HomePod arrives February 9, available to order this Friday
apple.com
apple.com
But honestly, the main obstacle for me is Apple's lack of 3rd-party integration. For example, it appears that Siri can't be used to access Spotify. With Alexa, I can scope music requests with "Alexa, play some jazz from Spotify (as opposed to Amazon Music)". I can even configure Alexa to use Spotify by default -- e.g. prioritized over Amazon's own offerings.
I've a pretty large iTunes library from back in the day but I've completely stopped buying from iTunes (and haven't bothered to check out Music) because of lack of interoperability.
However, in favor of a certain music service:
- with iCloud Music Library, you can play all of your mp3 files on any device, Spotify-style;
- if you purchase an album from iTunes, you own it forever; this is not true of Spotify-streamable music. I've had some of my favorite albums disappear from Spotify, for example.
Long-term, iTunes, Apple Music, and iCloud Music Library seem like a better solution because they allow you to retain actual ownership/control of your own music collection, which helps a lot.
No one is buying $350 home assistants, but if it’s a really high quality speaker (we’ll see) then the price is reasonable.
The marketing around it is really weird and confused. At this point I wonder what Apple even thinks it is.
Personally I'm really hoping to see them expand Siri over the coming year(s), especially given how...dumb...she is right now - expanding what can be done with SiriKit and allowing additional Siri functionality to be installed directly on the HomeKit would make my mind up on buying one easy (I'll still probably get one for a nice speaker to play music with, though).
Since getting an Echo, I notice my wife constantly changing the temperature on the Nest because, well, it's so easy to bark out a command when you don't want to get up or don't have your phone handy.
Prior to getting an echo, I only used my Wemo switches for scheduling lights to come on and off when we were away. I use voice commands for turning groups on and off all the time now. Since it's dark when I take out the dogs in the a.m., I use a "good morning" routine that turns on my downstairs lights and tells me the outside temperature so I know which coat to wear. I'm surprised at how dependent I'm becoming on Alexa for otherwise mundane stuff.
Having said all of that, I guess I made the choice to value convenience/functionality over privacy. I see the Amazon/Google assistants as "Big Brother with benefits".
It's interesting that I had a similar experience with the AirPods I got as a gift. I would never have bought them myself, but now that I have them I keep discovering ways in which they solve a 'problem', however trivial, that I had in the past with wired earbuds/headphones, or offer a new use-case. I often find myself having one of the earbuds in throughout the day, and I wasn't too much of a headphone-user to begin with.
If they'd break, I'd probably buy new ones immediately, despite the price.
(Well, I'd research the possibility of cheaper bluetooth earbuds first)
All that said, I wonder what it would offer an elderly person. If my Grandma were still alive I'd be very tempted to rewire all her light switches to be wi-fi enabled and set them up with a Google Home/Alexa. I can see it being a huge, huge benefit to the old and frail.
It's a big shift in technology, but since it is voice interactive, rather than computer/smart phone, I think it does provide an ease of use for older people who might not be as technology savvy.
SNL did a great skit on this … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvT_gqs5ETk
My personal feeling about home assistants is that they aren't supposed to be "meaningful", at least not in any significant way. I recently bought a Google Home Mini and I only use it occasionally, but when I do it's very supplementary. Example being that I've been re-reading the Harry Potter books and I've come across British terms I didn't recognize, so I just ask the Mini what the term means and when it works (80% of the time, I'd say) it's pretty useful as a utility.
But I'm not going out of my way to use it in such a way that it replaces something significant in my life.
1) To work with only the tracks I have downloaded in my iTunes library. Currently I have to use a 3rd party music player because the stock music player won't respect my wishes in this regard.
2) To be able to turn Siri off
3) To sync with an existing audio system, so that I can play music through my home audio system in my living room, and HomePods in my bedroom and bathroom
4) To avoid the weird situation where latency causes music to not sound synced, so that if I'm listening in one room, I'm not hearing music from the other room with a half-second delay.
I am hopeful on all counts except for the first one. Apple seems dead set on forcing their idea of music enjoyment onto me. Then again, perhaps the behavior forcing me onto a third party player is/was just a bug.
I'd have to move my music off of my iPhone or maintain two music libraries. Neither are more acceptable than the status quo.
Setting Music on my phone to only play downloaded music worked... until it didn't. Suddenly getting a gap between songs (while one was downloading) and then hearing a song that I took off my library 4 years ago was jarring enough and it happened frequently enough that I couldn't find an alternative player fast enough.
Apple doesn't understand just how central music is to my life. It used to, but I think they got so caught up in chasing the gold pot at the end subscription music rainbow that they let what made them so huge in the first place go straight into the shitter.
Overnight, they went from the only company that gave a damn, to the only company that didn't. And it happened right after Apple Music.
so 1) (iTunes != Apple Music) + 2) don't really make sense
Plus so much good music never made it to itunes.
Also sometimes it just doesn't want to switch and I'll have to do it manually.
Interesting that a key feature that the competition already has won’t be shipping at launch. I wonder if this is related to the Homepod’s previous delays.
As I understand it, Sonos can do some of these things because their audio is transmitted over a proprietary wireless connection, so it's not competing with Internet traffic. I use AirPlay today over ordinary home wi-fi, and it's awfully unreliable — stutters all the time, sometimes doesn't play, long pause before audio will start, etc. — and larger buffers would certainly help here.
There’s about a 2-3 second buffer with current AirPlay. It warns you of this when use use the a GarageBand app.
Try enabling IGMP snooping on your router and see if that helps.
Personally, I use Apple Music and am looking to do more with HomeKit, so it adds a few things there.
I was previously considering a Sonos, but the Airplay2 support will be baked into the OS so I don’t need to use a clunky 3rd party app.
It's connected to my existing nice hifi and speakers. I have a choice of clunky 3rd party apps, and some not-so-clunky.
It's possible the HomePod's clever design is as good as they claim, but I'd guess the same money spent on normal hifi speakers will give better sound.
Do not expect everything smooth sailing with Apple software. Currently when I AirPlay video to AppleTV, I can not use the remote controller to pause and play as there will be no sound. I suspect one reason for the HomePod delay is due to bugs.
Whether the "incredible speaker" part is true remains to be seen since the thing hasn't released yet but you can look at a lot of the features and they're very music-focused.
It's more competing with a Sonos than it is with an Alexa in my mind, the Siri stuff is just lagniappe.
Incredible by what standards? It's not even stereo. Nowhere does it mention perhaps the most important metric for audio quality, namely RMS audio power output. The tiny size alone pretty much guarantees that the amplifier will suck.
I'm very confident that e.g. a combination of Klipsch R-15M speakers, Yamaha R-S202 amplifier and a Chromecast Audio will knock its socks off. And that's a setup which you can order on Amazon today, it costs exactly the same, and it can do perfect multi-room out of the box.
The current breed of class D amps are shockingly small and and have pretty decent audio specs(thd, rms, etc). Unless you are expecting a 50lb analogue >500w audiophile quality amp, I’m not why you would assume the size == low quality.
So the idea of just having a single device that automatically integrates with your phone, etc. is appealing to many people.
Apple's main real advantage is lots of the high-disposable-income market is heavily invested in their ecosystem. The big ecosystems are real competitors, but the individual offerings within them are rarely direct competitors because the utility of the individual offerings depends on degree of pre-existing investment in the ecosystem.
For this reason, Apple will probably be one of the few western 'tech' companies who will most likely always have a foothold in places like China.
Apple has had the MSMs attention for so long it is silly. I have seen articles about Apple products in places that normally could not care less to cover consumer electronics or computers.
Basic thing is that Apple has long been the go to computer for doing media production, and thus the people writing for MSM is more likely to notice Apple news than other tech news because it affects them directly. And thanks to the typical fan myopia, if it affects them it affects the world...
Too late and too little by Apple, they missed this boat. Cortana seems pretty fun on the surface but is nowhere to be seen in this AI race. Guess Microsoft got their strategy wrong yet again.
Google and Amazon could project a 3D hologram of the band as the song plays, and I still wouldn't let one of those things in my house. From my POV, it boils down to two camps: "I'll trade some privacy (for arbitrary and ever-changing values of "privacy") for better sound" vs. "I'll listen to a tinny 1" speaker as long as it isn't spying on me". You sound like you're in the former, myself in the latter.
Besides, you don't know if the competition sounds better or not, at least not until February 9th.
Too late and too little by Apple, they missed this boat.
In an age where "no wireless, less space than a nomad, lame" is a meme, I'm surprised you'd let that one slip. OTOH, even someone like myself whose only debate is "buy two, or try just the one out first?" has to allow that there's yet no guarantee that this isn't iPod Hi-Fi 2.0.
Once someone has a couple of Amazon Echos, for example, why would they add a Google Home or Apple HomePod? I don't think anyone wants to have to configure several devices to have to do the same things (turn lights on/off, etc.)
> HomePod can also be used as a speakerphone with iPhone for crisp and clear audio quality.
I hope this means I can play anything from my iPhone like car because that’s a dealbreaker if I can’t Spotify or podcasts.
That being said, I hope there is a way to test HomePod live at Apple store. I don’t want to spend a couple hundred dollars for something turns out to be bad. My Sonos was a gift from my company so I didn’t have to worry about it (fwiw... not realky important, but I work for a music company, my boss owns two, and he said it was :) so I guess I should believe him right?)
1) Full voice coverage (I shouldn't have to redirect my voice or scream for it to hear me in any room).
2) Enough devices that talk to it so that it is habit-forming to use it for lights/tv/etc
I can see the HomePod doing 2 as that's more about what you have aside from the HomePod but I'm worried about #1 due to the price tag.
If I have a 3 bedroom house and a large enough Kitchen/Living Room we are talking about 5 devices. For HomePod that is $1,750. For ALL Echo's it's $500. If you were smart and did a mix of say 2 Echo's and the rest Dot's: $320 (At the $40/dot price point, I picked mine up at $30/ea). That is a HUGE price difference. The Dot's were so cheap that I stuck a few in bathrooms as well for even better coverage and it's awesome.
I'm not saying I will never buy a HomePod but for me: control > sound quality. And when price IS an issue you can't beat the Amazon ecosystem.
PS: Also writing skills and the like for Alexa is pretty easy from my experience
It will be interesting to see how the Homepod plays out. If it's successful, it almost certainly won't be because it out-features the competition. And they almost certainly haven't lost because they weren't first to market.
But this thing is expensive. Siri almost seems grafted on (they wouldn’t even let people try it at the announcement) to a speaker that was already in development.
I wonder if this will be the iPod HiFi 2.0. Sounds great, too expensive, no one cares.
I’m curious about it but have no real interest in it as a speaker or assistant.
Reviews should prove interesting.
I don't necessarily agree. I was shopping around for multi-room audio solutions, namely Sonos. I don't think the Homepod price is that out of whack compared to Sonos or Google Home Max. And this is coming from someone who generally finds Apple products way overpriced.
1) How big is that market?
and
2) It doesn’t do multi-room at launch
This all just feels odd to me. Like it slipped through a hole in Apple’s process.
2) In fairness, Amazon Echo did not do multi-room at launch either. I tend to think Apple fans won't have a problem waiting for that feature update. I'm not an Apple fan myself any more, but in general, when they do a feature, they do it right.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Hi-Fi iPod Hi-Fi - Wikipedia
More like the most marketed one. I recall reporters going out and asking teens at the mall about their media players. And most could not name the company behind it but new they had to have the one with the fruit logo because that was the "fashionable" one to have.
Similarly, check the cases and covers for phones etc. The only ones with a big ass window on the back to show off the logo is the ones meant for iphones.
The fruit has long since become a fashion brand.
Although the HomePod has only one woofer inside while Google Home Max has two and can create a stereo image.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Hi-Fi iPod Hi-Fi - Wikipedia
I have a Sonos setup for my home and I absolutely love it. The sound quality is great, and the Play:1 speakers are less than half the price of the HomePod.
Seriously though; there is little to no chance that this will not be another locked down device with which Apple will try to monetize your home to the fullest possible extent.
Microsoft was fined 561 million Euros for doing the same.
I don't think that's as big of an issue as others do, but it is still a restriction.
"The big competitors in the mobile-phone industry such as Nokia Oyj and Motorola Inc. won’t be whispering nervously into their clamshells over a new threat to their business….The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant."
Not that this speaker looks like a huge game changer, but coming out of the gate late is something Apple has proven adept at.
And Apple music sounds like garbage. I don't need a high-quality speaker to stream garbage.