Apple HomePod | Hacker News Reader

Apple HomePod

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121 pointsgoshx104 comments

There's no open API for this, right? And Siri is ~1-2 years behind Echo/Google Home. Only "innovation" is on aesthetic design.

Apple usually comes in when they know they can do something a lot better than the existing competition, but not recently. Not with Apple Watch & HomePod.

It's now about:

1) Apple has massive distribution 2) They can get a non-step-function revenue increment with that massive distribution, launching new products.

Which makes sense why it's music focused (lock-in with Apple Music)

I think they are positioning as a Sonos killer (price is inline w/ that as well) rather than echo killer.

Thats probably a mistake but it does appear thats their strategy. The "smart" part of the speaker is a total afterthought it seems.

Historically, their strength is UI and maybe they don't know how to find their feet in voice. It would explain siris lack luster performance in comparison to Google and Amazon.

Very much disappointed w/ this offering.

Agreed, I bought an Echo because of Alexa, the speaker functionality is just a really nice bonus. I bought one of the original Apple Hi-Fi's, and still remember that being one of the most disappointing Apple products I bought. As a speaker, it wasn't bad, just so many other companies soon flooded that space with better offerings.

How do you like the music experience with the Echo? That's primarily what I'd use it for, but the skills are great (and I've even developed one myself, so I have a bit of an allegiance).

Siri's behind on a lot of stuff. They have issues gathering all parts of their organization and centralizing efforts for A.I. due to their org. structure, so it's going to be a while before Siri can catch.

On the pricing front – I'm not very surprised that there's a bump. They've always been on the high-end of everything they release (Apple TV is 2.5x-3.X other competitors from Google/Amazon).

I think the main reason they played down the "smart" part is because they know Siri is behind.

Sonos will have Alexa in it and most people can't tell the difference between a better speaker over another in terms of sound.

It just ...looks better.

They have an A8 in the thing though. It sounds like it will have enough processing snort inside that I imagine they can roll out new functionality pretty regularly.

It also sounds like there is a companion app of some kind (or maybe just for setup?), which could provide an alternative interface on a "pane of glass" that you already have -- your phone.

It seems like its straight out of their playbook. They've laid some groundwork, perhaps collect some data on things the device gets asked and next year release massive upgrades. I feel its a bit of too little to late, but it is their way.

Also the device ships in 6 months. Probably they don't want to give out all details in advance.

Quite sure this will eventually open up for developers, but I'm not sure how to provide a smooth user experience. Like how to handle the case when multiple apps would like to react to same voice command.

My guess is that they'll eventually open up SiriKit to the AppleTV and this speaker.

I wonder how Apple will handle the multi-user aspect though. Even with music multiple people in the same household will want to access their own playlists.

Normally I would agree... but my Apple TV sits there pretty much the same as it did a year or two ago.

In contrast, the Fire TV had a huge UI overhaul over the last year. Still a bit underpowered for the Stick, but nice to see it still getting some love.

Probably encroaching on the Sonos Play-1 and Play-3 space.

I have a hard time seeing this touching the Play-5 and the other Sonos products that stand out, the Sonos-Sub in particular.

That said, Airplay over Sonos is a massive pain, even with the Play-5 analog line-in, which requires an Apple Express router.

I hope this pushes Sonos to improve their interoperability.

I also hope it pushes Sonos to improve their app. It's been clunky and slow for years now and the primary reason I'll be swapping my Play 1 devices with HomePods as soon as they're available where I live.

Not the first-class solution you're looking for, but I've found running https://github.com/stephen/airsonos on a local server reliable.

Do you think they'll follow Amazon's lead and release a dot-like device also? It could be that their hi-fi, high-price strategy is only in the short term — and that they're planning on serving a broader market after they extract an extra $300 out of their die-hard fans.

I would have expected that, however, I think their "cheap" device is what a echo costs. What's dissapointing is that lots of small assistants in you house also opens up tons of possibilities. I think their are some interesting possibilities in the Apple TV that they haven't exploited.

As a former Apple fanboy that is also a Sonos lover, I'm starting to get annoyed by the fragmentation caused by the multiple product offerings in this category.

I have an Echo, 4 Echo Dots, one of every Apple Device, and a mix of other tech sprinkled throughout the house. I have already committed both my home and business to Sonos, and have zero desire to decommission those so that I can more easily play music from my Apple music library.

Do I wish that Sonos had a better/tighter integration with Amazon Prime or iTunes? Absolutely. However, I like the fact that it's platform agnostic. Apple could've solved a much bigger problem here, but instead chose to create a new one and solve that instead.

This seems like a missed opportunity for Apple to back an open standard like WiFi Alliance TimeSync for their Sonos-like speaker synchronization and try to encourage third party participation, even if that isn't the usual Apple MO.

This is why I never bought into Apple ecosystem, even when it was far superior or even the only choice. Have you considered moving to Spotify for your music? Spotify has been working to integrate with other companies, e.g. it's well integrated into Sonos when you're at home, and into Waze when you're in the car.

If Apples actions have taught us anything it is that their products are standards hostile.

To list two relevant to this cycle: USB-C and WiFi Alliance TimeSync

How's Apple USB-C hostile? They got plenty of flake for dropping all other ports on the MacBook Pro (except the headphone port)

You will never find one on an iPhone or iPad. And for which reasons?

None apart from owning the ecosystems/further profits.

There are other factors. For one, Lightning is significantly thinner, so more suitable for thinner devices. For another, switching to USB-C would force iPhone users (who mostly already have Lightning cables) to buy new cables. I don't know how large a role those factors play, compared to what you said - the other phone makers don't seem to have a problem with the thickness, and Apple certainly isn't known for being hesitant to make its users buy new cables - but they do exist.

Has Apple ever played well with others or made a device that could be reasonably called budget friendly?

I do wonder what their story is going to be for people who want a dot-like speaker in most of their rooms, since that really does need to be priced cheaply.

I don't believe Apple is targeting those that already bought into Sonos. I know a dozen or so people that most anything Apple tells them to. They can't afford it. But they do. So, while they never would be in the market for Sonos, they'll suddenly get HomePod in 2018 because it is Apple's take on the home smart speaker.

I believe they opened up Apple Music for third party integration. Sonos should be able to integrate it into their native control app to solve your issue?

I think people are unfairly calling this a Google Home for $350 when it's a Sonos that has Siri instead. But I also think the real trouble will come when 3rd parties start making speakers just as good with Google Assistant for much less. For instance when Anker starts shipping a Google Assistant speaker, or a huge JBL extreme, etc.

We will see what it looks like when it is released. But it seems like Apple has a lot of music-oriented software tech inside this thing that companies like Anker won't be able to replicate.

The EarPods are an apt corollary. They're very expensive wireless earbuds; there are far better options for less if all you care about is sound quality. But they're sold out everywhere. The reason is because of the W1 chip and its tight integration with the Apple ecosystem.

I doubt Apple is worried about Anker.

Apple doesn't really have to worry about anyone but I don't think the EarPods compare to this. There is nothing like them in the market. Sure there are wireless ear buds but the battery life of them is crazy.

Speakers on the other hand are mostly "cheap" and anyone can make a decent speaker. JBL has some of the best sounding bluetooth speakers that just need an Assistant to compete. They even have the same full room modes where you can pair them all together. Hell a $30 chromecast audio can sync a bunch together and you can plug them into a $1000 bose speaker.

I just think Apple priced this really high because they wanted to compete with Sonos, and that's fair, but most people will be comparing it to Google Home and the likes who will pass. Will it be another iPod HiFi?

Wonder if Apple is making a conscious choice to market this as a speaker vs. a Home Assistant. A speaker seems far less creepy to the commoner (no ads, supposedly not listening to every command you request, etc.) and is something everyone can already understand the functionality of. With the nice processor, they clearly are thinking about this as something more than just a speaker that they can upgrade in the future.

This is an interesting point. I had the MacRumors live thread up in a tab as the keynote was going on and when I read about the speaker I thought briefly about purchasing it someday. On the other hand, my initial reactions to Amazon and Google's various offerings has been very negative.

I don't think I'll end up with any of them anytime soon, but the difference in reaction was profound.

I found it interesting that their nod to privacy wasn't "we'll do all the processing locally", but rather "we won't link this to your account when we send it up to the cloud".

Which is sort of weird, right? Are they doing voice recognition and language understanding in the cloud, then sending actions back to the speaker for local execution of things that require actions to be taken, eg setting reminders & liking songs?

I guess this is how they try and get themselves out of the corner they've painted themselves into with privacy.

they do this with siri on iphone. there is no reason to believe that they would do local processing on home pod

Fine, but do you find this to be a compelling privacy story?

To me it seems like Apple's "commitment to privacy" is running up against some technical realities and isn't much more than marketing fluff.

Without Spotify support the HomePod is a non-starter (for me at least). Here's hoping for BT speaker mode.

Just like Amazon, they'll probably learn that soon enough.

The two options are Apple integrate Spotify Connect, or Spotify integrate AirPlay 2.0. I don't have much faith in either option happening.

Bluetooth wouldn't be good enough.

Spotify does support Airplay. The thing is that still uses your phone as the source, and a whole lot more battery, while Spotify Connect hands over the playback to the target device itself. Most important in this case would be Siri integration, to this date it doesn't even let you open a song in spotify :\

Exactly, it's effectively a WiFi version of Bluetooth. Although I'm guessing notification sounds wouldn't be broadcast over AirPlay?

I think they made the wrong product. This is positioned as a Sonos killer.

What I hoped to see was a integrated home assistant, this is a really nice speaker no one is going to integrate with. Unfortunately whatever ecosystem people buy into for home assistant is probably going to tie them to that ecosystem for a long time, google and amazon are getting off to a early start that may be hard for apple to catch up to.

I really wanted to see any one of the following today:

The HomePod we saw, but showing off some slick home integrations (and audio out! - those integrations seemed like an after thought)

A Complimentary apple tv experience. Either new hardware that also had a speaker or some helper hardware (think more expensive echo dot)

A possible answer to the amazon show (an input in to the apple tv making it a video gateway - ie last thing before your tv) which allows on screen overlay (ie: siri show me traffic right now and have it pop up, siri is my wife at work still (shows location)?, siri web search for better HomePod)

None of those happened and anyone of those ideas would be a great start breaking me away from amazon/echo.

No kidding, but my first thought when I saw the photo was "how am I going to stop my cats treating it as a scratching post"

I really hope they'll enable other music providers as well. Or at least a bluetooth speaker mode.

I'd say its possible you could see other providers, I'd expect to see Airplay and not bluetooth from this.

It supports Airplay 2, so you can stream music from other devices that you own to it... so even if there is no native support for Spotify, you can still use as an Airplay 2 speaker.

$349 for a home speaker? For comparison, Google Home is $129 and Amazon Echo is $179.

And the Echo Dot is $49, frequently on sale for $39. Plus you get to choose your own speakers that will definitely sound better than the HomePod.

Interesting they are trying to sell this for music enthusiasts. It'll only appeal to Apple enthusiasts.

"will definitely sound better than the HomePod" -- hard to make that statement without actually hearing it. The technology behind it looks promising.

Audio enthusiasts tend to already own speakers presumably changing speakers unless its truly phenomenal may not be a feature valuable to audio enthusiasts.

I think that's just marketing bait trying to get to amateurs' ego for them to become self declared audio enthusiasts.

Have you even heard the speaker yet? Pretty hard to critique the audio quality if you haven't heard the audio quality.

The Echo Dot is not really usable on its own as a device to play music because of the poor audio quality. You can have a conversation with Alexa, but that's about it.

Yeah, you can pair an Echo Dot with a nice speaker like a Sonos Play 5, it'll probably sound even better.

Of course, at that point you're paying $549 instead of $349, so that's not really the same thing at all.

Supposedly it is a very good speaker, so if you compare it to Sonus Play3 or Play5 it is within that range.

I can't imagine this little HomePod scan touch the Play-5 2nd Gen, which is a extraordinary speaker.

We'll see. I'm expecting it to be Play-3 category. There isn't much to separate the Play-1 and Play-3 IMO. Play-5 is a different thing altogether.

This is competing against Sonos and similar audio-focused speakers, at least in my mind. Plus, it's not subsidized by advertising.

Google home is on discount now for $109

My Naim mu-so single speaker was over $1300 and I don't regret the purchase. I also have a Google Home (got it at IO this year) and I can tell you it sounds pretty awful - way too much bass at any volume level. So whether HomePod is worth the price or not really depends on how good it sounds.

You can tell the Home to play things on your high-end speaker, though. Or on both for multi-room.

I thought so too, but it turns out mu-so only supports AirPlay, but not also Google Cast, even though it supports Spotify Connect and Tidal. I suspect it might have something to do with it also being sold in Apple stores (pure speculation).

Sonos it seems also doesn't have support for Cast. Not really an issue since I don't have any of their speakers; but they are the most popular brand, so it's going to be an issue for a lot of people expecting to be able to stream to them from a Google Home device.

Just plug a Chromecast Audio into it.

You can always get a Chromecast Audio; I wonder if high-end speaker manufacturers are just not bothering since users can fix it themselves for $35.

You could always plug a chromecast audio into it.

You probably know that Naim is in a whole different category - this isn't a speaker for people that know Naim, Dali, KEF and Co. It's for potential Sonos or Bose buyers.

It's an unfortunate trend in my opinion, but it's all about small wireless speakers these days. They sound good enough...for their size, but are nowhere close to being comparable to real speakers. Hell, if this was about sound quality you'd be a lot better off with a pair entry level studio monitors (Yamaha, JBL) or budget bookshelf speakers (Elac, Dali Zensor, ...) and probably have money left.

For comparison with other multiroom network speakers, a Sonos Play:3 is $299. A Play:1 is $199. So depending on how much oomph the HomePod (god. terrible name) has, it may be reasonable: $299+129 = $428

Google Home is also a multiroom speaker. It also works with Chromecast Audio, Vizio sound bars, etc.

How about the privacy differences? They made a big deal about the privacy features of HomePod. That's significant.

What are the privacy advantages of HomePod vs Google/Amazon?

Compared to what? Sonos doesn't have any microphones so by definition this cannot be more private.

So what happens to the "world's first HomePod"?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keecker/keecker-the-wor...

Looks like it just started production in December, too...

The specs don't include the most important one for speakers: frequency response. Strange omission.

I'm thinking it's because there's so much active equalization happening that it becomes meaningless.

I'm sure it will end up being reasonably flat from 120Hz to 15kHz or so, but outside that range, the physical characteristics of the drivers take on primary importance.

Tactical omission. It wouldn't show any differentiation (not that there's much in the product overall).

Really curious how the sound quality optimizations based on room acoustics work.

I'd imagine it's a lot of signal processing and such, but I'm curious how they quantified optimizations and tested to see that it actually enhanced the audio based on room acoustics.

Companies look like Dirac and Audyssey do this, but require you to move a microphone around a room while a test signal plays (from speakers that are usually spaced throughout a room). The big mystery to me would be how effective such room processing can be, when you're limited to measuring from the point where the sound is generated. (My personal experience would say not very. It'd make more sense to me if the user maybe held up their iPhone as a microphone and the system calibrated itself as they moved throughout the listening space.

Sonos also does auto tuning now. The speaker plays a test tone as you walk around the room with an iOS or Android device with the Sonos app listening.

It seems strange to throw so much processing power at making it an "active" technology. Traditionally you had a professional sound engineer tune your audio system for your room. The sound drivers on my computer have that same functionality built in, I just have to setup the mic and run the wizard. These speakers have to plug into the wall, so I doubt they are going to move around very often...

The HomePod is $349. Amazon frequently has the Echo and Echo Dot on sale. For the same price as the HomePod you can buy two full sized Echos and a Dot. For me, Alexa has been exponentially more reliable than Siri. I do not understand this pricing at all.

Have you looked into the price of a Sonos speaker? Good speakers cost money, frequently a lot more than $500.

This for people who care about sound quality.

I am looking at this from more of the Home Assistant route than the Sonos route. I can see a higher price if that is the case. As a counter to that, though, why not just buy a good speaker and plug in an Echo Dot?

To be fair, I don't really listen to music and tend to listen to Podcasts or Audiobooks 99% of the time. I also have below average hearing / am tone deaf, so speaker quality is a very binary thing for me (can I understand the words and is it loud enough?). For my use case, I think the Echo speaker is wonderful.

So Schiller taunting Amazon and Google about their then-lack of screens was just a pump fake?

I have a Jambox and I hate the thing. I only ever want to stream audio to it from one device, and you wouldn't believe how difficult that can be at times.

But, I dunno if I can stomach $350 for its replacement, even if it is smarter.

As far as I remember, that's the first time I saw Apple introducing a brand new product by saying it's cheaper than equivalent competitors. I guess they had so little else to say...

How does it deal with stereo mixes? In the keynote they casually mentioned that you might want to get two, but I couldn't tell if it was a joke or not.

Any commercially recorded stereo music will work well in mono: many mix engineers do most of their work in mono and even those that don't will regularly check that it still sounds good in mono.

A surprising amount of listening is mono so it's taken really seriously: kitchen radios, canned music in restaurants, bluetooth speaker pill things (like the homepod).

What I want to know is: can the HomePod stream music directly from the internet like the Sonos or even the Chromecast audio? I mean, it would be quite stupid to have this thing requiring a iDevice/Mac to stream audio.

Another music playback device and still no Continuity support for Apple Music.

But December?

5 months is long enough for Amazon to "reverse engineer" the tweeter design and launch version 2. And that's assuming they haven't been working on it already.

Surprised they mentioned Sonos, but no talk of multi-room audio??

it is on the page:

"Combine two in one room.

Put another HomePod in the same room, and the two automatically detect and balance each other — for sound that’s even more lifelike.

AirPlay 2.

Add HomePod to more rooms. When you add HomePod to multiple rooms, the speakers communicate with each other through AirPlay 2 — so you can play your music all around the house. You can also control any other AirPlay 2‑compatible speakers."

They discussed multi-room audio during iOS Homekit updates and Airplay-2. The HomePod is listed as supporting Airplay-2 at bottom of page. Maybe I missed it, but there was less about multi-zone and grouping different speakers to different zones.

Typical, next year for Canada.... Sill waiting for the TV app.

And News. Surely they could do the News app for Canada.

I'd buy it if you could also use it as a (really good sounding) speakerphone for conference calls when working from home.

Google Home is your best bet at this point

Thanks, I had seen that. I have to rule it out though because I'm really not comfortable with the apparent privacy tradeoff.

This is a beautiful device. I think it will pair much more nicely with our iDevices than the Echo Dots do while sounding way better. Siri actually works quite well when it can hear you really clearly, so I'm assuming that these will work well two.

Assuming the reviews are good, I'll probably get two of these.

Apple is slowly becoming pre Steve Jobs delving into miscellaneous hardware devices and losing focus.

it's a luxury goods company and it admitted it when it renamed from apple computer to just apple. it all makes perfect sense from that perspective.

Apple is nothing like pre-Jobs Apple today. Today, they have the money and manpower to have many focuses and do very well at them. The power of Apple is in their ecosystem, and the wider reaching that ecosystem becomes, the larger and more unmovable they will become.

This isn't Apple's first speaker, and the last one was announced by Jobs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Hi-Fi

Looks like they re-purposed the old mac pro case.

http://imgur.com/D01e6MN

https://www.apple.com/homepod/

It's a completely different size.

Besides both being a rounded cylinder, they look nothing alike.

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