I'm fine that Siri can't do that much because I don't want creepiness and I don't want it arbitrating information by trying to give definitive answers to questions, but what does seem incomprehensible is how it has such limited access to your personal information and how poorly it integrates with Apple devices as a whole:
- It doesn't have access to your Contacts and therefore can't pronounce names properly. (Despite it telling you that you can change pronounciation via iPhone, but that only affects iPhone.)
- This seems like a gap in the way they have been programmed because iOS 15 IIRC moved pronounciation stuff to Contacts, but audioOS doesn't seem aware of this because when you ask HomePod about your pronounciation, it says to use the pre-iOS 15 method on your phone.
- I enjoy my personal assistant constantly mispronouncing my name /s. I even decided to rename my room in Home app so it would do it less.
- It can't activate Shortcuts so you better make sure you use another Apple device to do it.
- I get that not every device can activate every shortcut (eg. Apple Watch) but none at all??
- You can tell Siri to move playback from an iPhone to a HomePod, but not vice versa without making a Shortcut and activating it from something that isn't the HomePod. (Apparently this might be a patent thing. sigh.)
And this is compounded by the fact that HomePod has really sensitive microphones and is the most likely device to capture that request in my home. So I'm less inclined to use 'Hey Siri' nowadays unless I'm sure that HomePod can actually fullfil that task.
A lot of this seems down to auth - HomePod can be trusted recognise your voice to perform some tasks, but bizarrely, not all. It makes sense in a way because the voice recognition is really bad, but by that logic, it shouldn't be trusted with anything. In any case, Apple really needs to streamline their security policies for multi-device scenarios, as well as improve interoperability.
It's the least integrated Apple device in my possession, and it actively makes various tasks less seamless because I have to consciously avoid using it in many situations.