To determine which artificially intelligent voice assistant I prefer for controlling my smart house, I use a simple metric: Which one do you swear at least? Apple's Siri (which turns 10 today) wins hands down. This may be partly due to the fact that it doesn't give me useless information if it doesn't understand my question (*cough* Google), and most importantly because it never asks me if I want something (you are who you know). Siri's speed is a result of its role as a smart home controller.
Siri, you ask? The same Siri, whose laziness is legendary in its native iPhone? That's it. You can bring Siri into your home by using an Apple TV 4K, HomePod (maxi, mini), or HomePod (maxi, or both) as a HomeKit hub. The speed with which the AI responds to your commands will amaze you.
Simply saying Hey Siri, Goodnight turns off all smart lights in my house, locks the front door and back doors, closes my garage door, stops any music playing, lowers the shade and sets my thermostat to my desired sleep temperature. This takes around 6 seconds.
In less than a second, the HomePod Mini turns on all of those lights by simply saying "Hey Siri, lights on". It has also never accidentally lit the entire house at 5 AM, unlike other voice assistants (I know, I swear).
My home is brought back to life by a whispered Good morning into my Apple Watch and pressing the digital crown. It turns on all the lights I need without having to wake my partner, and plays NPR in the kitchen Mini quietly before I get out of bed.
Hey Alexa. Hey Siri. Hey Google. Hey Google, can you hear me? Is that you?
Siri might lack some of the great qualities found in other smart speakers. With its powerful backend, it is not the most intelligent AI. With its many (and often unsolicited) requests for assistance, it is not the most helpful. When all you want is to turn on the lights, your AI launches into a monologue regarding who invented the light switch. That's when you think, "I wish my smart home controller were a bit dumber."
Although the smart home vision is powered by artificial intelligence, which uses context to anticipate your needs, we are still far from it. Your smart home voice control is all you need today. You don't need a masters degree, but listening skills and comprehension.
Voice control in the smart house must be more intuitive than using a phone to open an app or pulling out a smartphone to access it. It also has to be less intrusive than having to reach over and flip a switch. This is a difficult task that Apple seems to be closest to conquering in my house.
I wish Siri were more promiscuous.
Fart jokes can be fun and it is great to have the world's knowledge within reach. However, Siri is not good at these things. Siri can hear me 100% of the times, even if the nearest speaker is not on the other side. It also understands my smart-home requests 95 percent of time and keeps its banter to a minimum. These are qualities that I love in a smart-home controller.
But, Siri could be more promiscuous. My out-of-the norm smart home has a lot of gadgets and gizmos that cannot talk to Siri. This is why I sometimes find someone in my household standing in the middle of the living room and saying "Hey Alexa!" Hey Siri. Hey Google. Hey Google, can you hear me? Is that you?
My partly-Siri powered smart home was not an easy or inexpensive task. (Due to my job, I am legally obligated to use all four smart voice assistants simultaneously. Yes, Bixby is also in this room. When searching for Siri-compatible devices, you will typically choose the most expensive filter from the search results. Then close your eyes and click the buy button. A few budget-friendly options have been released by Meross and Aqara in the past year, but it is still difficult to find certain categories such as smart smoke alarms and home security systems.
Siri-compatible devices are generally searched for by selecting the most expensive filter from the search results.
Matter's promise may solve this interoperability problem. But that isn't just Apples problem. I've found Siri Shortcuts to be a great way to bypass some of these limitations. Tailwind, my favourite garage door controller, did not have HomeKit support until a while. Although it does now, there was a shortcut to allow me to program my own commands to have Siri open or close the garage door. It was the same with my ceiling fans. The Bond Bridge (RF device that communicates with a ceiling fan remote controller, not a scene in No Time to Die), can be activated by Siri on your iPhone/Apple Watch to trigger Shortcuts to manage my not-smart, certainly not HomeKit compatible fans.
Shortcuts have one drawback. They only work with an iPhone or Apple Watch. Smart home control must be accessible to all members of the household, regardless of whether they've purchased into the Apple ecosystem. The cost to equip a small home with Siri access on-demand was prohibitive before the HomePod Mini. Even the $99 per-room HomePod Mini is still high.
Siri invites some friends to celebrate its tenth birthday. Siri-enabled accessories allow non-Apple gadgets that have speakers and microphones to send requests to the HomePod. The Ecobee SmartThermostat remains the only manufacturer that has committed to this. Ecobee could have Alexa gone, but Amazon has just Sherlocked them. I'm hoping that my swear jar will soon be collecting cobwebs with more ways to speak to Siri at home and more products that can all be controlled by the smart assistant.
