Add Support for “Skills”
HomePod can already integrate with third-party apps that support SiriKit — being able to set reminders in Things is one of my personal favourites — but these require that you have an app installed on your iPhone, and that you have the app nearby. Plus, they’re also specific to only one user.
Support for cloud-based “skills” is definitely an area where Amazon’s Alexa has the edge, but fortunately another recent acquisition by Apple suggests that the company may soon be fixing this. Ideally, HomePod should be able to tie into any number of online services without requiring the user to install an app.
This would greatly expand the type of information users can ask for beyond what Apple is willing to bake into its own Siri frameworks. Alexa currently boasts over 70,000 different skills, which is an order of magnitude above the number of apps that support SiriKit. Skills could allow users to query recipes, place food orders, check travel information, start workouts, find nearby event information, and much more.
While Apple has included some of these features in Siri — things like weather, movies, news, stocks, and even basic Wikipedia queries all work — these have been limited by Apple’s insistence on controlling all of the pieces.
The door could even be opened for supporting other music services such as Spotify, although it’s understandable how Apple might be more hesitant to allow its hardware to be so easily used by one of its major competitors, especially with its increasing emphasis on its services business.