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Comment by ratsimihah | Hacker News Reader

What’s innovative about this? I feel like I’m reading an Amazon Alexa or Google Home ad.

Apple has been pretty up-front from the start that they don't want to make the best possible home assistant, they want to make a really incredible speaker that has home assistant stuff built-in.

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.

> they want to make a really incredible speaker

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.

What on earth does power have to do with audio quality?

I think you've answered your own question: who would know to buy 3 separate products, glue them together, make it work, as opposed to buying 1 product from apple, that works right out of the box?

Well, if you can't be arsed to do some research, follow instructions and combine N things to make something really good, and think it's better to buy ready-made things, you can stick to eating microwave meals while I'm having slow roast tenderloin with butternut squash and sweet potato mash. But don't try and tell me yours is better.

RMS dscribes ‘loudness’, not quality.

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.

You're not the target audience, obviously. Although you and I realize that what you're talking about is simple to do, for us ... it's not as simple for many other people.

So the idea of just having a single device that automatically integrates with your phone, etc. is appealing to many people.

Sure, I get that convenience is a big seller. But then it's "a really convenient speaker", not "a really incredible speaker".

I’m interested in one as a new speaker. I don’t expect I’ll enable Siri. I want to use it as an AirPlay target.

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.

Although presumably with Airplay 2 you would still need your phone to play the music from, where with Sonos, once it was playing, you wouldn't need your phone as the speakers themselves would have the music. Though that might not be useful for your use-case.

We don't know for certain yet, but the AppleTV will opt to play music from iCloud as opposed to streaming from the AirPlay device if possible. You'd hope this functionality has been extended to the HomePod.

My wife has listened to a lot more music this last week now that she can just say "Alexa, play some ozzy osbourne" or whatever. We've had an Airplay system forever. Never used.

Out of curiosity, why not Google Cast ==> Google Home or Chromecast Audio?

I avoid anything with proprietary protocols, mostly out of principle, but also as I occasionally write a Python script to control these things. I wrote a script to use a €30 Chromecast Audio as an alarm clock, for example. It uses the DLNA standard.

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.

> but the Airplay2 support will be baked into the OS so I don’t need to use a clunky 3rd party app

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.

Apple typically isn't the most innovative. People just feel that way about them because in the past they get things right. This will probably be like Apple Watch where its true value is subtle and only apparent once you own a bunch of other Apple stuff and use them in conjunction with one another. In this specific case since Amazon and Google are so far ahead & haven't stumbled, Apple's only real advantage now is privacy; it currently has no incentive to monetize your data.

> Apple's only real advantage now is privacy

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.

In effect Jobs (or maybe the unnamed middle manager to managed to convince him it was a good idea) managed to make the fruit logo a status symbol, in large part thanks to allowing the iPod and iTunes to work on Windows...

Yeah I see Apple more as primarily a fashion company that integrates a lot of tech into their products; not far from say Rolex, with the main differientator being that Apple keeps updating their technology stack.

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.

Never underestimate the power of hype.

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...

Hopefully without mining and selling user data. This might be the real killer feature.

I don’t think it’s particularly intended to be innovative. The thing is, the existing options aren’t that great either for various reasons. This might be pretty good if you are in the apple ecosystem.

It's “innovative” because it serves people who are already fully invested in the Apple ecosystem, rather than either the Google or Amazon ecosystem, or not being deeply attached to many of those ecosystems.

I don't know that it's particularly innovative, but it is nice having the option.

Personally, I use Apple Music and am looking to do more with HomeKit, so it adds a few things there.

Beamforming audio?

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