When it comes to speakers and other audio equipment, Sonos is one of the more beloved out there. And despite not having its own voice assistant on board its range of smart speakers, they are still some of the most sought-after options out there. But for fans of the speakers, it looks like Sonos is ready to jump into the voice assistant market in the very near future.
Echo is a series of smart voice assistant devices by Amazon. You can review and listen to voice commands given to Alexa on your Amazon Echo, inside the Alexa app, and any other device with Alexa built in. From here, you can delete the voice recordings individually or in bulk. The settings also allow you to stop saving your Echo recordings. Finally, you can even ask Amazon to no longer use your Alexa voice recordings for evaluation and training purposes. This'll ensure no human hired by Amazon listens to them. In this guide, we show you how to do all these using the Alexa app on your iPhone, iPad, Android, and the Amazon website in a browser on Mac or PC.
While the HomePod mini appears to be doing all right, all things considered, Apple is still missing a huge chunk of the smart speaker market. Meanwhile, Google and Amazon have capitalized. But it looks like Apple's not quite ready to go quietly into that good night (yet).
Amazon has released a new iOS widget, dubbed ”Ask Alexa”, that provides quick access to the company's voice assistant, right from the home screen of your iPhone and iPad.
The beta version of Siri first saw the light of day as an iPhone exclusive in October of 2011. Which means we're nearing the 10-year mark for the digital assistant's debut (for Apple's platform). Since then, Apple has touted the many queries the digital assistant has handled, and made improvements in big --and small-- ways.
As first spotted by The Ambient, users of Amazon's Alexa app for the iPhone and iPad can now send their requests to the assistant via text messages instead of only using their voice.
Apple introduced a tinier version of its popular HomePod called HomePod mini. This smart speaker is not only smaller in size, but also in price as compared to its parent. Both of these features put the HomePod mini more in the running as a direct competitor to the Amazon Echo.
Whether for yourself or a gift for a loved one, you might be trying to decide between the two (or three including the Amazon Echo Dot). To help, we have a comparison of HomePod mini versus Amazon Echo. Hopefully this will help you pick the best smart speaker for your home or someone else’s.
People in Germany who own an Echo device can now ask Amazon's Alexa smart assistant to stream any audio show available on the Apple Podcasts directory.
As companies were jumping on the digital assistant bandwagon, Microsoft launched its own alternative: Cortana. It proved to be plenty helpful, but Google's and Amazon's dominance in this regard (across platforms, and Siri on iOS) forced Microsoft to make some tough decisions.
Amazon has overhauled its mobile Alexa app for iPhone and iPad around first-party features.
It's a relatively painless process to use Siri and ask the digital assistant to launch an app on your iPhone or iPad, but for folks who prefer to use Amazon's option, Alexa isn't quite there yet.
The European Union has decided that yet another investigatory probe is required into consumer-facing products, and Apple is included in this net, too.