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
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
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
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 not sure if I have just adapted my commands to ones that work, if Siri is improving, or it's both.
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!
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?
"why not" is quite a good question though. I will ponder, thanks.
Why did you have a CD player if cassettes worked for your? Was rewinding the cassette really too much trouble? Kids these days...
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.
It doesn’t answer all the same answers as the Google Assistant but I feel like that’s worth the privacy trade off.
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.
One of the things I appreciate about the HomePod is its single power cord. Super neat (as in actually neat not ‘cool’).
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).
Once your Product is out of warranty they have very little interest in helping you.
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...
Going by what you feel the news cycle should have done may not be reliable for a less popular product like HomePod.
Some reviews:
https://www.flatpanelshd.com/review.php?subaction=showfull&i...
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/6/16976906/apple-homepod-rev...