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HomePod Mini

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HomePod mini works with your iPhone for requests like hearing your messages or notes, so they are completed on device without revealing that information to Apple.

This is the big differentiating feature, along with the seamless integration within the rest of Apple's product line.

EDIT: HomePod does this too but it was not at a price point nor size that competed with other assistants.

Maybe that’s why my HomePod feels so slow?

The SoC in the Homepod is old. It's the Apple A8, which was used on iPhone 6 (2014).

The HomePod Mini uses Apple S5, which was in the Apple Watch 5 (2019)

Note that the S5 is essentially identical to the S4 chip.

It's not that bad of a CPU. It's powering my iPad Air 2 (A8X) which doesn't do too badly.

Remember when we were freaking out about the unprecedented performance of the A7, the first 64-bit mobile chip? And now it's in a speaker.

For real. Maybe, just maybe, a voice-controlled speaker doesn't need the latest cutting edge CPU.

I wasn't expecting new Homepod hardware until after they announce on-device Siri. That seems like the only thing that would warrant a better CPU.

It feels slower than my old Amazon Echo which is certainly using a crappier chip than the A8.

Doesn't seem slow to me. Mine responds quite quickly.

Do you have an Echo or Google Home for comparison?

I don't, but the wait time from when I ask my HomePod to do something and when it does it is fast enough for me that I don't much mind.

If I say "Hey Siri, turn on my lamp" it turns it on within a second or so of asking.

Maybe depends on country. iCloud is silly slow abroad. Takes 3 minutes to download 30 second video on a gig connection.

Yes, it's super slow abroad. Especially in the US.

Considering that the HomePod non-mini doesn’t do any on-device language processing, I don’t see a need for that much power.

Yea but who says that a watch chip from 2019 is faster than a phone SoC from 2014?

I don't even really use any other Apple products, and have never really been particularly comfortable with smart assistants, but I have to say that the steps that they've taken here with E2E, non-AppleID-tied identifiers, on-device computation, and of course the really good price point have got me seriously considering a purchase from them for the first time in a long time.

For my family members that already have Apple products for their tablet, phone, etc., but have either Amazon Echo or Google Home smart assistants, I'm definitely looking that these as an option for holiday presents.

> non-AppleID-tied identifiers

One thing I've learned is the identity is absolutely everything in (mass) surveillance.

The more places we can disconnect or obscure this as end users (or ideally consumers) the better.

I'm pretty deep into the Apple ecosystem (iPhone, Watch, iPad, MBP), but when it comes to smart speakers, I've always used a combination of Echo and Alexa-compatible Sonos devices.

The Alexa devices have always bothered me. Not just because of the baseline privacy concerns, but because it seems so damn easy to activate the trigger word on accident. The absolute worst part being a false positive activation of my Sonos system while watching a movie/show. When this happens (and it happens a lot), the audio volume of the show is lowered significantly to allow Alexa to hear the rest of the command.

Pause the show, wait til "she" stops listening, rewind the show very slightly because I missed whatever was just said due to the volume shift, resume the video, instantly pause again at the moment she was originally triggered until she stops listening, resume the show, this time without having to rewind since I paused soon enough not to miss any dialog.

Maddening.

And the fact that all of these false positives get sent straight to Amazon doesn't make me feel great.

I didn't need a HomePod for its audio quality since I already have great quality with the Sonos system, and couldn't justify the original HomePod's price as a command/control-focused smart speaker with a home already filled with Alexa devices.

All of that to say, HomePod mini is perfect for me.

I can throw out my Echos, disable Alexa on the Sonos system, and scatter a couple of Minis to replace the Echos.

This is something I didn't realize I wanted.

Sounds like you'd benefit from some sort of an automation script where, when a movie or a show starts playing, Alexa is disabled.

Can Homepod Mini control Sonos?

The new generation Sonos support airplay2, so I guess so. To an extent at least.

>> The absolute worst part being a false positive activation of my Sonos system while watching a movie/show.

South Park, being; well, South Park - actually did an episode taking advantage of this and trolling thousands of viewers:

https://mashable.com/2017/09/14/south-park-alexa-google-home...

(not really SFW content, strong language)

I know exactly what you mean, but if you say "cancel", it will shut it off faster. It is still a big annoyance which I hope gets fixed at some point in the future.

Binged Schitt’s Creek over the last few weeks and David shouting “Alexis!” triggered all of my Sonos speakers. Every. Single. Time.

I mean, if you binge The Witcher TV series you’ll probably trigger your apple voice products a lot. It’s the unfortunate consequence of choosing real names for virtual assistants. Only google home is really immune to this.

Alexa is just creepy.

I suspect that the device is constantly recording the audio in your room, and sending that to Amazon’s servers in the cloud. Because I doubt that the little puck has enough processing power inside it to handle speech recognition.

This allows Amazon the ability to continually upgrade their servers, without the need to upgrade the puck.

And only when the server detects it’s prompt, “Alexa”, will it send a response back to the puck. This is how the little device appears to be so responsive.

And not surprisingly, this bit of functionality is not marketed by Amazon. After all, who the hell in their right mind, would want to be constantly monitored, and have all their private conversations at home be secretly recorded by Amazon.

In fact, I suspect that all the voice assistant devices from other manufacturers, like Google, are doing exactly this.

re: on-device computation, you'll note from the presentation that they said that no data is sent to Apple _until you say "Hey Siri"_. They're still doing transcription in the cloud which requires sending your voice for Apple to process and store.

I have no issues personally with using cloud services like this but they very much used weasley language in the presentation and website to obscure the fact that Apple's cloud absolutely will get access to your unencrypted raw utterances following their wakeword detection, and cause people to conclude that that wasn't happening.

As a side-note I find it a bit surprising that with all the history Apple has with Siri and the meaningfully powerful on-device ML acceleration that they still can't download and run a recognition model on-device that wouldn't require streaming your speech to Apple's servers...

They don’t tie your request to your Apple ID and you can opt out of any recording being stored. Presumably this would make it impossible for a government body to subpoena your recordings, which as we’ve seen with Alexa is entirely possible.

I think the big brother would always find a way to do that, ip? mac?...

Pretty sure they do transcribe locally and only send text to cloud to interpret it. So still not private, but no audio is sent (unless for special cases).

I'm not pretty sure. Now Siri sends voice to cloud after triggered by wake up word.

No – Apple does transmit the audio samples and interprets server-side: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210657

Siri has always relied on external servers so it doesn’t bother much. I agree with your last point, I hope they move towards full on-device Siri

They can and have for many years, it’s just much less powerful than Siri.

On device you can only ask it to play songs on the device, calling people in the phone book etc.

Yeah, that'll be a differentiator for me. We have a few Echo Dots, which are pretty neat devices, but I'm not a huge fan of providing audio to Amazon and Google. Also, my neighbor was getting swatted and narrowed it down to his Echo Dots.

What do you mean by the last part? Swatted, as in having a SWAT team called to his house? What role did the Echo play in that?

Yes, the police showed up at his door a couple times saying somebody called 911. He disconnected everything from his network, no more visits from the police. He plugged devices back in one at a time, leaving a day or so between devices. Within an hour of plugging in the Echo devices, the police were back. He unplugged the Echo devices, no issues since.

I meeeaaannn come on, I feel like this person is withholding some important details about why the police show up at their door. This is just too ridiculous to be real.

The devices can make calls. There have been vulnerabilities that allow people to gain access and send commands: https://voicebot.ai/2020/08/13/amazon-patched-an-alexa-hacki...

This story sounds quite ridiculous, and I'd be reserving skepticism for his version of the events rather than for Google/Amazon

I find it odd that you say you're not a huge fan of providing audio to Amazon, yet have bought a few devices that actually do that and then have proceeded to put them into your home...?

For someone who isn't a fan of providing audio, you seem to have willfully done so.

I am genuinely confused.

The OP could not be a huge fan of sending the audio, but find the utility of the devices worth it for now. Very little in life is binary, and instead we make these sorts of trade offs every day.

They are not currently plugged in, and I don't have any plans to do so.

Sorry, I misunderstood you saying that you had them to indicate they were in use.

How is it different though? Doesn't Siri on your phone send your recording to its backend to figure out what you need anyways? So it's just an extra step?

It's opt in and only for idevices.

They explained in the video the only time it hits the Apple service is when you activate Siri (and limited to Siri queries only).

This is the way to do it ...if you insist on putting smart microphones in your house.

But that's true of Google too. It only hits their servers when you "hey Google."

I think the difference stated above, was that for messaging, calls and other phone related activities it’s not sent. I’m not sure you can say the same for Google.

On Pixel 4, 4a and 5, assistant does most queries on devices with the Neural processor. I wouldn't be surprised if they bring that capability to speakers too eventually. Though that increases the price of course. HomePod Mini is equivalent to Google Mini or Echo Dot but costs 3x the price. Maybe it's all the Apple Tax but my guess is that they had to put a pretty strong processor to do NLP on-device.

My interpretation of that was your voice query is still sent to Apple and interpreted as whatever text/command, but the contents of the text message are not pulled from iCloud, instead they are pulled from within your local network directly from your iPhone. So all of your requests still do get processed in the cloud on Apple servers, but they don’t wind up with copies of the content of your messages (unless of course you enable iCloud back ups or iMessage cloud sync). This is definitely an improvement versus how things work on the Google side, but it’s a far cry from nothing at all getting sent to Apple.

The problem is that Google's voice recognition results in false positives. I've seen a few recordings on my Google privacy page with nothing but ambient noise from my apartment.

Well to my knowledge, Apple doesn't even have a similar page; That instills my confidence in Google rather than Apple, as I know for sure Apple can't be foolproof with false positives

All smart devices by Google and Amazon have similar technology

Of course I should have added you have to trust that they will indeed do that when pressured to do otherwise by whatever agency or internal system.

That's really nothing new. Plus you're taking their word they won't send anything.

A key difference is that Siri doesn’t use personal identifiers - I.e. it does send the recording for interpretation, but it isn’t associated with your user account.

Yup. I really thinking in getting a echo dot, but I have serious privacy concerns.

I ordered two today as they were 20 €/each during Prime Day. I plan on using them as speakers mostly, so I'll have a look at where they talk to and maybe drop that connection...

I don't think Apple understands what 'world class' assistant means.

I've tried their intercom feature on an iPhone using Hey Siri. The message doesn't get recorded if you don't speak english. It works fine if you press and hold side button tho (my preferred way to use Siri anyway).

I would probably consider Homepod or Homepod mini if they've got batteries and bluetooth. Heck they could've even used MagSafe chargers for them. Now I've got two Soundcore Motion+ that got amazing hifi sound.

You can use intercom already?

No, but you can send audio message like "hey siri send audio message to foo".

Meanwhile a friend of mine flat refused to even consider buying any such device, from any vendor, because he's concerned about being spied on.

He cited several real incidents where vendors like Amazon had been caught listening in and sending audio clips to random subcontractors for analysis.

Several huge companies, including Facebook, Google, and Amazon have made it their business to maximally violate the privacy of the general public.

This rubs off on companies like Apple that treat customer privacy seriously.

The "free market" doesn't stop rampant abuse, and doesn't stop damage to unlucky bystanders. If everyone cheats, then the incentive will be to cheat also. If everyone violates privacy, then there will be little to no benefit in not also violating privacy. Certainly not if consumers simply won't believe you.

It's the same logic as: "Every politician is corrupt, so why should I vote for you Mr Honest Guy? You must be corrupt also! I'd rather vote for Mr Clearly On the Take, I like the way he smiles".

Everyone is cheating (they’re adtech companies) but Apple isn’t. Apple doesn’t have to cheat. They just charge it upfront, sure Siri won’t ever catch up because of the lack of data (knowledge graph like Google), but I’m fine with a crappy Siri than evil smart Alexa.

That is a naive (and demonstrably false) assertion.

Apple's privacy stance is really just marketing, like "There's nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."

You don't have to use an apple device for more than a minute to realize this.

For example, you cannot use a new apple iphone without activating it with apple.

In the first screen or two, you are presented with their privacy policy, with is literally hundreds of pages long.

The rest of the setup is full of dark patterns, and even though it is GDPR compliant, it is very hard not to come out of the process without signing in or allowing them access to your data.

I think all of this comes from "business common sense" which is based on fear. They want data (and control) because it is an easier and more guaranteed way to make and sell things.

The only way out of this (for all of us) is actually robust competition by someone who will do it right and not collect data in the first place. (hint: it will help if they use rounded corners, gradients and transparency)

I’m not convinced. Fundamentally, Apple is a services and a hardware company. They have no business in advertisement. Do you follow Stratechery (Ben Thompson)? He writes about Apple’s privacy fundamentalism here (midway through the post): https://stratechery.com/2019/privacy-fundamentalism/

Aside from the fact that Apple DOES do advertising, you have to understand that even outside this - your data is valuable to apple and they take steps to keep it turned on. In some cases they are contractually obligated to collect the data.

Here's the thing -- by circumstance they are like arms dealers stuck selling arms to both sides. They must entice app developers to develop for their platform, and they must also entice consumers to buy their products.

Personally I think if apple was concerned about privacy, they would let you see what your phone is doing, and let you firewall your phone (one that could block apple traffic).

What good is it to bombard a non-technical user with packet dumps and firewall settings that probably only break apps?

Apple certainly does have an advertising platform for the App Store and Apple News. They describe their privacy stance here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223

Maybe this is better in practice than other ad platforms, but they explicitly say that they use information about you to serve you targeted ads such as: location, age, gender, purchases from the App Store, what news you read, etc etc.

You are funny. According to this article Apple makes a great deal of money from search and advertisement:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/06/08/apple-c...

Please note that is is a blog post and not an "actual" Forbes article.

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24782678

this WTF happened to me few weeks ago https://twitter.com/cztomsik/status/1309377749962960897

there's no way to delete photos from icloud immediately and I was also googling a bit and there's some article from infosec company and they were able to recover deleted photos few months after they should be deleted forever (I was googling about how to delete those photos immediately).

now, I don't have anything useful there but it pissed me off a lot and I'm definitely not going to use devices from one company, no matter what they say I'm missing

Apple did too... : https://seekingalpha.com/news/3482463-siri-sends-sensitive-r...

>Meanwhile a friend of mine flat refused to even consider buying any such device, from any vendor, because he's concerned about being spied on.

I solved this problem for my HomePod by denying it outgoing internet access on my router. Bonjour-based AirPlay support works great, and if Siri somehow became activated by accident despite my disabling it on the device, nothing could be sent to Apple.

I'm a big apple fan, got a homepod last christmas, and it's the worst apple product that I've ever owned. Truly disappointing. Siri fails to recognize commands that work great on alexa or google, the features it does have often fail (if I transfer a podcast from playing on my phone to play on the homepod, my phone often fails to sync with the location of my homepod).

There's no way I will buy one of these until I hear from multiple people I know that they have one and it's truly amazing.

edit: typos

Whereas my family say that it is the best Apple gizmo we own. It sits in the kitchen and typically only gets used for

Playing music setting timers adding things to the shopping list answering stupid google queries during dinner.

All of which it does with aplomb. But it was bought because wanted a great sounding smart speaker

I was gonna say it, but then you did.

My non-tech partner 100% agrees. “Love it” is a term that I’ve heard.

I do have a few (literally a few) custom shortcuts for weird things that it just couldn’t figure out, like playing specifically our local radio station, but other than that it’s amazing.

“Hey Siri, play <whatever>” while we make dinner. “Hey Siri, turn it up!” Hey Siri good morning, turn the lights on, set a timer, she mostly does it all with aplomb.

If this one broke I’d have another within half an hour. I might get the Mini just to put in another room and mess about.

Now, caveat: I’ve never used Alexa or Google. I have no doubt that their voice assistant stuff would be better, but it’ll be a cold day in hell before I let one of those things listen to me at home. I just don’t trust them at all.

I'm glad you're happy about it, but for me, Siri is a disaster. It only has about a 75% chance to get a simple music command right. Pretty hopeless.

Google assisted has a 40-59% success rate for simple alarm and timer commands in my home.

That is a surprisingly exact percentage range. How are you tracking this?

I'm always pretty surprised by the disparity, I wonder if its an accent thing. Quite frequently we use our HomePod from the other room since they were too pricey (before today) to put in each room. I cant think of a time where its had an issue with us giving it commands even when we're hollering from the adjacent room.

It probably is - I live in London with a spectrum of housemates from about the place and the needed "Alexa voice" is basically RP if you want it to work at all.

Siri has gotten much better for me. It's actually useful now. With my Airpod Pros I can reliably respond to texts using my voice. Music commands are also much better.

I'm not sure if I have just adapted my commands to ones that work, if Siri is improving, or it's both.

I must be getting old because playing an audio track, looking up some information or changing the volume seems a first world "problem" and is still incredibly easy just by using the device that is performing the task, eg. playing music. Back in the day, using my CD player or cassette player didn't seem like hard work.

The gulf between the "issues" that these devices solve and real problems in the world (starvation, war, death by covid) has never been wider.

I honestly am happy that they're useful for people but they feel like devices looking for a real purpose. I know someone with 70+ "smart" lightbulbs and cameras and devices all over his house and I do not understand how turning the light on or off can be considered too difficult for him to do.

I think reading through this thread confirms it! Didn't mean to target your comment in general but this is as far as I've got reading through this thread.

Like you, I wouldn't trust the Google or Amazon devices at all!

A sign of getting old indeed: when the technology at stage `n` is surely good enough and you see no reason for `n+1`. ;-)

You also set up a nice straw man there. Nobody’s saying that these things are “solving problems”. They’re just cool new technology. Being able to ask for an album while I’m chopping the vegetables for dinner is cool. Why not?

I must accept I am out of touch with the kids, like Principal Skinner...

"why not" is quite a good question though. I will ponder, thanks.

Turning off one light is not hard. Walking through the house in the evening to make sure the kids didn't leave lights on (and to lock up the various doors, and set the thermostat back, etc) is annoying. Being able to speak a single voice command to do all that on my way upstairs is much more convenient. Could I still do it by going to a different room? Absolutely. Is it nicer to not have to do that? Definitely.

Why did you have a CD player if cassettes worked for your? Was rewinding the cassette really too much trouble? Kids these days...

Audio fidelity! CDs were better than cassettes, even the later metal coated tape! CDs had no easily-discernable hiss for the most part (although a few early tape to CD transmissions were very hissy). Having said that, cassetes were far more robust and I regret getting rid of my Walkman with Bass Boost, that's for sure.

So? I'm sure you could understand the words just fine on cassette. Wanting to hear a bit less hiss in your recreational music listening seems like a pretty "first world problem" to me...

Good point!! You have highlighted my foolish complaint!

I've been a homeowner for nearly a decade now and I have to say I sympathize with you, even if for slightly different reasons, mainly the "hassle" factor. I see most of these "smart" things as just one more thing that can break.

Sure it may take a bit longer for me to initially run some wire for speakers (or cost more on a new home build), but once it's set up it is one-and-done. My stereo receivers are a little bulky, but they hide in a corner and the last forever and I don't need to debug their internet connection when I change my Wi-Fi password.

In engineering we talk about building solutions that are as simple as possible, and no simpler. Light switches and door locks are the epitome of this; adding batteries and wireless communication yields a "wow" factor at first, but I cringe at the idea of the numerous ways these can all fail now! I have enough to deal with just keeping up with maintenance on the simple stuff. I'll keep my nightly routine of manually turning off lights and locking doors, thank you.

Not to mention the fact that all of this is changing so fast. Are my HomeKit compatible devices even going to work with whatever phone/speaker/tv setup I have 10 years from now? Am I going to have to pull out all my light switches then? You know what's compatible with the human finger I expect to see at the end of my hand in 10 years? A normal freaking light switch.

I expect that by the time my kids are grown up everything will have settled on a common standard and "smart" devices will be a boring commodity product made by boring brands like GE on my boring Home Depot shelf. At that point I'll probably consider putting it in the wall. Right now I see 50 different one-off Chinese brands racing to the bottom competing with $100 top-of-the-line latest-and-greatest Apple techs and it's all just not worth the effort.

For me, asking Siri on my iPhone 11 Pro to play music from Spotify is always an adventure. Last it played me Spanish female singers, and before that I got acquainted with Japanese jazz! Then there's the 20% of times it freezes for around 20 seconds before replying, and the other 20% of time it just says "there's an error, please retry".

The fact that you can’t specify a default music app on iOS also bothers me quite a bit. On Android, assistant knew what app to use so I could just ask it to play something and not have to specify “on Spotify “. Of course this problem extends to loads of other apps on iOS.

TIL the word aplomb. I'm a 30 year old native english speaker. Not sure whether to be excited to learn a new word, or worried that I didn't know it.

Maybe i had low expectations, but i was impressed with homepod siri's understanding and how much it could do. I don't know why Apple doesn't just publish a list of all the commands. I documented what i found if anyone is interested:

https://xinsight.ca/homepod/

Apple does have this page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208336

Really?? I love mine. I use it every day for Hue bulb activations, playing music, timers, etc. and it does the job perfectly.

It doesn’t answer all the same answers as the Google Assistant but I feel like that’s worth the privacy trade off.

A $30 echo will do that. I have a few of those, why spend $200 for a HomePod if that’s all it is.

Sounds much better and privacy

Privacy is an interesting dimension. I definitely wouldn’t trust google, but why trust Apple over Amazon?

Because Apple is making privacy a key differentiator across their entire product line. How private they actually are is a different matter, but certainly they talk a lot about how the data that is sent to their servers doesn't include IDs and can't be tracked back to you, even if it does get stored.

I don’t own one personally, but I use one at the office daily. They sound incredible. I have some google smart speakers and they’re pretty underwhelming in terms of sound. The voice assistant is excellent, though.

I’d much prefer the sound of the HomePod but it’s hard to justify the expense when I have something that works fine. If I could do it over, I’d absolutely spend way more for the better audio experience. While I use the assistant for things apart from music, music is still more than 99% of what comes out of that thing.

You can connect an echo to other speakers.

But now you have other speakers, and a bunch of wires and power cords.

One of the things I appreciate about the HomePod is its single power cord. Super neat (as in actually neat not ‘cool’).

I listen to music with mine and the sound is very good. Tried it with a friends Echo and... well it did play music but the sound was like a cheap radio.

Mine bricked itself on an update. No way to hard reset it. Apple would repair it only for $1 less than the full cost of the device.

You're kidding? That's such poor product support.

I have a whole army of Google Homes, and not one has bricked or had any problems. However, at their price point (bought the Home for $100, Home Minis were mostly free or $20) I wouldn't mind shelling out for a replacement. Considering the starting price of the HomePod, it's nuts that Apple would charge that much to fix (for something that was their issue no less).

That also does not sound typical of Apple customer care. They are generally very helpful and will often not charge for some issues, particularly if the device was actually bricked due to an update. They would likely replace a device for that kind of thing. I’m not convinced that we have the full story here.

Clearly you don’t have much experience of Apple’s out of warranty support.

Once your Product is out of warranty they have very little interest in helping you.

I’ve never even heard of a HomePod bricking itself, nor does it sound plausible that Apple would charge to fix a device they bricked themselves, especially at $1 less than the price of a new device. I feel like you’re omitting something here.

It is plausible. 13.2 had a problem with bricking HomePods: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/10/28/new-13-2-update-brickin...

And the out-of-warranty repair cost is $279. Perhaps they got it on sale at $280. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/12/17003296/homepod-repair-i...

Did Apple demand that people pay the out-of-warranty repair cost price on HomePods bricked by this update? Because I feel like that would have been a PR disaster that would have been newsworthy. But all I can find right now is a reference regarding the 13.2.1 update saying some users have “arranged replacement devices” with Apple after contacting support.

Yes, at least in some cases. We have the anecdote in this thread, and here is one from Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/equuum/comment/fju...

Going by what you feel the news cycle should have done may not be reliable for a less popular product like HomePod.

My previous Apple TV (pre 4K) bricked itself twice. I got a refund after the second time.

I don't own one, but I visited a friend who had gotten one. He was excited to show it off. It was embarrassing. It played the wrong song. He asked it to increase the volume, which it did on the second attempt, but then it was too loud to hear him give the command to decrease the volume. He tried stopping it with his phone and couldn't. Ended up having to press a button on the thing (I think? Or he unplugged it). Quite literally the worst possible demo.

This is an amazing SNL skit. I covid-insanity-laughed maniacally when I imagined this being part of the slick apple demo video from today.

How was the sound quality though? I don’t care much for the smart assistant features but would definitely consider getting it for good sound quality

It's pretty good, obviously not as good as high end speakers, but for the price (I got mine for £200) it's really good value and effortless to use. Main feature is it can adjust to any room or place you put it. I find it bit bass heavy, though I prefer more neutral sound. I bought it just for listening of music while I work and I'm very happy with it. I want to get another one to pair them into stereo setup.

Some reviews:

https://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?subaction=showfull&i...

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16976906/apple-homepod-rev...

So here is the thing I struggle with. I have a NAS. On it is my media (music, videos, photos) collection. I do not have a subscription to Apple Music, or the reset of the streaming services and I not want one. So how do I play my own music collection with this?

Right now to do this I have an AppleTV on every TV. I have an app on the AppleTV called MrMC which is basically a paid for port of Kodi for the AppleTV. The MrMC app can mount the NFS file share and play my music just fine. The AppleTV is plugged into and HDMI splitter that strips audio and outputs it to an amp which goes to my speakers. This just works, and I can remote control it with my an app on my iPhone.

Given that the HomePod will not be able to access my music collection, it is useless.

I would be happy with the HomePod being able to steam music from an open Music app on a Mac somewhere. I have enough spare Macs that it would be simple to just run Music on it (which mounts the network share.) But of course, I would be wasting power.

Oh well.

It would also be really nice if the AppleTV would just support SMB again.

I'd be sort of surprised if you couldn't "cast" arbitrary audio from a phone or laptop to the homepod.

You can, at least from any Airplay 2 supported device. Mac, iOS, just change the output setting. Audio will sync up with video as well. Stereo pair only works with iOS and iTunes on Mac. (Not system audio)

It works with the TV app too FYI

You can make it work with iTunes Match. It will upload all your music (it's not just filename or metadata matching, apparently it uses audio fingerprints).

Then you can play your own stuff without needing an Apple Music subscription.

It's $25/year.

I moved to Apple music a while ago, but iTunes Match worked great for me before that.

Ehm $25/y to play your own music!?

I don't get it.

It is a cloud storage service. You get all your music stored in the cloud. You always can use AirPlay to play your music on Homepods, if you like.

It has a limit of 100K tracks. I have 97,760 right now. I worked at a music store in HS & College so I managed to acquire quite a collection. At Christmas the employee discount basically reached 75% so if I even thought I might want one song, buying the album was a no-brain. At one point I had an 8-bay SCSI tower with CD-ROMs in it and wrote a script to rip all the CDs. It took a few weeks :) In the last few years I have started on the process of IDing things that where ripped at lower quality and re-ripping in as Apple Lossless.

I had no idea this was still a thing! Does it work well? And what does it do if it can’t find a match? Will it let you play your unique song?

Still works for me. If it can’t find a match it will just upload your mp3s to apples servers and then I presume they can stream to a HomePod.

I mostly use Roon or my phone to control my music, so I haven’t really tested the match stuff in a long time.

Great, thanks for the answer. I'll try out iTunes Match then. It sounds like exactly what I need.

Random aside: the VLC app will also play music/movies from NFS/SMB and is an overall great app on Apple TV.

Can HomePods only play via Apple Music? How about using Plex and getting that to play thru whatever device you want?

Disclaimer: I don't use Plex for music or have any Apple smart home devices. Just trying to throw out an idea that maybe possible. I use Plex with my NAS for video content and stream it to all my devices.

The "big" HomePods do support Airplay, I would assume the HomePod mini does as well. But indeed, if you have AppleMusic or iTunes Match, they become more useful.

It supports the same sources as the big one, including airplay

https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/specs/ (Audio Sources)

How is MrMC these days? I stopped using it about a year ago and migrated to Infuse as the MrMC UI was gross.

Infuse is missing the sort-ability of KODI (e.g. sorting by Director, or by rating), does MrMC have these features?

I have not looked at Infuse. Thanks, I am going to check it out.

As to your feature ask, I never looked...one sec....Title, Year, Date Added, Last Played, Rating, My Rating, MPAA Rating, Duration, Data Added.

I was using Kodi on Intel Sticks before this (Win10). I wanted to switch to the AppleTV because it is simpler and supports Netflix, Amazon, etc. as an app (Needed keyboard, mouse on PC). I do not want my TV connected to the internet all so using the build in apps was not an option.

The HomePod can act as audio out for any Mac/iOS device. The music app on Mac can also stream directly to HomePod. (Or you can send system audio to it as well)

Correct, but can I have Music open on a Mac with a shared library and then say to the HomePod "Play ZZY" will it be able to locate that on the share and play it? If I cannot talk to it and have it find the shared music then what is the point?

I would assume that it takes your local iTunes library into account, but apparently it doesn't: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/advq56/cannot_make...

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe audio out for Mac still doesn’t support stereo pairing?

Clearly you are not the customer that Apple wants and honestly I dont blame them. You probably represent the .001% of potential customers.

Maybe plex + homeassistant + daap-server will cover your use case.

https://homeassistant.io https://github.com/johnpdowling/custom_components/tree/maste...

There's a project called HomeBridge that lets other wifi/smart devices be seen on HomeKit and then can be controlled. Lots of user created plugins for a variety of things

https://github.com/homebridge/homebridge

This works really well with Home Assistant

Thanks for mentioning this. I've been using a HomePod/HomeKit for a while already, but was curious if there was a way I could get my cheapo IP cameras' feeds into the Home app. I was using Zoneminder, but that was kind of overkill and a pain to use for my use case.

After seeing your comment I setup HomeBridge and the homebridge-camera-ffmpeg plugin in about 10 minutes, and now I've got what I wanted. Thanks!

I also hooked my CCTV through homebridge recently with the aformentioned plugins ... it was a bonus, because with IFTTT effectively going payware, I needed to move my automation somewhere else

NAS -> Plex -> Nest Audio (or other Google speakers) would achieve this. If your NAS doesn't support Plex, you could easily run it on a Raspberry Pi if it's just for music.

You'd have to look at alternatives for the media server (Plex) if you want to use a Homepod though .. I'm pretty sure Plex doesn't support AirPlay.

If it's just wireless audio you're after and not a "smart speaker" then there's some not-too-tricky ways to do this in the DIY space. snapcast for instance supports AirPlay and might integrate nicely into your current setup: https://github.com/badaix/snapcast

It mostly works fine on a Raspberry Pi even for video. Though I'm not streaming 8k stuff, I've only got a 1080p TV.

I have nice speakers I don't want to change. I used to control spotify and soundcloud through them using chromecast audio which is discontinued and the second one I bought off ebay doesn't work. I am open to playing MP3s off my NAS. I would even consider bluetooth since I rarely fiddle with the playlist.

What is the best way to remote control a device that is wired to my mixer (XLR or 1/4 in or 1/8in jack)

Have you looked at Mopidy?

Did you click my snapcast link? It natively supports Spotify connect and Airplay, so you'd connect your mixer to the Pi's 3.5mm jack (or use a supported DAC).

You can also fashion a Chromecast audio out of a normal (video) Chromecast and an HDMI->audio adapter if you're looking to preserve the same experience.

You can use HomePods as dedicated outputs for your Apple TV 4th gen or newer. Can also work alongside your amp.

Also, as stated in earlier comments, you’ll be able to use AirPlay to stream anything from your NAS via an iOS/Mac device.

The only feature you’ll lose is the ability to say “hey Siri, play song x”

AirPlay is lossless, too.

The only feature I care sorting is "Hey Siri play X" in the framework of the Music is on the NAS. So yah, out of luck.

The current setup works very well, except I have to us a physical thing (remote or remote app on iPhone) to play something.

Ah. Then there really isn't any completely voice activated solution on the market that can sort your needs. They're all so cloud-focused.

You should check out Roon https://roonlabs.com/

I wouldn’t be surprised if Plex eventually supported the HomePod now that there’s an API

NAS TO CAST. I came up with the name. You do the engineering.

If you can run docker, try https://docs.linuxserver.io/images/docker-daapd. It actually from https://ejurgensen.github.io/forked-daapd/ It can connect to all the airplay-able devices in my home, and the remote app on iOS can be configured to control it, but I think one still needs to access its webpage to set which airplay device to use.

I use AirPlay to Sonos from my DS219 running Plex. Should work just fine with HomePods

Get some HeOS speakers, they support all the sources you need including network shares from a NAS.

You should look into Logitech Media Server (open source with community forks/support). You can install it on your NAS, I have it on a synology.

It also supports syncing music with multiple devices at a fraction, if any, of sonos or similar costs.

There is a plethora of plugins available including an AirPlay bridge to stream to your Apple tv.

You can use the excellent iPeng app (paid but recommended) as a phone remote (and even a source with an IAP).

I use the LMS ecosystem to stream from my NAS to my linux workstation (using squeezelite), to my tv/speakers on an nvidia shield, to my phone via iPeng and to another chromecast.

On Synology you can install iTunes Server [0] and then just use native AppleTV's music player to access your library.

[0] https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/packages/iTunesServer

The coolest part to me is that they're using the S5 watch SoC to power it. Pretty cool that Apple's various hardware teams can just grab a part off the shelf to use in a completely different class of device.

I'd love to see them reintroduce AirPort routers powered by an A-series chip.

Agreed. I wonder what the cost is on that chip.

Apple Watch S5 - Sensors + Speaker + Markup = $99

I'm having a hard time finding out which node it's on and the die area. The S5 is essentially a re-badged S4 which as far as I can tell is made on standard TSMC 7nm. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say the BOM is dominated by the casing and speaker hardware. That chip has been in production for about 2 years now.

Display + restrictions on internals/construction due to size constraints will make up a large part of that cost as well. I'd imagine that the chip itself is a pretty small percentage of the price of an Apple Watch.

I'd love to see them put AirPort tech inside their smart speakers. That's one great way to differentiate from Alexa devices. We're still running AirPorts at my house, though I know eventually they'll die and we'll have to find something else.

In the meantime, they're super convenient for having my Time Capsule back up my Mac, and for piping audio via an Airport Express to the speakers I use with my projector setup.

Oh yes that would be nice. A bunch of PoE HomePod minis with WiFi 6 would work great in my house to replace my 802.11ac UniFi setup.

I'm really dreaming big now, but some sort of AirPort central base station with SFP+ for my FTTH connection and 4xPoE to power and feed a bunch of HomePods would be brilliant.

Not so sure on PoE (great for technically inclined folks, not the general public, and if you're really set on PoE you could use a reverse injector to take power off the ethernet and break power/data out at the device) but it would be smashing if HomePods had WiFi mesh support (802.11k/v/r) and Apple used them to challenge Google Next Wifi and Amazon's Eero offerings (because the UX on Nest Wifi and Eero is so good, but I'd rather give my money to Apple).

802.11s is the mesh technology you would want. The others are, I think, for roaming devices (literally mobile radios). A bunch of access points already have this, though most all implement mesh in their own, proprietary standard.

You're right, thanks for the correction. The standards I listed are on the mobile devices for seamless roaming between access points, 802.11s is the mesh standard proper [1]. OpenWRT supports 802.11s [2], so I assume this protocol is trivial to support in wifi silicon.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11s

[2] https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wifi/mesh/80211s

eero is a great mesh system and the closest to a spiritual successor to the AirPorts.

This is such a great idea! HomePod / HomePod Mini Acting as WiFi Mesh system.

May be Apple TV in the living room should take the job of Routing as well. ( They said the AirPort Extreme team were folded into Apple TV team. )

I want a WiFi 6 AirPort Router.

It seems like with Apple, any piece of tech with exactly one use tends to wither away and die. Now that the processor for the Apple Watch is on another device, it may show up somewhere else. Since this is wall powered, I don't think that bodes well for my hope that they release an Apple Watch that is smaller or has longer battery life (smaller often means smaller battery).

It seems like they always bring a new SoC in under their last commoditized SoC. What's the next smallest thing for them to stuff a new SoC into? Airpods?

AirPods already have their own special SoC called the H1. It's in AirPods (gen 2), AirPods Pro, and a few Beats products.

This is the weirdest part about working in big tech. So many teams can reuse world-class tech in other products with very little barrier to entry.

You mean like the MacBook team grabbed that T2 security chip and now instead of desoldering some miniature flash chip with a BIOS in it a MacBook can be owned by merely plugging something into the USB-C port that accesses its magic debug wires?

Watch SoC on speaker looks cool and the use existed chip makes sense, but is it practically differ than just buying Broadcom or MediaTek chips?

I was tempted, but my partner has an Android and I'm pretty sure these can't even function as a basic Bluetooth speaker for non-Apple devices, so unfortunately it's a no-go. Apple got this right with AirPods: special integration with other Apple devices, but basic functionality with everything. Hopefully they will with these too one day.

You're right about not being able to pair as a Bluetooth speaker, but there are some advantages of Airplay (if you're using an Apple device). No pairing required (just shows up as an output device), no wrangling of Bluetooth connections to switch devices.

Surprisingly, it also supports peer to peer play if you don't have a wifi connection.

Of course AirPlay is more streamlined, just like Google Cast is more streamlined. The point is to have a fallback, for the cases when you want to use your expensive device from outside of the golden path.

This exactly. Apple is consistently releasing products that I would absolutely buy if they didn't do everything they could to get a horizontal monopoly of microprocessor devices in my house.

Usually I can live with it; I don't see myself switching to Android anytime soon. But the story is different when it's a communal device for everyone in the household.

break up with them

/s jk jk

It doesn't look like the HomePod Mini would support Bluetooth devices as an audio source [1] (the older HomePod has the same issue), even though it lists Bluetooth 5.0 as a connectivity option.

[1] https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/specs/#specs:~:text=Audio...

[2] https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/specs/#specs:~:text=Wirel...

Bluetooth used for Homekit stuff IMO.

Am I the only one that finds this astounding? Not to mention the inability to take an aux cord.

It's one thing for phones to have these lock-in properties, but not being able to aux in audio into a speaker feels wild to me.

Welcome to the future

Sonos has not supported this for over 10 years, and seem to be doing quite well.

It is a “smart speaker”, not a speaker, so expectations are different.

Are you talking about aux? Because Sonos Move supports plain bluetooth audio connections; I use it all the time.

Bluetooth wasn't an option for Sonos before the Move. All my Sonos devices support WLAN only, no other way to connect.

It uses Bluetooth LE for proximity sensing so that you can pass audio from your phone to the HomePod just by waving them near one another.

Alas, it's actually using the U1 ultra-wideband chip for position finding. That means this only works on the iPhone 11 and above. My guess is that bluetooth signal strength just isn't accurate enough.

You can see that this documented [1] in a footnote [2].

[1] https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/#overview-sound-handoff-1...

[2] https://www.apple.com/homepod-mini/#footnote-2:~:text=speake...

(text fragment highlighting links only work in Chrome)

Does that mean it only works with Apple devices?

If they could make these work in a wireless atmos setup seamlessly with the apple tv I'd buy like 14 of them and place all around my living room. Syncing video and audio in real-time wirelessly is really difficult apparently, there's a standard for it called WiSA but almost no adoption sadly. I'd love to cut down on wiring.

The comparison table makes is seem like the mini can't be paired with an AppleTV at all like the regular HomePod can.

Oh that's a real shame if so.. missed opportunity!

> Pick up an incoming call from your iPhone, listen to music on your Mac, or upgrade your TV experience by taking the sound from your Apple TV to the next level — they all connect to HomePod mini.

From the Apple website

Weird. I see that too. Not sure what the table is trying to state then. https://www.apple.com/homepod/

Apple's site is a bit contradictory on this. In another place it lists speaker features and it lists "Home theater with Apple TV 4K" as a feature of the full size HomePod but not the mini.

Inquiring minds want to know.

Home Theater uses the full size HomePod's to do 5.1/7.1/Dolby Atmos surround sound. It requires the spatial processing to allow for the surround sound experience.

The HomePod Mini can be used as a stereo pair, and connected to an Apple TV with no issues.

This is handled via Airplay 2, so I can't see a reason why it wouldn't be supported on the mini.

One feature I wish Apple would build into this would be a 3.5mm jack or optical audio out. I have a lot of very nice speakers already in my house, but no multi-room audio, or voice assistant. I know the echos can do this, but I don’t want them spying on me.

Every single amazon echo device has a 3.5mm jack. And chromecast audios are going for $90 on eBay. I just want a simple solution to stream to my old speakers that isn't bluetooth or Amazon. I would've 100% bought a homepod mini if it had an audio out.

AppleTV does this. I believe you can use it as a headless sound machine. Mine has optical out.

That's how I can use my sub-woofer and anything else plugged into the receiver.

Unfortunately, the newest models do not have optical audio out, only HDMI.

This is disappointing

They dropped it in 2015. The old airport express has audio out as well.

Once upon a time, Apple shipped with all Macbook with 3.5mm jacks that doubled up as optical audio out. Ah, the good old days

My dad watches Craigslist for old Airport Expresses because he wants to replace their Chromecast Audio with something that can talk to Apple Music, but Apple bafflingly doesn't have any current AirPlay offerings to connect external speakers.

I have an AirPort Extreme he can have? It’s just in a box in the garage, I’ll ship it to you for nothing.

Bit bigger than the Express obviously. Hmm I may even have a really old one of those, too.

Thanks - that's really kind!

He's interested in it to connect his speakers to AirPlay. Does your model do that?

Hey, I have a fairly old Airport Express; the box says 2004. The physical "factory reset" button doesn't seem to work anymore, but it's in a ready-to-be-configured default state (I got it there by connecting it to a network via Ethernet). It would need the old version of Airport Utility, but I'm assuming your dad knows that already, if he's looking for the old ones.

If he's interested, please let me know.

There's Sonos also

My understanding is that the HomePods cannot play audio in real-time, due to the processing involved.

The U1 ultra-wideband chip means the HomePod can be used a fixed reference point for general purpose indoor location finding! Would be great for AirTags, if those ever become a reality.

At the moment, the U1 is only be used for the nifty hold-your-iphone-close move, but I have no doubt Apple has other applications in mind. Ultra-wideband is amazing for its indoor high-resolution position finding. Down to the inch is possible. But the more reference points you have, the faster/more accurate it will be.

When used with the U1 chip also in your iPhone, having a HomePod mini around could enable Apple's forthcoming AirTags to be located more quickly/precisely. Or enable a better AR experience. They're basically GPS satellites for in-home position finding. (Ultra-wideband uses time-of-flight, just like GPS)

I really wish of a future where I can just point my phone at one of my cast devices to cast to it.

A very limited version of this feature is used in AirDrop with U1 equipped iPhones. Just point your phone to the phone you are transferring to and it shows up in the AirDrop share sheet.

Was that actually implemented / tested? I remember hearing about it but I never saw anyone mention or test it in any reviews. Does it actually work well?

It does exist, and it works! But both phones need U1 chips, meaning iPhone 11s and above.

One thing that's cool about this is that iOS must be using the slight movements of the phone in your hand to help triangulate the other phone. Ultra-wideband position finding relies on time-of-flight, so from a single reference point you only know the precise distance something is from you, and not its direction. To get around, my guess is iOS is using the accelerometers in the phone to measure slight changes a phones position, and then using multiple ultra-wideband distance measurements from those different positions to triangulate the other phone.

I’d really like to see a future where HomePod Minis with the U1 enable my phone to precisely track its own location as I move throughout the house, with automations as I go from room to room, or with songs following me between rooms, or letting me ask Siri for a precise location of my phone.

The U1 and the Homepod-Mini really will make this possible! It seems like you'd need more than one Homepod to easily triangulate position, but by leveraging the precise accelerometers on the phone and taking multiple distance measurements from the Homepod's U1 chip, that alone might be enough to give you pretty precise location.

Pretty disappointing that some users here flagged this post, apparently just for spite. Some of us are interested in this discussion.

I think it's more because people are a bit annoyed at 5 different posts effectively discussing the Apple event.

Really cute :). I have a pair of Homepods which pretty much has replaced my stereo for me, as together they sound really impressive. And are very convenient to use. Most of the time, I use my iPhone to control them. Certainly will get one or two minis for the rooms I am not constantly in, but would like to have some music support.

One thing I don't get, why Apple doesn't push them more as computer speakers. Mojave still doesn't support them as a pair, and the latency is too big for normal speaker usage. Should be a relative easy sell with a new Mac, if macOS supported them as a proper pair with low latency.

Was just thinking the same thing, would love to use with my Mac mini as a speaker. Cheaper than Sonos Beam I was going to get

I have the iPhone now and have always used MacBooks, but so far I have refused to buy other products from them because they insist in keeping the ecosystem so closed. No Spotify support is why I’m not buying this. I’ve had Spotify for years and I’m not looking to switch. And Siri, unfortunately for me it’s now a selling point. It struggles so much on my phone that I can’t bring myself to use it often enough to care about it.

They already announced earlier this year that they had a new program to integrate third-party music services. And in today’s event they specifically called out “services like Pandora and Amazon [Music]” as being available “in the coming months”. I don’t know whether Spotify is included, but I would hope so.

It’s part of the SiriKit Media Intents that was introduced in iOS 13.

Isn’t that for suggesting songs based on search results, or triggering songs with Siri on your phone? That’s not the same thing as using third-party music providers on HomePod.

That will be up to Spotify. I switched from Spotify to Apple Music because Spotify won’t support cellular streaming.

I would have switched back to Spotify but after the Apple One announcement, it’s too late. They lost me.

Strange. Spotify seems to work fine with my Apple Watch (Series 3)?

One of the interesting things is that on the specs page it says it supports “Thread”, which is a new wireless protocol championed for home automation tech, as an alternative to zig bee and Zwave. One thing I didn’t see was any mention of if it would support being a “Home Hub”, allowing for remote access to smart home stuff.

Thread is not exactly new, July 2014[0], and it uses the same base standard as ZigBee (IEEE 802.15.4), just using 6LoWPAN which is a low power personal aera network using IPv6.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thread_(network_protocol)

The footnote on that item is a bit disappointing:

"Not compatible with non-HomeKit Thread devices."

Lol. Adopt an open protocol built by Nest and then make it exclusive to Apple devices. Very revolutionary indeed

Pretty sure that means HomeKit certified devices, not Apple-built devices.

Honestly it is very much Nest's decision to not support Homekit.

I think personally this is one of the biggest details that is being entirely overlooked. In past keynotes Apple has mentioned they are actively working with other companies on the new Project Connected Home Over IP working group[1], which according to the limited marketing material available, seems to indicate will at least partially operate over Thread.

[1]: https://www.connectedhomeip.com/

No Spotify support. Spotify’s market share is probably so large that Apple will sell fever of this speakers because of that.

They are a direct competitor with Spotify Connect.

I wish there could be a better partnership between Apple and Spotify. I consider Spotify to be best in field for my music needs and a tighter integration would be a win-win for me as a consumer.

Just the other day:

> "Hey Siri, favorite this song on Spotify."

> "Sorry, Spotify hasn't added support for that." (paraphrased)

According to Spotify, it’s Apple that’s making life hard for them [0].

And here is Apple’s rebuttal [1]

[0] https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/03/addressing-spotifys-c...

Spotify has to drag it’s heels and blame Apple now to support its legal case.

Exactly. Its a charade that's not in the best interest of customers of their service in order to get regulatory leverage on the 30% cut. I think people confuse the means (not support functionality that their customers want) with the ends (have a more level playing field against a competitor). I respect the ends they're trying to achieve but the means make me a dissatisfied customer.

All the third party apps have an even playing field according to the APIs Apple provides for media playback with Siri

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit/media

AirPlay enables streaming from basically any source on iOS or macOS, including Spotify.

AirPlay is garbage.

It has a 2-second lag, and still regularly loses sync for me.

Apple didn't even bother to update macOS to support stereo homepods over Airplay.

For what it's worth, Airplay 2 addresses at lot of those issues, but it does require a rework and support from the host app.

Is Spotify on Airplay 1 still?

It is.

The APIs required for Spotify to support HomePod are available, but as usual Spotify has yet to take advantage of them.

That is an interesting reversal. You could also say that the SDK for Spotify is available [1], but HomePod is yet to take advantage of them. The Spotify SDK has been available for many, many years and is integrated into many devices already.

There is a long history of Apple changing the rules on Spotify [2]. Given Apple's focus on promoting their streaming services, I would not be surprised if Apple is intentionally trying to pressure Spotify into a narrow lane as far as integration options. They wouldn't want to cannibalize their own streaming ecosystem.

1 : https://developer.spotify.com/use-cases/hardware/

2 : https://www.timetoplayfair.com/timeline/

Apple historically has not shown much interest in integrating direct support for third-party services, even in spaces they aren't competing in. In the few instances it has, these integrations saw little maintenance and were eventually removed. This makes some amount of sense with how rocky third-party APIs can be[1][2]. Generally, it's easier for both ends when service providers write their own integration for a given platform.

As an aside, the timeline given by Spotify is somewhat disingenuous because it doesn't include any of the times that APIs were opened up and is missing significant details about why rejections happened — for instance, early watchOS rejections (as far as I recall) had to do with the lack of a power efficient streaming API in watchOS. Once Apple had a streaming solution that was fit for public consumption (internal/private APIs almost always aren't and cleaning them up takes time), they added it to watchOS.

Don't get me wrong, I think iOS would be better if it opened up a little, but Spotify is no saint and has a tendency to embellish the story.

1: https://jod.al/2016/02/18/guide-to-poor-api-management/

2: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/2/6/16979102/sp...

Even if Apple didn't have a competitive offering to Spotify, it'd be a terrible idea to adopt a third party's standard/SDK that impacted such a core part of the ecosystem and UX as controlling and handing off audio. The reason people buy into ecosystems is so there's a single entity that is weighing and making decisions about what creates the best user experience, which necessarily means having control over the roadmap of standards and interfaces.

Even if we were designing the perfect tech ecosystem that was free of business or competitive constraints, it still wouldn't be a good idea to have an app developer, with their own motivations that may not be aligned to users, dictate SDKs and standards to ecosystems or platforms. It's a weird and unsustainable power dynamic that misaligns incentives. It'd only be viable if in the process the app developer opened the standard and shared control of its future.

As much as Spotify wants to be a platform, what they offer is just a service, and they're not positioned to be controlling such standards. I love Spotify and much prefer it to Apple Music, but what they're doing is choosing not to build features that their customers want on platforms their customers have chosen in order to gain leverage in the regulatory battle over the 30% cut. I respect the desire to have a more level playing field but their other complaints are disingenuous and are not in the best interest of their customers.

Apple has a position as a gatekeeper and is charging a toll, unjustifiably. It's disingenuous to say that other people submitting to Apple's tolls are not working in the long-term best interest of their customers.

Spotify is slow to implement features their customers want (see: Watch, HomePod, TV, Siri), which is not in their customers best interest. Other smaller services like Pandora seem to be able to do this [1], leading one to reasonably conclude Spotify is choosing not to.

This has nothing to do with the 30% cut, except that its likely Spotify is crippling themselves to make their regulatory case (similar to Epic's approach). See sibling comment [2] regarding Spotify's slant on their timeline post, in which they seem like they're entitled to certain things that the platform is not yet capable of (e.g. Watch apps in 2015 when the APIs were very crude).

Fast forward to 2020 when these issues have long since been sorted out and Spotify still lacks an offline Watch app. As a Spotify customer I'd love to be able to listen to music while on a run, but Spotify has decided this core use case of an extremely popular platform is not worth building.

[1] https://9to5mac.com/2020/04/29/pandora-shows-spotify-how-to-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24771000

Spotify works great with Google Home, works great with Amazon Echo, works great with Sonos, and works great with countless other devices.

It seems like Apple is the problem here, not Spotify.

Not having Spotify is a feature.

Apple Music over 3rd party music apps

250mm MAU really cuts the market for these devices. I won’t get one till they support Spotify so my house is filled with Echos and Google smart speakers. While all my TVs have Apple TV because it supports Spotify. They also need one with a screen for kitchen use to see recipes.

As in I can't play Spotify remotely at all?

One thing I don't quite understand about the HomeKit "ecosystem" is that there doesn't seem to be much of one...

I've looked on the Apple store, the local electronics store, but everything I would expect to see in a range of smart devices are very notably absent.

For example, I can't find a reasonably sized multi-port Apple HomeKit power board.

I can't find motion or person presence sensors.

In fact, just about the only products that seem to exist are "smart" light bulbs, but I don't see what's so smart about paying AUD 150 for a light bulb...

Motion sensor: https://www.amazon.com/Philips-Motion-Sensor-Installation-Fr...

Power strips: https://www.imore.com/best-homekit-power-strips

Most philips hue products are Homekit compatible, if you have a hue bridge.

As far as the “best” lighting/switch products, I would recommend Lutron Caseta. Not cheap though!

If you’d like to reliably detect when someone is home (their phone is on wifi), you can dive into Homebridge. The plug-in you want is this: https://www.npmjs.com/package/homebridge-people

With the homebridge-people plugin, you can expose an occupancy sensor in Homekit, and trigger a scene when everyone leaves the house, for example. Or the inverse, when someone arrives home. This is more reliable than the built in Homekit location based triggers, because those work with GPS. You don’t always want your lights turning on just because you drove past your house. :)

I should have specified that I live in Australia, so US power boards are useless.

It seems that vendors aren't manufacturing these for all regional power outlet formats.

Oh I see, that stinks. I know this isn’t what you were looking for, but here are some options if you are willing to be creative:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeKit/comments/hzc7lr/powerboardp...

a) That's an interesting post, thanks!

b) It's crazy that the best option I've seen so far for HomeKit compatible power boards is to custom flash some noname Chinese brand.

I thought Apple was known for their slick, well-suported products!

Agreed!

Home kit works really nice when combined with something like Home Assistant. I can use any kind of smart device I want while still interacting through the clean native HomeKit interface

Wish I could get 4 or 5 of these and use as a home theater setup. It'd be significantly cheaper than a Sonos Arc, and presumably offer better surround (though worse low-frequency response).

You'd be limited to only getting audio through the content of your Apple TV right?

You wouldn't be able to get the audio from an Xbox for example?

Good point, this is a limitation for some. We have a projector setup that we plug iPhones/iPads/MacBooks into, so we can AirPlay the audio from those to the speakers at the front of the room. Currently we AirPlay to an Airport Express (c. 2009?) that sends sound out to speakers. This works around the challenge of having video going out at the back of the room (to the projector) and needing audio to come out at the front of the room.

This system doesn't work when we're playing Nintendo Switch, in which case the audio just comes out of the projector. For our purposes, that's fine; but I could see how someone playing Xbox would want that to be hooked into their audio system. I wonder if there would be some way to pipe audio through an old Mac mini to accomplish this. At that point it's probably worth just paying the Sonos tax.

I think it could withy something like HDMI ARC.

But how would you get the audio from an HDMI cable into the HomePod? Does Apple TV offer some sort of HDMI passthrough? I don't know since I've never had one.

Presumably, in this theoretical, Apple would make some kind of HDMI plug-in dongle that acts as an AirPlay audio source.

I guess with the lack of Dolby Atmos they would be more comparable to a Sonos Beam plus two rear speakers (e.g. Symfonisk) which can be bought for about $500. And that works with HDMI ARC for any input you might have on your TV, AirPlay, and every service that Sonos supports.

I think this is big. I've never gotten an Echo because I don't trust Amazon, but at $99 I'll buy one or two of these.

I haven't gone looking, but I wouldn't assume that you can get sync'ed stereo unless specifically a feature.

> If you want to take the amazing sound experience of HomePod mini even further, you can create a stereo pair. Two HomePod mini speakers paired in the same room create left and right channels for an immersive soundstage.

Fwiw, it does look like they are advertising stereo pairing as an out-of-the-box feature

The stereo pair feature was hobbled at release (only iTunes on MacOS, but from any app on iOS), but subsequent MacOS updates apparently solved this. But beware if you're running and older MacOS and don't want to update just to get stereo pairing!

Oddly enough this was the most exciting thing for me today.

I use a Google Home in my kitchen almost exclusively for hands-free timers and music control when cooking/cleaning. My Home got bricked by an update last month and was going to just forgo replacing it because I am getting tired of Google's diminishing support of their products and the privacy concerns.

My only concern is Siri is easily the worst assistant when compared to Google or Amazon. I just hope it is good enough to handle my music and timer requests.

I definitely agree with you that Siri is (currently) the worst assistant, but if it helps, it has consistently been just fine for me with music and timers.

Yeah I figure it should be able to accomplish that. I am sure there are people who use these home speakers for more complex tasks, but after the honeymoon period of owning it, my usage of the speakers basically broke down to: 1. Timers 2. Music 3. Asking about commute times

I agree that this is one of the more interesting things today (especially for folks with an iPhone 11 Pro, who aren't looking to upgrade).

There's already a way to use Siri skills to access OK, Google through your iPhone [1] without letting Google listen in on everything you say. It would be awesome if there were a way to do this from HomePods...

1: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3393159/how-to-use-hey...

Can anyone with a Homepod comment on the usability compared to the Google and Amazon spy systems... err speakers?

I haven't used Alexa, but Siri on HomePod is way behind Google Assistant in capabilities and recognition reliability. I use it moderately for setting timers, reminders, shopping list, controlling my HomeKit lights, and getting weather.

I'd judge it to be 80% reliable in picking up commands (but the way human memory works, it's likely much higher than that but the times it fails are more memorable)

But HomePod is a phenomenal speaker.

I just tried to tell it to play music, but my closer iPhone picked up the order instead -_-;

If we keep making these, you're going to need to name each device.

Hey HomePod, play something sinister.

That's true, unless you have privacy options enabled in your Google account. In which case your Google Home becomes a doorstop.

At least that was my experience before I gave away a gifted Google Home because it refused to let me proceed through setup without disabling a bunch of privacy settings across my entire Google account.

I use it for home automation using hoobs, and as a primary speaker. They are the best sounding of all, and in stereo mode, they sound even better.

The sound quality is way beyond anything Google or Amazon offer.

If you have other Apple devices, it works just like Siri on your phone. I've got one in my kitchen and it can hear me anywhere in my 3 bedroom house. It's pretty impressive from an audio recognition standpoint.

Amazon and Google both have much better home assistants built in.

There is a new Nest audio device out which apparently has good audio and is at the same price as Homepod Mini.

...with the additional downside that it's from Google, and Google projects and devices have a tendency to be abandoned pretty quickly whenever their interest turns to something else.

Has Google ever abandoned consumer hardware, or their obligations to Nest customers?

Well, sure. Look at the Pixel phones: the Pixel 1 was released Oct 2016 and support ended Dec 2019, and the Pixel 2 was released Oct 2017 and they'll be dropping support this year after updating to Android 11.

Even with Nest specifically they dropped Works With Nest support last year, effectively killing off the many integrations that had been built since 2014 in favor of their newer Works with Google Assistant program.

Then there's my beloved 2013 Google Glass Explorer Edition, which still works perfectly but which Google stopped supporting February 25, 2020.

https://mashable.com/article/google-glass-explorer-edition-f...

Well I've sure got a bricked revolve hub at home courtesy of Google.

I don't know how the chain of obligations to Nest customers tracks through, but [0]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/4/11362928/google-nest-revol...

I don't quite know where the saga is now, but for a while it seemed like they were killing off Nest's 3rd-party API.

The Nexus player was a bit of a debacle.

But I agree with you.. they're generally better about hardware support than software.

The "Nest" rebrand of the Google Home devices to me signifies that they're really investing in this consumer IoT product line. That and they're (arguably) the dominant player in the space.

> The Nexus player was a bit of a debacle.

Nexus Player still works though.

Wasn't apple fined for slowing down older iphones?

I mean they've been doing the physical incarnation of Google Assistant for a while now; it predates Homepod by more than a year. There's no arguing that Google is anything but capricious and loaded with privacy issues, but I think it's safe to assume at this point that they're not going to be dropping the hardware any time soon. The original Google Home is still getting feature updates and I doubt that's going to change even with a replacement coming out.

Have you tried the echo studio, probably not. If you are streaming music, I wonder if you could tell the different between the echo studio and the homepod in terms of price. They don't sound the same, but the quality is very good for those not looking for an audiophile setup. The studio is a lot of speaker for the money and offers better voice assistant. Apple made a nice thing in the home pod, but it isn't any special...yet

I have a homepod that I use exclusively for playing musing and it's quite good at that. It's definition of what's "disco" and isn't doesn't quite match mine, but...close enough.

> Google and Amazon spy systems

I have only used an Echo in the past but fwiw Google does specify what they store and how they use it. https://store.google.com/magazine/google_nest_privacy

Why would you trust a company whose bottom line ultimately depends on spying on everyone, in a regulatory environment which demonstrated that breaching your own promises/privacy policy (in the case of Facebook and the 2FA phone numbers they promised not to use for ad targeting purposes) results in nothing more than a slap on the wrist?

Because the alternative (Apple) is a company that produces worse products that breach my privacy even more. You cannot get your location on an Apple device without also sending your location to Apple. You cannot install an app on your iOS device without telling Apple. If you want to make your own apps for your device, you have to deanonymize yourself even further with banking details.

If you want better privacy, don't continue to let companies who lie about providing better privacy get away with it. So far, I haven't seen Google deliberately lie about the privacy of their services. That should be the bare minimum that we expect.

Yeah Google deliberately lies. That's why they're being sued by the state of Arizona, for willfully deceiving users and tracking their locations even if they opted out. [1] They said "with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored" and then did it anyways.

Apple, for its part, says "Apple doesn’t retain a history of what you’ve searched for or where you’ve been" and there's no reason to doubt it.

1: https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mark-brn...

> They said "with Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored" and then did it anyways.

I would just apply Hanlon's razor here. It most likely was a bug or oversight, if it had been some malicious evil scheme, I would assume more care would have been taken so that people don't find out.

Now, coming to the question of why do they even store it for opted in users?

Aside from potential ad relevance, I think it is simply because they power a lot of their features with context and they get better with data.

For example, if you search cheesecake on Google, the answer likely will be either a recipe or a restaurant. A restaurant search will likely be helped by data about previous visits and current location. A recipe search will be helped by past search result clicks and again location.

Do they really need to store this to serve search results? I don't think so. DDG works without them, but then again DDG performs very poor for queries like this which can be helped with context.

Note: I don't know how any of this exactly works, so these are just my assumptions.

"Willfully misleads and deceives" is verbatim from the lawsuit. IANAL but that sounds like "deliberately lies" to me.

From the lawsuit: for years, Google has known that the user experience they designed misleads and deceives users. The evidence obtained from within Google—such as internal emails, presentations, and memos—is overwhelming in this regard

They knew that they were deceiving users, and liked it that way.

An example of of how Google uses this data: Google will track if you click an ad for Cheesecake Factory and later physically visit one. This allows them to charge higher rates for ads. This isn't a secret, they brag about that capability. It's why they use so many dark patterns to push users to enable location tracking.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6100636?hl=en

Google deliberately lies, like when forcing you to enable location history to be able to store home or work addresses in Google Maps - there is no technical reason for this.

The GDPR consent prompt they recently implemented on Google & YouTube is not actually GDPR compliant and does not offer an easy way to opt-out.

I can go on and on. I'm not saying Apple is perfect (a lot of the points you raised are valid), but it's sure as hell better than a company whose entire bottom-line is based on stalking people.

> forcing you to enable location history

Not defending them but is it forced? I remember being asked about it. I used to keep it off for a long time but keep it on now to keep track of places I visit.

> there is no technical reason for this.

I have seen them give you best time to leave from home/office for/after work based on developing traffic as notifications. Same for reminders of events in calendar with location context.

Also, just my assumption but they might be adding locality context to searches.

Primarily use mine as a speaker and HomeKit device. I have a couple light switches that I use with HomeKit and Siri works really well with control of that.

I also use it with Apple Music and from time to time as an AirPlay device. It also works really well for those purposes.

I don't typically use Siri for reading emails, text messages, or other things like that. I will ask it what the weather is as I walk out the door to determine whether I need to grab an umbrella or a hoodie or something. It also works well enough for that.

IMO Google Assistant is still generally stronger in parsing my sentences, multi-command workflows (Siri doesn't have it), and not having all my devices wake up and respond at the same time.

> multi-command workflows

One thing I'm waiting for with Siri is the ability to set the colors and brightness of my Hue lights at the same time. I have to "Hey Siri" twice to do what should be a single command.

Could a Shortcut do that for you? Or a "scene"?

This gets to a different philosophy of voice assistant computing between the companies.

Google (and Amazon) have significant cloud infrastructures. The sequence of wake -> audio clip -> cloud -> process -> command -> device --- that's how they do it.

Apple has taken a different route with a limited set of "domains" which have voice processing associated with them. These can be seen in https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sirikit which has different apps register that they can handle different domains.

This means that Google (and Amazon) will have a stronger parsing of those sentences and commands for arbitrary queries. Siri, however, has a stronger integration with arbitrary commands that are part of an existing 'domain' being handled by an existing app.

The multiple device wake is an interesting problem (I've seen Alexa, when two devices both wake, verify that the correct one had the response). With Siri, I've seen multiple devices wake, but I haven't had multiple ones respond - I suspect there's some network traffic to decide which one has the best audio signal and ability to process the information... but that's my experience, I could very well be wrong there.

The thing is that this really goes to a difference in philosophy about how voice assistants work and integrate with different 3rd party applications.

You mean the Google, Amazon and Apple spy systems?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...

That article is over a year old and Apple does not allow this anymore. Of course Google and Amazon still do.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/28/20836760/apple-apology-si...

You act like if this was some kind of bug that Apple discovered and fixed. It was not. It was a conscious decision they made and would still be doing if this article was not published and there wasn't some controversy surrounding it. Yeah good for them for not doing it anymore but the point is they did and that was a year ago not a lifetime. Apple is only trying to sell you privacy since its looks good for them.

Google also doesn't retain audio recordings by default and hasn't for longer than Apple hasn't. https://www.blog.google/products/assistant/doing-more-protec...

Apple is consistently worse on privacy than alternatives. Don't let them get away with it, or everybody will play Apple's game of just pretending that they care about privacy.

Apple is consistently better on privacy, actually, than competitors. Not sure which competitors you are talking about or which issues/products, but you're way, way off-base. And for obvious reasons: Amazon and Google need to gather user data to survive because they don't make any profitable hardware. Apple doesn't need your data, plus, they have a real and honest commitment to privacy.

It's not even a close call, really.

> Apple is consistently better on privacy, actually, than competitors.

Among Apple, Amazon, and Google; only Apple's phones and tablets send your location to Apple every time you use GPS (even if you're not using an Apple app like Apple Maps!). Among those three companies, only Apple requires you to tell Apple every app you install. Among those three companies, only Apple requires you to further associate your banking details with all that data collection if you want to develop apps for your own device.

That is not an honest commitment to privacy. The other two companies let you opt out of all data collection entirely on your devices.

You're absolutely right that it's not a close call.

To millstone because downvotes prevent me from replying: that is data that the users voluntarily gave Google (like their email and documents), and Google collects that data from its services on iOS as well. On Android, you don't have to give Google any of your data at all. It even makes it easy to not send data to Google by letting you choose a default maps application, browser, etc. Compare to Apple, where you must give your location data to Apple if you want to know where you are on iOS, and there is nothing you can do about it. One is clearly worse. Making light of not being able to develop apps for your own devices without handing over banking details is something I never thought I would see on a forum for technologists.

> only Apple's phones and tablets send your location to Apple every time you use GPS

Impressed they can do that when I’m using offline mapping in an area with no mobile signal.

It gets stored on the device and sent when you are back online. On an Amazon or Google Android device, you can use a truly offline mapping app that doesn't send data to anybody. Even better, you can set that as your default map provider if you like.

To sibling commenter: my comment is based on a correct understanding of Location Services, not on anything to do with Find My Device. You don't have to put words in my mouth, especially when I have already explained it using my own words elsewhere in the thread.

I believe that the other poster's comments are based on a misunderstanding of the technology behind the "find my device" feature.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/06/the-c... gets into the crypto side of it.

So yes, information about location is being sent to Apple. No, it's not useful for Apple and it is encrypted in a way that Apple can't get it the underlying data.

> Apple returns the encrypted location of the laptop to your iPad, which can use its private key to decrypt it and tell you the laptop's last known location. Meanwhile, Apple has never seen the decrypted location, and since hashing functions are designed to be irreversible, it can't even use the hashed public keys to collect any information about where the device has been.

“Among Apple, Amazon, and Google; only Apple's phones and tablets send your location to Apple every time you use GPS.“

This is a false statement that you continue to repeat.

This is a correct statement, which I have proven to you before. What's more, your earlier quibble about anonymizing the data doesn't even negate the statements I have made. Apple always sends your location to Apple, while Google and Amazon do not if you don't want them to.

Just as you did then, you continue to ignore the even more egregious practice of not only tracking everything you install but tying it to your identity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24585353

Due to people downvoting my comments to the point that I cannot reply, I will explain why askafriend is wrong right here (though I already explained why they are wrong in my GP post, which they also ignored in their response to that post). Disabling Apple Maps from getting your location does not stop Apple from getting your location. When any app gets your location on iOS, Apple also gets your location. This is explained clearly in the link contained in this comment, which askafriend ignored. Both Amazon and Google allow you to get your location without telling anybody.

Wrong.

Go into Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> Maps and toggle the setting to "Never".

The full set of options are:

* Never

* Ask Next Time

* While Using the App

* While Using the App or Widgets

and there is also a toggle to turn off Precise Location so that apps only get approximate location.

Go nuts with the options.

I just tried it and I can use the Maps app just fine with location services set to "Never".

Picking some narrow definition that fits your point isn't going to convince anyone of your grand statement. It just comes off as disingenuous.

Disabling Apple Maps from getting your location does not stop Apple from getting your location. When any app gets your location on iOS, Apple also gets your location. Apple even gets your location if no app requests your location. This is explained clearly in the link contained in comment you replied to. Both Amazon and Google allow you to get your location without telling anybody.

Apple doesn't not get _your_ location without an app requesting it.

They periodically send the location of nearby cell-towers and wifi hotspots (all public information) back to a crowdsourced database. _Your_ identity isn't associated with any of it. Apple doesn't know who you are or where your phone is. They do not store GPS coordinates. A single cell tower is nowhere near accurate enough to determine the location of the phone, etc etc.

Google/Android do this too: https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locatio...

You can also entirely disable location services if you're uncomfortable with this and that'd stop it.

You're weaponizing people's ignorance and the complexity of the technical details.

> They periodically send the location of nearby cell-towers and wifi hotspots (all public information) back to a crowdsourced database.

With your GPS location. That's how they figure out the location of those devices.

> _Your_ identity isn't associated with any of it.

As I showed in the link you continue to ignore, an easily deanonymized identifier is associated with that data in order to prevent people from sending junk data.

> Google/Android do this too:

The whole point is that on Android, you can opt out. Android respects users privacy enough to even ask them if they want to opt out on initial setup.

> You can also entirely disable location services if you're uncomfortable with this and that'd stop it.

As I explained in the link, disabling location services means you can't get your location at all. Not so with Android.

> You're weaponizing people's ignorance and the complexity of the technical details.

I'm fixing your and zepto's ignorance in order to protect people's privacy against bad actors like Apple.

> The whole point is that on Android, you can opt out.

The principle of Privacy isn't the act of giving people options (Facebook uses this excuse all the time - "but users had the option! not our fault!").

The principle is designing privacy into the default way people use things. At an ecosystem level the privacy awareness level and incentive structure is clear between the big companies.

Nitpicking and hyperbole isn't helping make your point like you think it is. Do you think my mom knows how to opt out of something like that on Android or if that's even possible? No. But she's IS going to be using Apple Maps by default and have a heightened level of privacy all the same.

Privacy is taking care of your entire customer base and making intelligent default considerations. Not giving nerds a pane of options.

> The principle is designing privacy into the default way people use things.

And Android puts it right there in device setup, allowing them tonset up their privacy preferences correctly the way people use things.

> Do you think my mom knows how to opt out of something like that on Android or if that's even possible?

If she uses Android, she would. It asks her right there in setup. Do you think your mom knows that Apple tracks every location she has ever been, and she can't make them stop? Even you don't know it, and you're arguably tech literate.

The correct way to handle privacy is giving users the choice between usability and privacy. Android does this correctly. Google's Android devices default to usable, which gives you services that are actually useful unlike the iOS apps that are missing functionality, and allows the user to install apps that are actually private and set them as default if they prefer. Other Android distributions default to the other side. iOS is worse both for people who value functionality and for people who value privacy because it gives you defaults that are neither private nor usable that you cannot change.

Even if it were true that Apple always sends a location home, which it is not, if it is anonymous, by definition it is not your location.

But that’s the least of it:

The text you quote in you your linked comment nowhere states that your location is sent to Apple every time it is requested.

That’s not a quibble. It’s much more serious

You wrote comment so you must know that what you just linked doesn’t support your actual claim, so it creates the impression you are doing this to be intentionally misleading.

> if it is anonymous, by definition it is not your location.

That's a really wacky contortion. Whose location is it then?

> nowhere states that your location is sent to Apple every time it is requested.

You're right. It's worse than that. I pointed out in that post that Apple periodically gets your location even if no app requests it. Apple also says that you consent to having your location collected every time another app requests it, so even if it is not true now (which you have not been able to show and which would mean they wouldn't need such a scary consent, so I highly doubt it), it can be true tomorrow.

The actually privacy-respecting Android devices from Amazon and Google do not suffer from this issue. Nor do they require you to tell anybody if you install an app on your device, tied to your identity, which you have once again ignored.

1. Whose location is this: 38.0826966°, -122.0144075°?

2. “so even if it is not true now”

This is you admitting that you actually don’t know that they are doing what you said they were doing.

You actually have no idea what Apple is collecting. You are just speculating based on a legal disclaimer about what they could be doing.

3. “it can be true tomorrow.”

Again you admit that you know that it may not be true.

Asserting something to be true, when you know that you really don’t know whether it is true, is called lying.

You lied when you made the claim earlier in the thread, and you doubled down on that lie by asserting that it was not false, when you were challenged about the truth of your statement.

> Whose location is this: 38.0826966°, -122.0144075°?

That is not the data that is stored. You are deliberately lying because you yourself said that an encrypted identifier is stored with the data. As I already proved to you earlier, that encrypted identifier can be deanonymized by Apple.

> This is you admitting that you actually don’t know that they are doing what you said they were doing.

I showed that they were doing worse than what I had originally claimed, and you ignored that.

> You lied

You're the one who lied in my previous comment. Go see what it says. You can't even argue semantics like you're doing here.

Remember, the whole point is that on Google and Amazon allow you to turn off this data collection entirely, which is significantly better for privacy, and you have not been able to argue otherwise. Worse, you continue to ignore the app data tied to your identity. You are arguing for a bad actor, which makes you look absolutely silly, like somebody who was duped into overpaying for a worse device who feels the need to justify their foolishness to the world.

By the way, here's proof that they're not just making you consent to that scary privacy disclaimer for shits and giggles as you hoped against hope that they did: https://www.wired.com/2011/04/apple-iphone-tracking/

A lot of your statements are either misleading or false but I don't have the energy to engage so I'll let someone else do it.

As a start, I'll paste some information from Apple and TechCrunch around when they rebuilt maps from the ground up in 2018:

---

“We specifically don’t collect data, even from point A to point B,” notes Cue. “We collect data — when we do it — in an anonymous fashion, in subsections of the whole, so we couldn’t even say that there is a person that went from point A to point B. We’re collecting the segments of it. As you can imagine, that’s always been a key part of doing this. Honestly, we don’t think it buys us anything [to collect more]. We’re not losing any features or capabilities by doing this.”

The segments that he is referring to are sliced out of any given person’s navigation session. Neither the beginning or the end of any trip is ever transmitted to Apple. Rotating identifiers, not personal information, are assigned to any data or requests sent to Apple and it augments the “ground truth” data provided by its own mapping vehicles with this “probe data” sent back from iPhones.

Because only random segments of any person’s drive is ever sent and that data is completely anonymized, there is never a way to tell if any trip was ever a single individual. The local system signs the IDs and only it knows to whom that ID refers. Apple is working very hard here to not know anything about its users. This kind of privacy can’t be added on at the end, it has to be woven in at the ground level.

The secret sauce here is what Apple calls probe data. Essentially little slices of vector data that represent direction and speed transmitted back to Apple completely anonymized with no way to tie it to a specific user or even any given trip. It’s reaching in and sipping a tiny amount of data from millions of users instead, giving it a holistic, real-time picture without compromising user privacy.

All of this, of course, is governed by whether you opted into location services, and can be toggled off using the maps location toggle in the Privacy section of settings.

Apple says that this will have a near zero effect on battery life or data usage, because you’re already using the ‘maps’ features when any probe data is shared and it’s a fraction of what power is being drawn by those activities.

----

On the one hand, Google has compiled a petabyte scale database containing detailed day-to-day movements, trips taken, searches made, web sites visited, purchases online and offline, and more, all linked together and associated with our identities.

But Apple requires a credit card to sign up for a developer account so obviously they're much worse.

One of them is collected with user consent on both iOS and Android. The other is a problem only with iOS, and you cannot opt out.

The Arizona lawsuit tracks the many ways that Google manufactures "consent", from deliberately confusing UIs, to pushing software updates that automatically change settings without informing the user. It even documents cases of Google engineers who thought they had opted out, but were not.

And this is ignoring the tons of non-consensual tracking, such as purchasing credit card history, the DoubleClick/GTags/Analytics that infest the web, etc.

Maybe you can get an Android phone and thoroughly deGooglefy it by flashing LineageOS or whatever. I'll give you that, you can't do that with an iPhone. If that's your bar, then so be it. iPhones are not for you.

But the vast vast majority of users will have their privacy better protected by Apple's location services, which don't track you, than Google's pushy and deceptive tracking.

> The Arizona lawsuit tracks the many ways that Google manufactures "consent"

That lawsuit is completely irrelevant to the question of which devices provide more privacy.

> Maybe you can get an Android phone and thoroughly deGooglefy it by flashing LineageOS or whatever.

You don't have to do that. Just don't use apps that use Google services. Done. It's that simple. On Apple devices, you have no choice but to give up your privacy. Worse, you give up your privacy to use garbage services that are less useful than their Google and Amazon counterparts.

>Apple doesn't need your data, plus, they have a real and honest commitment to privacy.

Since you opened that door: Apple shares personal user data with the Chinese government. Call it what you will, but it's not a 'real honest commitment to privacy'.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/03/apple-privacy...

I fear the day Amazon buys a home security company and tries to develop a crossover device.

https://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/halflife7283/images/b/b...

They’re well on their way: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.cnet.com/google-amp/news/...

“We got the test results back. It says you’re a horrible person. We weren’t even testing for that.”

Related, but if you want a non spying speaker (i.e a network connected speaker with no mic) - Sonos make a mic free version of their entry level speaker: One SL. It supports Apple Airplay 2 and two One SLs can be paired for studio sound.

However, it is more expensive than the HomePod mini, not wireless (needs to be plugged in), & although it integrates tightly with iOS it can’t be as smooth as HomePod probably is (I haven’t tried the HomePod myself).

Sonos spies on your usage instead of your audio, and is nowhere near the Homepod in terms of sound quality.

Huh? Seriously? Maybe the little Sonos One isn't, but they make some hardware that rather clearly outperforms the Homepod.

Well maybe not the ~$400 Homepod, but who knows how it will stack up against the $99 one.

Sure there’s some level of tracking, but that wasn’t my point. My point is that it’s mic free

Also, Sonos speakers from my research outperform HomePod in terms of sound - but if you have data to suggest otherwise feel free to share

Can't comment about the sound quality.

As far as privacy however, I definitely understand people's worry about the mic, but honestly I think it distracts from really looking at the data tracking practices and how much data is collected even without a mic. See [0]

I'm curious about Apple's data tracking, but based on their marketing page alone it definitely feels like they've given it a big consideration and it's not an afterthought. I cannot say the same for Sonos unfortunately. (I assume Google/Alexa etc are worse, but I don't use those, and didn't dig into it).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24680614

The HomePod Mini also needs wall power, so it’s just as wireless as the Sonos speakers.

I just made another comment down the thread[1], but Sonos spies on you plenty, even without a mic.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24680614

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24773717

I only housesat for someone with one so my experience is limited. My take was audio quality is WAY better, so if your primary desire is for a speaker it blows the Google/Amazon ones out of the water. BUT Siri is less useful so if you want more voice-control/smart assistant stuff it feels much more limited.

It's actually really decent at the use cases it's explicitly designed for, but completely falls apart if you have any edge cases. Bear in mind though, these are what Apple thinks of as edge cases like "What if I prefer Spotify over Apple Music," not necessarily a reasonable person's idea of an edge case.

I, personally, didn't notice much of a difference between the HomePod and the Sonos 5 though I know people who say the HomePod is markedly better. The Sonos, however, has a line-in and works with an Alexa unit if you have it (though, strangely, it's not built in). If not for the privacy sensitivity with Alexa I'd probably go for the Sonos, but the privacy and integration with the rest of the Apple ecosystem kind of tips it back to Apple for me.

Homekit might limit you as far as hardware goes, but if you’re handy you can run a Home Assistant instance and connect Siri to just about anything: Z-wave sensors, Logitech Harmony Hub, non-HomeKit light bulbs, etc.

If you're going for the HomePod (vs. the HomePod mini), buy it only if you have Apple Music or iTunes Match. It's really not worth it otherwise. I have a Google Home, Google Home mini, and an Echo Dot (got all of them for free except the HomePods).

Assistant wise, you'd get better results from Google Assistant/Alexa. Apple has been lagging and playing catchup (from not having multiple timers in the initial HomePod release to adding voice recognition last year when Google had it earlier). The answers are more limited like your iOS Siri (don't expect anything better). Even worse, it seems like HomePod's Siri backend is different than say an iPad's which generally means it's a generation behind. For instance, the HomePod doesn't really support continuous conversations/follow-up questions.

Siri is ok finding popular music, but if you ask it to play the "The A-List: K-Pop playlist" vs. "The A-List: Pop Music" for instance, it's a tossup on which it chooses dependent on the alignment of the planets. The same goes for musician names where if it kinda sounds like the more popular musician, it will tend to choose the more popular one. Furthermore, if you have a specific version of a song (say acoustic/live version), then the HomePod always tends to pick the most popular version of the song even if you say "acoustic" or any other hints.

There are "Shortcuts" on the HomePod. You can use it to add Todos to third party apps (if you don't want to use the Apple Reminders integration) or play a podcast from a third party player from your iPhone/iPad. Not as useful as Alexa skills and every now and then it takes some magical phrase to correctly activate them. The main problem with Siri beyond lacking knowledge is that Siri lacks consistency. While it's ambitious in letting you say anything versus the narrower "scripted keywords" that Alexa understands, if you say something one day that it perfectly understands and repeated it exactly a week later, you have no idea if Siri will still understand you. I read about this complaint before against Siri, but having experienced it more than a few times now, it is incredibly frustrating. And Siri sometimes (unintentionally) mocks you by repeating all the main parts of your request back to you correctly, but it does the wrong thing.

Hardware wise, the HomePod sounds better than a Google Home, Google Home mini, and Echo Dot. But of course, the others are cheaper. Two HomePods do sound better than one. Besides the better output, the mics are significantly more sensitive even in a loud environment. If you're putting the HomePod in a noisy kitchen or playing music loudly, then a HomePod can pick up your voice without you shouting at it.

The Apple TV integration has gotten better, but even with two HomePods, a relatively cheap home theater setup sounds better and can be used for all your TV content instead of just from your Apple devices. If you place the HomePods right next to the TV at roughly the same height, they sound good but if you move them too low/high or around the room, it does sound "off". The whole spatial two HomePod thing kinda does work for music in a room, but for TV content, it does not.

Really the other assistants are as good if not better than the HomePod, then the only distinguishing (non-privacy) feature is if you want a premium and pretty good way to listen to Apple Music. Maybe a few more music services which hopefully will be available soon. I don't regret buying the HomePods at all because I do like listening to music on them, but all of the assistant and "smart" tech is available on your iPhone if it can hear you.

Curious how much market share this homepod line has. My gut feel is that Amazon has the lion's share, followed by Google and everyone else has crumbs at the bottom.

Siri lives in on your wrist, in your pocket, or even in your ears with AirPods. It's a pretty significant difference. When you can access Siri anywhere, you only need to put speakers out where you want music.

Google and Amazon need to work harder to get presence so they push them out using aggressive pricing.

I have the same options with the Google assistant/Chromecast etc. That doesn't answer the question of what the homepod line's market share is.

"Speaker" market share is irrelevant when 30-50% of iPhone owners have speakers in their ear or on their wrist.

You appear to be intentionally obfuscating for whatever reason. I found something from 2019 that appears to show Apple in a distant third place, with Amazon as #1 in the USA and some supporting research showing similar trends world-wide. [1][2]

So yeah, as I expected it's Amazon's game, Google trailing but a strong presence, and Apple virtually missing from the race.

[1] https://www.macrumors.com/2019/08/08/homepod-smart-speaker-m...

[2] https://macdailynews.com/2020/02/13/apple-homepod-took-4-7-s...

It's true, I have so many places that I can set timers.

Beyond that piece of functionality, Siri is still a very developmentally disabled assistant and has never proven useful in my experience.

Globally or in the US? Because they only sell the HomePod in a handful of countries.

I think it is best to understand this as two different markets. Amazon Echo and Google Home devices are mainly about their smart assistants. Homepod is for music, and it competes more directly with Sonos devices.

after today's presentation i'm pretty sure that HomePod Mini is the Apple answer to Amazon Echo and Google Home.

Maybe the HomePod (original) can compete with the Sonos One or Five at sound level but not in terms of features people are looking for listening music such as: virtually all music streaming services available, integration with all the remaining Sonos products for Home cinema or for Home sound system.

To me Homepod Mini is after the home assistant market. The HomePod (original) well it seemed like a shot in the dark now it will most likely get the Homepod mini features.

I also think the market is pretty saturated if not about to taper. Amazon and Google have been all over this market for years and there's just no big value prop. 99% of the use is just as a smart speaker. I'd bet very few do home automation. Some are doing a bit of voice commerce if they're bought into the Amazon ecosystem. Apple doesn't offer much beyond cool product design. If someone was going to bust open this space it would be Spotify.

I'm bummed the didn't release a smart display. We're an iPhone/iPad/Mac/Apple TV family, but the Nest Hub Max has become a really great part of our lives. When combined with the Nest Hello, we get video of the front door in the kitchen when the doorbell rings, and the Google Homes in the bathrooms also notify us. We have a couple HomePods that we tried to use, but there's no doorbell integration we could find, and believe it or not, I really like having a photo display and visual cues when we interact with the kitchen device. I would spend the money to transition to an Apple smart display/doorbell and these HomePods, but they have stubbornly refused to produce the product so many others are selling. I just don't get it.

From the video intro, it looks like the power cord is hardwired into the device. I would have thought it was going to be USB-C.

I'd prefer to swap out the cable in case it comes with a standard 6' and I want to tuck the speaker next to an outlet on a shelf.

It's unfortunate that isn't battery powered/more portable.

I laughed out loud when they mentioned the intelligibility of Siri.

Every 6 months or so I try Siri and am shocked it still can’t understand basic things my kids are using Alexa for.

I think the killer feature is the Intercom

My initial reaction was the same — maybe we'd get one for our kid's room. But then I saw that Intercom supports all iOS devices, so probably we'd just put an old iPhone or iPad in there instead.

But it's not 100% clear if when they say Intercom supports all iOS/WatchOS/MacOS devices, they mean you can communicate from one of those devices to a HomePod, or whether you can communicate amongst any of those devices (no HomePod required).

Most likely if the iOS device is new enough to have iOS14 and Intercom support, you can sell it for more than $99 and get the Homepod =)

We have a first-gen iPhone SE that runs iOS 14 fine but probably wouldn't fetch more than $99+tax, especially when the hassle factor is accounted for. Also, it's nice to have a backup phone around the house, in case something happens to one of our primary phones.

I just asked Siri on my iPad to “tell everyone to go to bed” and it told me you can only intercom from one HomePod to another.

From Apple's website:

> Intercom offers a quick and easy way to send messages to everyone in a household — from one HomePod to another, or across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, and CarPlay.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/10/apple-introduces-home...

Still not working on my iPhone. Same message.

Most likely it'll require a point release for iOS to bring the features to other devices.

...but the Homepod Mini will be limited availability like the original Homepod, so I won't be getting it anyway.

I think I read that Intercom only instantly plays on HomePods; anywhere else, you get a notification you have to explicitly tap to hear the message.

I was expecting a refresh of the HomePod too, though rumors mentioned only the HomePod mini. I also thought that a price of $79 would’ve been quite attractive compared to the $99 price. Just have to wait for holiday sales, I guess.

I can’t wait for reviews and comparisons on the sound of HomePod vs. HomePod mini.

> I also thought that a price of $79 would’ve been quite attractive compared to the $99

How did you arrive at that? Is $20 really the deciding factor for you?

Probably not relevant to what GP is trying to argue, but it would likely mean they’d price it at CAD $99 instead of CAD $129. Fairy significant psychological difference there.

It's not about $20, it's about 20%. If you're thinking about buying 4 or 6 of these things, 20% adds up.

Also for some people, $20 does matter. Lots of people are out of work — unemployment hasn't been this high in decades.

Come with the power adapter. With the size constraints, I guess it was not possible to have it built in.

Looks like the Echo Dot that was just released a few weeks ago: https://www.amazon.com/All-New-Echo-Dot-4th-Gen/dp/B07XJ8C8F...

They look to both be almost exactly the same size- 3.9 inches in diameter.

Echo Dot: 100 x 100 x 89 mm HomePod Mini: 98 x 98 x 84mm

1/2 the price

With the prime day sale, it's even a smaller fraction.

However, there's probably a bit of a difference with the amount of on board processing that the two devices can do.

For example, my iPhone can do voice to text while on airplane mode.

{guessing} Similar on board processing would allow a HomePod Mini to work with HomeKit without needing to go to the cloud - Amazon working with Hue does need to go out to the cloud to get that voice to text to command layer. {/guessing}

I trust apple with privacy, I don't trust Amazon. That extra money is well worth it imo

Woohoo, finally a cheaper homepod! I was looking forward to something like this to be able to remotely control my Home Assistant setup through Homebridge Hue.

Without having dedicated Apple TV/iPad/Homepod at home, you can't access devices in Home app, even if you have VPN.

This meant that even at home I had to unlock the phone and wait for it to connect to Wifi before Siri would do anything with devices. This delay made it impractical to use Siri for controlling devices through Siri.

Maybe it's possible to make it work with VPN by also forwarding some autodiscovery packets, but I'm not sure.

Am I right in thinking this doesn’t work as a speaker for your living room unless you do everything through Apple TV? Is there a way to use it with a PS4 at all for example?

These look great, and much cheaper than I expected. I already have a couple of the big HomePods and they're great, but I couldn't quite bring myself to buy any more for rooms that I really just want the smart assistant stuff in. But for this price I'll pick up three I think.

I'm sure my wife is going to drive me up the wall with the intercom feature though!

This doesn't appear discussed in the copy: does anyone know if HomePod/(Mini) has been updated to be friendlier towards households with more than one adult user in them (families, roommates, whatever)? I initially found the HomePod alluring, but that it could pair only with one iPhone (and thus effectively one user) was a real turn-off when I last looked into it.

They've had it for a year or so. From the HomePod site:

A personalized experience. For each person in the family. Together with Siri, HomePod can learn and recognize up to six different voices and create a personalized listening experience for everybody at home. So when they say “Hey Siri, play some music” they’ll get a mix of songs customized just for them — picked from Apple Music based on their listening history and personal preferences. And with Personal Requests, they can access their own messages, reminders, lists, and calendars, and make and receive phone calls.

Oh, that's a significant improvement; thanks for the clarification! I may consider one of these down the road.

I believe I saw something about voice recognition to route requests to multiple iPhones, yes

We own four of the standard HomePods. They are supposed to be stereo pairable. They are, but several times a week they either plain don’t work, lose the channel, or play different music on each channel.

Generally speaking, while the sound is excellent that user interface and implementation are atrocious.

Not much buzz about the sound quality yet, but it looks like a solid attempt. Force cancelling passive radiators with what looks like back suspension too, but I wonder if it will have vertical axis vibration issues if they arent doing something about that from the speaker driver itself.

All these devices look so beautiful until you add the unsightly power cords.

Cute, an Apple themed Google Home. Is it still the case that Spotify won’t work with it? Because that really makes the device worthless to me and many others like me.

There are no power cords in any of the images I've found yet.

In the presentation there’s a cable when it’s placed on the kitchen’s counter. But other than that the lack of cables caught my eye as well!

Could these be used as conference room speakerphones/mics?

I have to wonder if Apple will ever release a sound bar or the like, for Sonos-style 'sound bar plus two rear speakers' surround sound rather than just stereo.

Get 2 of them if you are gonna do it, it sounds amazing for original HomePod and for 200 for a pair that’s the setup you want

I doubt the HomePod Mini at 99$ has any good sound quality compared to the Sonos One or original HomePod. Except if you want to use the Apple ecosystem features in different rooms i dont see the benefit of getting 2.

Even if this thing were to respect one's privacy, it still normalises the intrusion by other smart speakers.

Do these work together with the old HomePod?

"Hey Siri, where are my keys?"

...

Nope. Not useful enough yet.

> Private and secure.

As long as it's sending data to Apple, it's anything but private.

It's also the same price as a braided solo loop watch band.

Yes, but Siri

This is so me-too. The only newish feature is a better privacy argument.

This is a full 5 years after the Amazon Echo was introduced.

This just adds to my creeping feeling that innovation is dead at Apple.

The big difference is seamless integration with other Apple products. This is why they’ll take market share, it will just work with your iPhone better than the echo does.

A limiting factor is Siri. It took them 8 years to allow asking to play a particular song on Spotify.

Usually the first thing I say to Siri is 'Hey Google' so it goes to Google Assistant.

I'm not really sure what "seamless integration" is left. I (and my friends that have similar devices) use smart speakers for power control, getting the weather, playing music, and setting timers/alarms. It doesn't take an sole-source ecosystem to make that work well.

I agree with this "innovation is dead" sentiment. Apple used to be pioneers and futurists. Now they focus on retaining their well-defined market. This almost makes sense, except they have such a tremendous amount of cash they can afford to take risks.

It’s nice, but I wish it had a line out jack for an external amp. I would love to replace my Echo Input with one, and keep the nice speakers I have...

Oh wait, it’s not available in my country...

Both of my comments were factual. Why the downvotes?

so much apple-fanboy on here. Grab a good second hand hi-fi set (cheap this days, everyone wants to be "smart"), play your own cd`s, vinyls, *.flac or other good quality digital media) and you will get a good sound...

HomePod mini works effortlessly with your Apple devices.

and only apple devices.

Burned myself on apple years ago, got myself an ipod, learned my lesson with itunes, sold it, never come back.

Sounds okish and very nicely priced.

Too bad it seemingly relies so much on Siri. I haven’t been able to make Siri play me any music what so ever, despite multiple attempts. Once I’ve started playing, I can’t even make Siri skip tracks forward or backwards. Absolutely worthless.

Caveat: not using Apple Music.

I don’t get it. Siri is the absolute worst compared to Google assistant, the only compelling reason to buy the HomePod is for sound quality.

So unless this has some other redeeming quality over “Siri in your living room”, I don’t think it will sell well. The original HomePod regularly went on sale for 33% off already.

I'm curious to know what 90% of people do with their home assistant devices. I have a Google Home. I know it can do a huge array of things, but almost all I do with it is play music, control lights, and set timers. Siri can do all of those things.

For me it's that plus voice-controlled NPR or audiobooks while doing other things (often cooking) and weather for later in the day (while getting ready in the morning). It'd also be temperature control, but I'm stuck with a millivolt thermostat and apparently nobody's interest in selling to us gas fireplace people.

I have a couple of Echo devices, predominantly I use them for lighting control, alarms, timers, speakers for music and podcasts when cooking, paging out messages round the house rather than yelling down the stairs. My six year old son has picked up that he can use them to call me despite not having a phone of his own, so I also occasionally get calls when out and about asking for urgent Zelda help.

For one, I can use them as a speaker for my non-Apple devices. My household is almost entirely Apple products, but considering I have a few devices I would like to occasionally pair like a PC, it makes more sense to buy a home assistant/speak device from Google or Amazon that will work with everything I own, rather than a Homepod that will work with 90% of what I own, even if I like everything else about the Homepod more.

That was my exact thought too. I'm an owner of both an Echo, and a few Echo Dots. The Dots aren't great for music, but the Echo is actually really decent.

The name is a big mistake (they should call it just "HomePod", and the larger one "HomePod Max / Studio". Right now they are forcing people to compare it to the $30 smart assistants by the other two. It's not evident from the name that the HomePod "Mini" isn't competing with the Google Home Mini or Amazon Echo Dot.

Google / Amazon / Apple

Low end: Home Mini / Echo Dot / None, but people will think HomePod Mini sits here

Mid: Home / Echo / HomePod Mini

High: Home Max / Echo Studio / HomePod

Siri is slowly catching up and my bet it will become really good soon. If you want to get this, get it for privacy and better sound quality.

Nest Audio was recently released and for the same price as the Homepod Mini. Curious to see how they stack up sound quality wise.. if the Nest holds it's own like I think it will I really see _no_ compelling reason for the Homepod.

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