[Poll Results Live] Has HomePod (Siri) become worse/dumber after iOS 15 update?

New updates are being added at the bottom of this story…….

Original story (published on January 12, 2022) follows:

HomePod is Apple’s family of smart speakers. Since the launch of the first model, these devices have become a fundamental part of Apple’s technological ecosystem for several users.

Over the years, the HomePod has received more models with newer functions. At the same time, iOS updates have been bringing new features to all models.

However, in the last few months, users have been facing multiple issues and glitches. At Piunikaweb we have covered a lot of those problems (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Given the above, many reports suspect that the update to iOS 15 has significantly worsened the performance of the HomePod devices with the Siri assistant voice commands (1, 2, 3).

Many HomePod speaker users report that, after the update to iOS 15, the devices have become more ‘dumb’, as they do not respond correctly to voice commands given through Siri.

As an example of the above, the following report describes how the most recent iOS updates have affected the performance of those devices.

Have HomePods gotten much, much dumber recently?

Has anyone else’s HomePods gotten much, much more stupider in recent months?

I have 6 HomePods around the house, and I used to love them, even though they had been discontinued. But recently, I can give it a simple command. Like “set the volume everywhere to 60%”… and the response I get is.

“one sec… … … … … working on that … … … … hmm, something is taking too long”.
Source

In the same report, to complement the description of the problem, the following is also added:

Or, I’ll ask Siri to “listen to Marc Cohn everywhere”. Then, it will start playing on 4/6 HomePods, with the non-playing HomePods. Simply displaying the volume +/- on their touch surface, but with no audio playback.

It’s absolutely maddening.
Source

So, it seems that, after the arrival of iOS 15, Apple speakers are having a hard time handling commands as basic as raising/lowering the volume, or just playing a particular song.

Apparently, the most common issue is that, after iOS 15, the HomePod speaker takes a long time to process a Siri command, eventually not fulfilling it saying that the device ‘is not responding’.

It’s gotten much slower and quirky since version 15.0. Lots of “on it” and “_________ is not responding” (when it actually is responding just fine) Pretty much the same shit show you mentioned. I guess no one in Cupertino actually uses their own work (supposedly it’s the “best work of their lives” according to daddy Cook).
Source

Also, some report that their HomePods can’t even remember the user’s location. So, when requesting things like weather, the device asks for the location.

The reports include other problems derived from the update to iOS 15. For example, cacophony while responding to commands, or connectivity issues with Apple TV and Airplay.

What do you think about this situation? Do you agree that iOS 15 made the HomePod more ‘dumb’ and worsened its response to Siri commands? You can express your opinion in the comments below.

You can also vote in the poll below (the results will be announced after a week). And, you can check out the bugs/issues tracker dedicated to iOS 15.

04:34 pm (IST): Poll results are now live. And while 60 percent of our readers think that the iOS 15 has indeed made the HomePod dumb, 30 percent do not agree. And the rest 30 percent have no idea about it.

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