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Apple HomePod

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”An Apple-designed A8 chip powers the most complex audio innovations in HomePod. Like real-time modeling of the woofer mechanics. Buffering that’s even faster than real time.”

Faster than real-time. That IS fast!

Well, that's actually true, it can buffer the entire song and more. So it's faster than real time.

Which is not a great achievemnt with audio over WiFi really.

Were it only real-time, could you even call that buffering?

Sure. Load 10 seconds, start playing and then always have a buffer of exactly 10 seconds in memory.

But what does it have to do with the powerful cheap? Buffering is not very useful if it's slower than real time, and all that's needed for it is a connection and some memory.

"real-time modeling of the woofer mechanics" reminds me of those Philips Motional Feedback speakers [2] my parents bought in the late '70s [2]. Instead of digital "real-time modeling" they used an analog feedback loop to control and correct woofer cone movement. These were self-contained active speaker cabinets containing a 35W (later also available in 75W) amplifier and two or three speakers with the feedback mechanism controlling the woofer.

They did not have wifi or an always-on microphone, true, but the former is easily remedied (use a Raspberry Pi Zero or something similar) while the latter is more of an advantage than a disadvantage.

[1] http://www.extra.research.philips.com/hera/people/aarts/_Phi...

[2] http://hifipig.com/philips-motional-feedback-speakers/

Apple's approach goes a fair bit beyond simple servo control (which only tends to work well for truly low-frequency content.

While Apple hasn't disclosed much about the particular details, it's bound to be in the same vein as Klippel's work, which doesn't use feedback as much as it monitors a few states as input to a feed-forward error-correcting mechanism. The net result is that distortion is lower, and it's much less limited with regards to the frequency range you can support.

[1] http://www.audioxpress.com/article/louder-faithful-and-consi...

[2] https://www.klippel.de/fileadmin/_migrated/content_uploads/A...

I do not want an always on microphone in my house. And for sure I do not want one that is connected to the internet.

I don't either. But if the choice is between Amazon, Google, and Apple.. I am going Apple.

No, the choice is between having and not having one.

We've turned off all of the "assistants" in our home - in our phones, laptops, etc. We find they provide nothing of real value, and the invasion of privacy is not acceptable.

Well, you turned off all the obvious always-on listening devices. In reality any phone can be listening all the time without you knowledge. As to whether they are actually listening is another question, accusations on the subject fly [1] and [2] get rebutted [3] all the time [4] but it is hard to prove or disprove either thesis.

On the subject of the usability of these 'assistants' I mostly do agree except for the possibility to use voice commands which can sometimes be useful. Fortunately that option does not need an always-on internet connection to some faraway mothership and is easy to implement in free software, e.g. [5].

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/10/30/facebook-li...

[2] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41802282

[3] https://lifehacker.com/facebook-isn-t-recording-your-convers...

[4] https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch?query=facebook+phone+li...

[5] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-m...

I don't plan on buying one either. It was more of if had to trust the three companies I would trust Apple more.

Apple isn't in the business of giving me adverts for soap if I tell my roommate it is their turn to get more Irish Spring.

There’s always open source: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-m...

"Buffering that’s even faster than real time."

What? Buffering AT real time isn't buffering at all. Storing data faster than real time is the definition of buffering, no? I can't make sense of that statement.

Early internet movie players typically buffered the video stream at whatever speed was available until the software was reasonably sure it would be able to play the full (where ‘full’ at the time typically was less than a minute) video without stuttering.

Those old enough probably remember RealPlayer, which was famous for buffering at slower than, often a lot slower than real time.

I think modern video players still take the same approach, but if bandwidth is high enough, they need very little time before they start playing.

Can someone shed some light on why Apple would release this with only Apple Music as a music source?

Not being able to play local mp3’s Or even CD’s ripped through iTunes is a deal breaker for me.

Does it not play MP3s? Under Tech Specs it says for audio formats:

"HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV, and FLAC"

You can use itunes and send the music to the speaker, right?

Using AirPlay. But as far as I understand from the media coverage, it does not support Home Sharing. So, you cannot say "Hey Siri, play me some King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard" and expect it to be played from your computer.

Not having to go to your computer and enabling AirPlay and selecting an album is kind of the point of a home assistant ;).

Because Apple, Amazon, et all know when all is done, they will be media companies, not utility providers.

Amazon allows Alexa integration with other music providers.

Yes, but not always at launch. The ability to play on multiple Echos at once didn't support for Spotify for the longest time.

You can stream music from any provider using your phone, but Apple mostly does not allow third party integration with Siri aside from a few preset commands that apps can register to implement. So using the Siri voice commands you can only control Apple Music, because that's all Apple chose to implement. I think they probably will add support for third party music players through Siri in the future, but Apple is probably not unhappy to give users another reason to choose Apple Music.

Presumably there would have to be some kind of Spotify "app" running on the HomePod, to access Spotify without a phone, but there is no SDK for that yet

It's amazing how so many people have been misled to believe that HomePod is limited to Apple Music, which is not true. I think it's both a failure on Apple's marketing part, and our own fears that Apple can deliberately lock us in to their ecosystem. Not entirely unbelievable unfortunately, but in case of HomePod it's just not true.

Speaker marketing failure, or Apple Music marketing success?

If you want to take advantage of the "smart" part of HomePod you are locked into Apple Music. Otherwise, it's just another Airplay speaker.

Because they can add functionality over time through software updates. This is their MVP.

So they make money off you buying Apple Music, too...

Since they advertise this is made for music and comes with a woofer and 7 tweeters, it would be useful if the specs offered some details like frequency response, harmonic distortion, sensitivity and power usage.

People will be listening lossy crap from Apple Music anyways. Why bother with such technicalities?

Yeah I'll stick with Sonos, thanks. We have one at work, and the only complaint I have is the terrible taste in music of my colleagues :-)

... and the fact that you can only use the Sonos app with it.

Or Spotify.

Proving that yet again Apple is held by a different standard to everyone else

They are going to add AirPlay 2 support once it is available:

https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/4/16418944/sonos-airplay-2-...

(AFAIK AirPlay 1 requires dedicated hardware support.)

Google Play Music and Spotify both work with Sonos, without needing the awful Sonos app.

(I think you need the Sonos app installed, but, you don't need to use it)

Don't you need Spotify Premium?

What is the 2017 cliche? : "We completely reimagined" for the things that are obviously not so.

There’s no discussion here about the device as a voice assistant.

While I’m sure the audio quality is excellent, I think I’d rather use cheap Amazon or Google devices to build a home automation system, for example. The cost of a multi room assistant is too high with the HomePod.

People are also starting to work on open source solutions:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-m...

In the delay between announcement and release, and the lack of advertised features at launch (airplay 2) I have completely lost interest.

Apple need to get back to releasing things soon after announcement.

> Create stereo sound with a second HomePod.

That seems really lazy [edit: making you buy a whole second thing instead of just a speaker]. What will they do next? Sell iMacs instead of external monitors?

Sound is literally not stereo unless there are two or more speakers...

Yes, so maybe they could have offered a slave speaker instead of letting you buy the whole thing again?

The other smart speakers didn't even have multi-speaker support from the outset, much less slaves.

Plus slaves in the same room don't really make much sense. I want my sound to be balanced. It's not really going to balance well if I have a tiny speaker on one side of the room and a big one on the other.

The HomePod already has eight speakers inside.

The HomePod does channel differentiation with one device, but for true wide stereo you need two.

Question: Is there a "smart device" in existence which can function well without requiring a remote agent on the backend who watches you? Where do I find such a thing?

The HomePod is probably the closest you’ll get. Voice recognition for the trigger word happens on device, and requests are anonymized using differential privacy. iMore goes into more detail. Apple has no use for watching you, so they don’t. Amazon wants your shopping habits, Google wants anything they can use in advertising.

I'm quite sure a standard 2.1 setup will get you better sound than this at a fraction of the price.

I also don't want my speaker to "run my smart home" or anything like that.

To further my point (in case of additional downvoting):

You can get a quality 200W subwoofer for $150. Pair that Mackie or JBL studio monitors for another $150.

One homepod costs $349. And you need TWO for stereoscopic sound.

Its just another vanity item, much as all Apple products of late - they add no real value.

I just am not impressed by this. Maybe I need to hear it in action?

> Available starting 2.9

What the hell is this? After some thinking I realised it must be a date, 2018-02-09, but this is not clear. Do they think it looks cool or something?

I think that’s more standard in the US, but sure looks weird to me.

Its a date? What else would follow after the words "Available starting", month is first since it's US locale. Whats so confusing about it.

That it's not obvious. It's not a standard format and a lot of people will be slightly confused. It's understandable if you think about it but still not something everyone will get at first glance. Also the fact that it's localised to US only but both digits could be a day or a month will be even more confusing.

Just adding a .18 or even better making it 2.09.18 would have made things easier and I can't believe that it would have hurt the page design that hard.

Or just, you know, February 9.

I thought the US used slash.

I mean it's usually 9/11, not 9.11.

Slash is for official forms, period is pretty common stylistically

Just what I thought. It's really annoying. Or maybe some hint of sorts, who knows ;)

Agreed, that looks very weird for an non-US.

Took courage to format it that way.

Indeed; if you go to the UK-specific site, https://ssl.apple.com/uk/homepod/, it is formatted as "09.02".

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