not have the ability to remap the iPhone’s home button to remove Siri and replace it with Google Assistant, you can place a widget that can be seamlessly be accessed with just a right swipe and a tap on the microphone. And everyone’s aware of the fact that who’s a better virtual voice assistant and Apple needs to work on its smarts to conquer the game.
