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Comment by godzillabrennus | Hacker News Reader

I share the opinion of many that it's not a worthy contender in the market at this point. However, Apple released the iPhone without basic functions like copy and paste but focused hard on a user experience no one else had worked on to create the most valuable mobile phone product in history.

There is potential here for a high quality speaker like this to mature into a quality product.

Unfortunately for Apple though I'm not interested in helping fund that market for them. I will keep my Amazon Echo's in the home until I feel compelled to switch because they have leapfrogged the competition.

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The original iPhone made a point of doing three things well: being an iPod, being a phone, and being a mobile internet appliance. Basically everybody had a phone and an iPod at the time, the combination was enough to sell a lot of people. Having an excellent real browser and very good mail app certainly helped a lot. But I think the "third heat" effect there had a lot to do with the success of it.

The HomePod will not be saved by being the best at one of the two or three major functions of these things, when it is so absolutely sucky at the other two. I'm sure a cult following will develop around the audio quality. But this product is going to fail unless they address the elephant: Siri is worst-in-class on an iPhone, and it's apparently even more hampered on the HomePod. What are the "platform" effects you think are going to sell this, like the original iPhone had? What exactly could Apple do to enhance this, beyond the obvious one of getting Siri to work?

Apple TV is kind of in a similar boat. The sales numbers are not that great, the competition is stiff, and the refreshed Apple TV has continued to not get enough love to really address this. They just seem like they can't keep it together.

I got an Amazon Echo as a present a couple months ago. I haven't even bothered to unbox it. What can it really do, besides order stuff from Amazon for me? Play Amazon music? Not a subscriber. Turn off my lights? Nice party trick, but I live in a small apartment, not much use there. Look stuff up on Wikipedia?

It also supports spotify, pandora, etc.

For me Alexa is great for Home Automation (which while turning off the lights is a night party trick, it's pretty great to turn down the lights when you're already on the couch. Yes, 100% unneeded, but it is nice.), Cheap Sonos Style Music in Every Room sync'd, and yes, ordering stuff from Amazon. Again, totally unneeded, but for certain goods, I've found it nice to just say, "Alex, order me more blah" and it replies, "These that you recently ordered?" "Yep" "Ok. Done."

All of this isn't stuff you need, but hey, it's pretty rad nerd stuff.

I use my dot almost exclusively for music. Hook it up to a nice stereo system and it turns a dumb stereo system into a Spotify device that i can control with my voice or from my phone.

Same. I just have a nice little bluetooth speaker paired to it that I can move around my space whenever I like.

I agree with you.

Its most useful features so far have worked best in the bedroom.

Alexa, set my alarm for 7AM. Wake me up in 2 hours. what's the weather in X? What's my commute? Nightlight.

That's about it.

Play music (spotify, amazon music, pandora, etc), control any home automation you have (hue lights, etc), be a super easy hands-free kitchen timer ("Alexa, set a timer for 45 minutes"), answer basic information questions (forecast, store hours, unit conversions). If you have more than one, it can be an in-home intercom.

edit: I started this before you edited in your examples, so sorry for the overlap :-)

I find it useful for just three things:

1. Play music

2. Timers, especially when cooking

3. Turn lights and heating on and off. It's nice to be able to control them while in bed with just your voice.

Nothing I couldn't live without, but it adds convenience.

I get daily use from my two echos with these functions: set a timer for x minutes, remind me to x at y am/pm, set an alarm for y am/pm, connect to my phone (so I can play bluetooth music), what time is it (when I'm in bed at night; I prefer not to have a bright clock splitting the darkness). A lot of this stuff my phone can already do, but it's easier not having to always pull out my phone. I've never used it for ordering, amazon music, lights, or to ask it questions for its biased responses.

>> it's easier not having to always pull out my phone.

Not just that, but you don't have to hunt for apps and fiddle with UI. Asking Alexa to set the heat to 21.5 degrees is way faster than finding the closest mobile device, unlocking, launching the app and doing a bunch of taps.

While I'm missing a couple of skills in Canada (stupid region locks!), the smart home control has been fantastic for our household. We also find the shopping list helpful.

Hooking it up to my lights and playing music is nice, but honestly having a hands-free timer when cooking can't be beat.

So yes, a $40 timer. Still worth it.

You can write new skills very easily, or use IFTTT with it, so it can actually do pretty much anything.

> it's not a worthy contender in the market at this point

However I'm not aware there's anything else comparable on the market: 7 separate tweeters with 7 amplifiers in such a small unit -- which to me means it's much more capable in reducing distortions compared to anything it competes with. In short, I don't know there's any exact contender in the market.

The capability to control distortions by using the separate amplifiers and a fast CPU means that any reviewer who compares it with anything else while keeping it in the middle of the room is missing the point. This device is supposedly made to sound good when located on the place where the "audiophile" wouldn't put, that is, where "normal" people put the devices, not because they spend the energy to figure out what sounds best but because the convenience, existing furniture etc. Whoever can organize the whole room around the best sound doesn't have to buy anything small anyway.

I haven't heard this product but can't believe it could work in anything even in the same universe as "audiophile" speakers, or even less than average speakers.

Bouncing sounds around the room does not "control distortions". In fact it does the complete opposite. That's exactly why actual audiophiles spend thousands of dollars on room treatment to deaden reflections.

It's the same as those Atmos speakers that attempt to bounce the sound off the ceiling. It's impossible to do that without introducing a massive amount of distortion, also the frequency response of the bounced sound waves is completely screwed even if it works at all. It will also depend on the surface material and the angle of those surfaces, something the Homepod couldn't possibly know.

It's just a misunderstanding of the physics of sound to think this could work in anything close to an "audiophile" way.

Do you put a measurement microphone at the listening location to optimize for that location? Otherwise how could it possibly know where in the room the listener is to align those 7 bounced audiophile signals? That might be the only thing to possibly make this product not a complete joke.

I'd rather have a single reasonable speaker with a T-Amp plugged into a phone than what this must sound like. And that would cost maybe $100, if that.

A silly bound-to-sound-crap speaker locked into the Apple ecosystem, with microphones that can record your conversations in the living room... for $350!! I would literally never even consider buying this product.

Man, I feel more and more removed from the average consumer every day.

You are of course right that it can't "optimize for location" of the listener. But it can, at least theoretically, estimate the "environment acoustics" from its own standpoint and somehow adjust itself to it. I'm not claiming it does, it doesn't fit much to the Apple's concept of "it works as soon as you plug it in." So some honest review is still needed.

350 USD is expensive, but it "competes" with a lot of the small consumer products that have just one or two speakers, one amplifier and still cost, for example, in the range of 200 USD. Apple can of course easily double the price when competing with them.

It's simply a different market: a lot of people do want the small device that "just" works in the given (possibly small and with "wrong" configuration) room, even if making the room to be good for the sound is the best way.

> 350 USD is expensive, but it "competes" with a lot of the small consumer products that have just one or two speakers, one amplifier

What I'm saying is it just shows a lack of understanding of how sound works to think that more speakers/amps would ever sound better than less speakers/amps in a tiny box. Throwing more tiny speakers in there is always going to make it sound worse.

Bloody marketing. And they'll probably be successful with it too...

Seven speakers!! Did we say it has seven speakers?!! The HomePod Pro next year will have ten!!!

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