I'm the author of the Alexa skills for LMS so let me address your point on voice control of LMS via Siri and why it is (currently) not available.
The voice control paradigm is complementary to using a GUI and not intended to replace it. If you want to browse a library then nothing beats a touchscreen or a chromebook on your lap for browsing and e.g. seeing something you haven't played in a while and deciding to listen to it. Voice comes into its own when you don't have a screen or keyboard handy or your hands are full, like when under the shower or chopping vegetables or changing diapers. It's also great for doing something decisive and concise like kicking off playback of a named favorite radio station or a daily playlist. The advantage of a dedicated room-based speech device like an Amazon Echo (or HomePod) is that the spoken response from Alexa/Siri will be properly audible with background distractions, unlike the Siri response from an iPhone laid down somewhere in the vicinity. To date, almost all Siri use is via iPhones because Apple has sold a dismal number of HomePods. But, if you have a smartphone at the ready for Siri use, why would you choose to talk to it instead of just using iPeng or Material on it? I have 12 Amazon Echos in my house and 10 Squeezeboxes and I heavily use voice control for almost everything in my (very) smart home, but other household members struggle to remember the correct syntax for even 5% of the commands. Voice control is very divisive and you either love it or hate it. Most of the LMS community (by far) are haters. Voice control is pickier than you may realise for how exactly you word a command and is very unforgiving of humming and hawing. Siri is much, much worse than Alexa or Google Assistant in this respect. LMS and its plugins/skills/actions/shortcuts is a community development and there has to be enough traction behind a platform to get developers interested to spend time. It's not commercially motivated but more a hobby or personal-interest. I wrote the Alexa skills for my own use and put over 800 hours of effort into them, so (subsequently) making them available to the community made that effort more justified in my mind. If anybody wants to do the same for Siri then it's their choice. I could have targeted Siri because we are iPhone/iPad users and also mixed PC/Mac users at home, but the market share of HomePod vs Echo made that a really easy choice not to opt for Siri. Just because a household is an 'Apple household' does not automatically mean that you should try to do everything on your Apple devices. Pick your device ecosystem wisely and don't try to fit square pegs into round holes just because you have round holes - get a few square ones too for when it makes more sense. Just my 2 cents. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ philchillbill's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=68920 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=113721 _______________________________________________ plugins mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/plugins
