HomePod has been jailbroken with checkra1n | Hacker News Reader

HomePod has been jailbroken with checkra1n

yalujailbreak.net

227 pointswittypineapple168 comments

I hope this leads to some way besides Airplay to play arbitrary audio with no delay. If Apple had just included support for Bluetooth audio (or God forbid, an aux jack) I would've bought two full-sized Homepods to use as computer speakers two months ago.

What's the trouble with buying any of the competition, if you want those features?

You can get a Klipsch R51 PM for quite a bit less than the price of two HomePods. Better audio, Bluetooth, aux, optical, USB, even phono pre-amp in case you have a turntable.

The aesthetics mainly.

HomePods, for all their flaws, are very decent speakers in a small footprint. They blend in and are very minimalist, in my opinion, and that's important to me.

Depends on your taste, I guess. For me this is quite minimalist:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41A-xmDb8nL...

Yes, it depends on taste. Those are just boxes...

They look like the sort of pack-in speakers you got free with a Packard Bell computer in 1993.

They look like reasonable bookcase speakers to me, not enough hard gray plastic with yellowing from heat to be vintage OEM like these:

https://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NzY4WDEwMjQ=/z/Bi0AAOSw5cRZICJN/$...

Not to dogpile, but do you remember the 90s? In 1993, computer hardware that wasn't SGI wasn't allowed to be any color besides Beige, to the point that in the late 90s having a black PC was a design trend instead of the default.

do you remember the 90s?

I do remember the 90's. I wasn't a fan of it.

computer hardware that wasn't SGI wasn't allowed to be any color besides Beige

I used to dream about one day pounding away on SGI gear. I eventually (early/mid-2000's) got moved to an office with meteorologists that had Indigos and Octanes, and I think Irisseseses. Blue was awesome. But then they all got replaced by generic Dell machines. Ick.

I remember back before all computers looked the same. Back when keyboards were vastly different between models, and would have blue or red or brown or very rarely green keys. Standardization? That was for the Telex at work. Computers were going to free us from that tyranny. Except they didn't.

If what you really want from your computing experience is freedom in the form of a colorful keyboard, there's options out there for you. Perhaps you would like to start with some cute pastels? https://thekey.company/products/dsa-magic-girl-keycaps-round...

> computer hardware that wasn't SGI wasn't allowed to be any color besides Beige

Not true. Digital (DEC) PCs were "almost white" (maybe stightly off-white but still approaching a cream, not beige).

Hard to find a picture that shows this without having aged but this does a good job: https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/userdata/images/large/68...

Note the marked difference between the beige floppy drive and the case.

Also: https://www.speedhelp.net/Bilder/Computer/ISA/P1/digital_ven...

That seems pretty not white to me.

I personally would not want these monstrosities anywhere in my house.

There is a reason they call those "bookshelf" speakers. No great place you can put them outside of an office or a dedicated space you can give them enough separation.

for all their flaws, are very decent speakers in a small footprint

This is an understatement.

I bought one just yesterday, and was very very surprised by how small it is. It just blends in unobtrusively with the room. It's like it's not even there. A pretty good step on the route to making computers blend in with the world.

If you're a tech nerd who is OK with wires and blinking lights all over your home, this won't be important to you. But if you are someone, or live with someone, for whom the aesthetics of your home are important, this is a very important feature.

I'm six months into owning one and am still blow away by the quality of the sound.

And yes, the aesthetics. It just looks good. Actively good.

They do sound incredible. Though I don’t think I’ll ever own a voice assistant.

I keep Siri disabled on mine, and I use a Raspberry Pi for cloudless voice control. They’re pricy for dumb speakers, but worth it IMO.

How are you using your Raspberry Pi to control your HomePod?

It's a convoluted setup I'm not sure I'd recommend to anyone else! :) Still tinkering on it, but current rig is a Respeaker Core [0] running voice2json [1], which sends MQTT commands to a Mac Mini running mopidy [2], and the audio is routed through Airfoil [3] to multiple AirPlay speakers. (In theory, a Pi could drive all that directly, using shairport [4] rather than Airfoil.)

The major shortcoming is that Airfoil doesn't support Airplay 2, so it doesn't take full advantage of HomePod stereo pairing; and while the sync is perfect, it comes at the cost of massive lag (5+ seconds). Sounds great though!

[0] https://respeaker.io/rk3229_core/

[1] https://voice2json.org/

[2] https://mopidy.com/

[3] https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/

[4] https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync

That sounds incredible, thanks for posting. Do you not use the sync at all with that kind of lag?

The speakers sync perfectly with each other for pure audio, but the setup is definitely unusable for video or games due to the sync delay. It seems to work okay switching back and forth between AirPlay 1 and 2, so I can temporarily take over from Airfoil and use them as an AP2 stereo pair, in which case they sync well for video.

Supposedly Airplay 2 was cracked about a year ago, but there still aren't any usable third-party implementations. Really a shame that Apple hasn't opened up the standard.

I don't understand your example, those Klipsch are just speakers, you'll still need an amplifier and bluetooth receiver.

This feels like comparing apples (no pun intended) with oranges.

No, they are powered speakers - amplifier integrated in the case - which supports bluetooth and the other inputs I mentioned.

They are speakers with a built in amp, bluetooth, and various other inputs.

My bad, I was looking at the R-51M, not the R-51PM. The 'M' is a passive speaker, the 'PM' has build in amplifier and bt

I think they're (one of?) the only smart speakers on the market to automatically calibrate themselves to the room. I'm sure it's just some EQ and maybe a bit of phase adjustment, but the speaker doing it automatically for you whenever you reposition it is a nontrivial feature that makes the audio sound noticably better than much of the competition.

The Sonos Move has "Auto Trueplay", which is the same, and allows Bluetooth playback in a "dumb speaker" mode. Weirdly, not at the same time - Auto Trueplay is only supported in WiFi mode.

Does Sonos still spy on people? ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24680614 )

Everything is spying on us. Privacy was traded for “free” stuff.

That's a weird thing to say in an article about the Homepod which very definitively does not spy on anyone who owns one.

Google Home Max also does the auto calibration thing and also has an Aux jack and bluetooth support.

OP may also care about privacy.

Do you have the homepod code or are you just going by what a trillion dollar company that does plenty of shady things advertises to you?

Do you the source code for the microcode running on your CPU or are you just going by the corporate advertising? :)

Obviously we have to put some trust in corporations if we're not to live a purely analog existence, and so it stands to reason that we can put a little more trust in a company whose business model is selling premium hardware (and which increasingly sees privacy as a competitive advantage) than a company whose business model is selling your personal data to advertisers.

I agree with your sentiment that there is no absolute here; however there is a difference if the whole machine is a blackbox or just the CPU and is sold by a listed corporation that is only accountable to their shareholders.

They see privacy as a marketing advantage, however they collect data as they see fit. It is also important to note, that they are indeed in the ad business and even if it is no match to their hardware business they are profit maximizing. So even if they don't sell your data now this can change and your record on that big corp will become known to whoever pays enough.

Side question: Does Google directly sell personal data to advertisers? (For Google applies what I said above anyway)

apple makes 1/100th the revenue from ads that google does, so it's very clear which is abusing user data to do so

That’s a non sequitur.

You don't need the code. Just hook it up to your network and use Wireshark or something similar to see when it phones home.

Does it work without network connection? (just curious)

Yup! Not 100% Bluetooth works but I can confirm AUX working without a network.

If you are technically inclined, this isn't that hard to do. You will need a calibrated mic, but result is you can do Sonos style adjustments to calibrate for a room on any set of speakers:

https://www.hifiberry.com/docs/hifiberryos/hifiberryos-room-...

https://www.hifiberry.com/shop/boards/hifiberry-dac-dsp/

They maintain a list of supported microphones.

You can even bake the configuration into the HifiBerry DSP once done, it doesn't need the Pi attached to apply the room correction. The included HifiBerry OS software has a setup process that makes calibrating the room with mic just as easy as the Sonos system.

I was huge into Sonos ecosystem, but recent actions with how they treated owners of earlier equipment have left me cold on it. This works forever once set, assuming you don't move the speakers. Works with any old speaker/amp combo you can output a phono/optical signal to.

its purely opinion etc, but I am just as happy with results from this system with nice pair of bookshelf speakers as I was a pair of Sonos 1s, and it will work as long as the board lasts.

I am shocked hifiberryOS hasn't found more fans, its really impressive for what it does for little money with a supported DSP. The hardest part of this is cloning an image to an SD card, rest is plug and play. You could eBay the calibration mic once done too. If you intend to move your speakers a lot this is no good of course, but my experience is people often set these things in one place in their home.

I do have a solid calibration mic and have done this a handful of times with different speakers, but like you've said, I'm very much technically inclined and wouldn't expect the average person to be able to do it.

It's probably just a matter of time before pretty much every speaker can self-calibrate to some degree. Most mid-range bluetooth speakers already have a microphone and some basic DSP abilities, which is really all you need.

HifiberryOS is new to me and looks pretty nifty - I'll have to check it out.

Yeah its pretty crazy how advanced its sound calibration is. It uses its microphones (six of them) to measure the response of the sound in the room according to where its placed, and adjusts itself on the fly so that it sounds as good as it does.

So if you pick up your homepod and move it in your room - say from in the middle of the table to near a wall, it will change its sound profile (after about half a minute) to lower bass and minimize reflective frequencies from the wall. Having an omnidirectional speaker blast into the wall would not sound good without that kinda calibration, as you would get reflective sounds from the wall and too much bass.

It does further calibration like this one put in a stereo pair to make sure _both_ homepods are outputting the best sound together.

The audiophile equivalent of this is getting a good mic, hook it up to your $5k stereo, and then use the manufacturer provided software to calibrate it. Then never move anything around your room again or hang new art of throw down a rug, because if you do that you have to recalibrate again.

The homepod is really some crazy audio engineering. One of apple patents describes some of stuff that probably went into the Homepod [1]. There is also a fun review [2] that was posted on the reddit audiophile back when the homepods first came out.

1 - http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=.... 2 - https://www.reddit.com/r/audiophile/comments/7wwtqy/apple_ho...

One feature I like about HomePods and Airplay is stereo pairing. If you have two, you can link them, stream to one, and they automatically play in Stereo. Can other non-Apple alternatives do anything like that?

https://support.apple.com/guide/homepod/set-up-stereo-pairin...

Sonos; KEF LSX

Denon HEOS

My computer speakers live on a bookshelf in the center of my apartment, so I don't want them to sound muddy from the side that they're not facing. I wanted the Homepods because they're omni-directional, they sound great, and I think they're really cute! I would've happily paid extra for that set of traits, but Apple seems determined not to have me as a customer.

What I ended up doing is getting two of the Bose Home Speaker 500, which has sideways-firing speakers. I leave them in aux mode all the time and arranged them so that no matter which side of the shelf you're on, the left audio will be on your left side and the right audio will be on your right side.

>but Apple seems determined not to have me as a customer.

What do you mean by that? It sounds like the Homepod, or even a pair of HomePods Mini, would be perfect for your situation.

For me, WAF. I have traditional speakers/amp but they sit in my office. Homepods are unobtrusive, and I don't have to worry about positioning/directing them.

While bluetooth would be nice, I find Airplay a much better option. I currently hate trying to use bluetooth headphones/speakers between multiple devices and having to go to. settings to manually "reconnect" them. (Yes, even with Airpods).

No delay but Bluetooth audio? Is that that even possible?

I use Bluetooth audio a lot when only listening to media but try and use Bluetooth headphones while playing a MIDI instrument. For me I struggle when I try to do that.

My headphones are Audio-Technica ATH-M50xBT. They support Bluetooth 5.0

https://www.audio-technica.com/en-gb/ath-m50xbt

I’ve been using them with a wire connection to my MPC X when doing music but a couple of days ago I used my MPC X in controller mode connected to my 2018 MacBook Air, and used Bluetooth Audio to see what that’d be like. As mentioned I found the delay to be too high. I tried to lower the sample buffer size in the MPC X software on the computer but with lower settings I got popping and clicking sounds.

Besides, the buffer size settings in the MPC software were not the main contributor to the delay AFAICT. The default setting of 512 samples, when used at 48kHz will mean 10.67 ms of delay, which according to some sources online is at about the upper limit of what you’d want when playing an instrument. And some sources say that for sounds with a steep attack (e.g. drums) you’d preferably actually have sub 6-7 ms delay.

But Bluetooth 5.0 adds a minimum of 32 ms of delay according to what I read online, and they also say that more likely it will be as much as a couple of hundred ms delay.

All I know for sure is that when I tried to play instruments through Bluetooth audio using the headphones I mentioned and the MPC X connected in controller mode to my computer with the MPC software, the delay was sufficiently high that it became difficult to play.

Whereas with a cable connection to my MPC X in standalone mode with the same headphones the delay is low enough that I personally don’t notice it, even when doing drum sounds.

For hardware from Apple's walled garden, here's some numbers on AirPods latency:

> What about results? The first-generation AirPods, which use Apple’s W1 chip, measure latency of 274 ms. Second-generation AirPods, released earlier this year and powered by Apple’s newer H1 chip, drop the latency to 178 ms. And AirPods Pro, which use the same H1 chip, are even better at 144 ms.

https://9to5mac.com/2019/12/22/airpods-latency-test/

That's pretty shocking considering hardware from 100 years ago could do the same with sub-microsecond latency. 100,000x worse!

You can't compare wired to wireless, they both and different advantages and disadvantages.

Yes, and my car burns more gasoline than horses used to

I think what OP meant is that Homepod only works using the Airplay protocol, where the delay is 2 seconds. Very few macOS apps support Airplay 2 which cuts it down significantly.

That's what I hope this will help accomplish. The homepod has a ton of power and could easily run additional applications / protocols.

What do you mean by "no delay" ?

If you mean the delay between asking Siri to 'play music' and music to start, that is annoying and should be fixed by Apple engineers at some point. Siri is just way too slow on the Homepod. I typically use my phone and just manage what is playing that way, which is faster and has a better UI anyways.

If you mean playing something with minimal latency between your source and the speaker, that is just not going to happen with any sort of speaker over wireless. Airplay is pretty good in that regard, but you can never beat just plugging in a line out to a full fledged self powered speaker, like the KEF LS50s or LSX.

Can the link be switched to https://twitter.com/_L1ngL1ng_/status/1329552467240116236, the actual source of the news?

Especially since the source sucks, with “gems” like

> Every Apple device, including the T2 security chip, has been jailbroken with checkra1n so far.

and “jailbreaking makes your device insecure”.

Jailbreaking DOES break the security model though. Its literally performed to "break the jail". It takes a locked down system and removes the locks, resulting in a system that is more open; to yourself and an attacker alike.

Jailbreaking uses vulnerabilitities, but doesn't (by itself, of course it allows the user to) introduce any. It even allows you to patch the vulnerability behind you before Apple does officially (see JailbreakMe, 3.0 IIRC).

My understanding, though I'm not sure, is that a "traditional" jailbreak (installing Cydia and such) allows all apps to read/write from the full file system.

Usually, yes, but there is no need to actually do that. I would be surprised if the jailbreak presented here installs Cydia.

>Jailbreaking uses vulnerabilitities, but doesn't (by itself, of course it allows the user to) introduce any.

What? The entire point of jailbreaking is to leverage specific kinds of vulnerabilities, often only exploitable via physical access (a tether and DFU mode is typical), in order to root the system so that afterwards other stuff can be done with it more conveniently. Sometimes this even necessitates further security compromises. To use checkra1n itself as an example, last I checked in order to use it on A11 devices (iPhone 8/8+/X) with iOS 14 you must give up on using any passcode on the device via the "Skip A11 BPR Check" option.

It's certainly worthy to note that none of this should inherently be necessary. Apple could offer power users the option to load their own root certificate alongside Apple's, and then sign and run things with the full iOS technical security model from there. Apple is mixing business desire with security desire. Further, many of the threat vectors introduced by jailbreaking are ultimately the same we deal with on the PC, so they're "new to an iDevice" but something technical users can often mitigate. And it can even offer new security options sometimes to go along with it too!

But none of that means that jailbreaking isn't introducing new threat vectors to the system. It is. It's just that it's often worth it to many of us given the alternatives is all.

While it should not be inherently required, in practice it is. When not jailbroken the only people you can assume within reason to break your privacy/security are Apple (due to bugs or bad design) and Nation States. Apps, both private and on the store, do only what is allowed (which for instance, before iOS 14 was far looser re clipboard, microphone, camera, and location).

The option of installing a root cert now requires users to refuse to install root certs at work or for some App required to get cheaper insurance or whatever crazy idea you could think of. Users would need to know what is possible (at that point anything) and also have the power and incentives to refuse.

Checkra1n for A11 isn’t really considered to be usable for that reason, so it’s not a very good example.

Jailbreaking by definition introduces avenues for exploitation against what device security requires. Apple pays millions of dollars for security staff, auditing and security research.

It might actually be billions at this point, since they bake in some features into the silicon itself. That being said, Apple’s device security model is has many places where it is not aligned with what most people want. KTRR is a good example of a mitigation that has no effect in practice for preventing most exploits, and it’s just one of the instances where Apple tries to protect their software over you, the user.

The fact that jailbreaks exist show that the security was broken when you got there, kind of like when you pick a house’s lock you’re not “reducing its security” unless you choose to throw away the lock entirely. You could (and many jailbreaks do) add a better lock.

Do you have examples of how these better locks work? I'm interested in how these jailbreaks patch over the exploits that led to them working in the first place.

Sure, here's one: http://cydia.saurik.com/package/pdfpatch2/

Interesting. I wonder what would happen if someone tried to launch the applications from the Homepod's /Applications directory on the new M1 devices

Hopefully this leads to completely reverse engineering AirPlay 2.

If only apple strategists believed in interoperability as a way to grow their revenue... There is unfortunately no ground for me to contest their current strategy.

What use cases do you see this having? Just curious

I'm guessing being able to send any audio stream, for example your computer audio, so you can use Spotify or anything playing at your computer.

Someone did this without the need of jailbreak for Sonos speakers, although it has some delay so was not good for movies or games.

You seriously can't do that on a vanilla homepod? Seems like the most basic feature every bluetooth speaker has.

Re: the delay, usually for videos the computer will compensate by delaying the video playback to match the speakers.

Which makes this jailbreak somewhat moot, for now at least. It makes more sense to buy an inexpensive Bluetooth speaker rather than risk bricking your $300 Homepod that has no data port

I'm so tempted to jump into the Apple ecosystem, but things like this make it really, really hard. If I buy a $300 speaker I shouldn't need a second, shittier speaker.

Yes, once again then convenience of this tight integrations comes with the loss of freedom. I guess the goal is to increase subscriptions to Apple Music at the expense of losing fewer more "demanding" users.

I wonder if there would be a case for enforcing companies that use the word "speaker" in their products to allow customers to play whatever they want via bluetooth or jack input.

I have no great experience with Bluetooth Speakers, but the magic of the HomePod is that they use Airplay 2 which piggybacks on WiFi and has some advantages:

- AirPlay uses lossless compression to stream audio from source to speaker. All Bluetooth audio streaming uses lossy compression.

- AirPlay has the capability of playing across a much larger distance and with a solid connection between devices than Bluetooth.

- When using AirPlay you’re actually capable of controlling the volume of the Airplay speaker (not just the volume of the device which transfers to the Bluetooth device).

- Airplay can stream to multiple output devices. Bluetooth is one-to-one streaming.

- AirPlay caches multiple minutes of Audio (or Video). AFAIK Bluetooth does not cache.

A sibling comment talked about using a Sonos with Bluetooth, but having delay issues. There is no lag on AirPlay:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/gt4g40/lag/

I might be misunderstanding, so if all I have are iPhones and MacBooks, this actually would allow me to play arbitrary audio from my devices?

Yes. If you use an app like AirParrot, you can do it from windows as well. Can't speak to android specifically but I believe there's an App For That as well.

Alright, being limited to certain devices seems less bad than being limited to specific apps like Sonos

> Alright, being limited to certain devices seems less bad than being limited to specific apps like Sonos

Sonos also supports AirPlay, as well as DLNA/UPnP rendering. So for example you can set a Sonos speaker as the output device, wirelessly, in the latest nightly builds of VLC[1].

[1] https://shaleenjain.com/blog/vlc-dlna-support-2/

If you're thinking of buying a HomePod, I think it's fair to assume that you also have an iPhone.

So, what's the use case for Bluetooth here? Streaming from phone to HomePod via AirPlay is so superior to Bluetooth as to make it obsolete for such needs.

The only thing I can think of is if the kids in the house have Androids or something. Or do some game consoles stream to Bluetooth speakers?

Yep, seriously, I was shocked too when buying my first (and last) Sonos, there was a list of apps, and a list of FM stations that worked with the Sonos app, and some had arbitrary restrictions like Spotify needing premium account.

I don't own an Apple HomePod, but I'm assuming the situation is similar because I read Spotify is not supported yet. If that's the case "The speakers of the house."[1] slogan might be miss-leading for many customer that expect bluetooth speaker behaviour or a jack input to play whatever you want in "your" speakers.

[1] https://www.apple.com/homepod/

might be miss-leading for many customer that expect bluetooth speaker behaviour or a jack input

It's not a Bluetooth speaker. At no time does Apple claim it's a Bluetooth speaker. If someone wants to believe it's a Bluetooth speaker, that's their fault for failing reading comprehension.

I don't expect Apple to put a big red sticker on HomePod boxes reading, "THIS IS NOT A BLUETOOTH SPEAKER!" any more than I expect an electric car to have a big red sticker on it reading, "THIS WILL NOT RUN ON DIESEL FUEL!"

The slogan is literally "the speaker of the house" and is wireless, so OK they don't use Bluetooth word, but you get my point, is just my opinion, I can't claim how many people expect Bluetooth like behaviour, just personal anecdote, I would.

HomePods have AirPlay, so you can use that to stream arbitrary audio from anything that supports it (officially Mac and iOS devices, but there are various apps that have reverse-engineered the protocol to stream from Windows and Android).

It's not Bluetooth, but as long as you don't literally need Bluetooth hardware specifically you can use it the same way.

Current Sonos accepts arbitrary audio from Airplay. That's how I use mine most of the time, streaming via podcast websites in mobile Safari or using my local NPR affiliate's app. In these cases my phone is handling the audio stream, so its battery is draining and if I step out of the apartment it will cut off. Deeper app integrations like Spotify are nice because my phone isn't in the signal path.

You seriously can't do that on a vanilla homepod

You can. I don't know why the poster claimed it can't. I'm doing it right now with the HomePod I bought yesterday. It shows up just like any other audio device on your LAN.

You can for any Mac, however only to a single HomePod (not a stereo pair). It shows up as a system audio device.

I've been sending my computer audio to my Homepod Mini every day since I got it this week. Can the full sized Homepod not do this?

The 2 second delay is annoying, but doesn't really have a big impact for music.

Not even using a Mac? I am surprised.

It can. Anyone who tells you it can't is repeating some rumor they read on an Apple-hater forum or something. HomePods show up on your devices just like any other audio device you own.

No you can’t if you want stereo sound: https://www.google.com/amp/s/9to5mac.com/2020/07/22/mac-soun...

You're moving the goalposts there.

Yes, I'm moving them where they should be.

Yes, very annoying. iTunes/Music.app on the Mac does support stereo though.

being able to send any audio stream, for example your computer audio, so you can use Spotify or anything playing at your computer.

HomePod does this. I'm doing it right now.

Click on the volume icon > select your HomePod. Done.

I could not do this with my stereo pair.

You can already AirPlay audio from a Mac or iPhone device, including Spotify. You can also do it from a PC but it requires something like Airfoil.

The numerous microphones/speakers and spatial awareness features could be used for some localized active noise cancellation. At the very least you could set it to increase the volume of white noise/ambient sounds playing when ambient volume increases.

This would be useful for anyone who uses it to block out traffic/street noise at night.

- Use of the top screen for custom notifications

- Run an audio server on it

Looks like they might be able to make the HomePod useful before it's available in Europe.

Does anyone know why it's not available yet? I'm in Denmark, and while Siri on Watch and iPhone speak Danish, apparently if I buy a HomePod, it'll only work in English.

It looks like it's available in countries that have support for apple's speech to text: https://www.apple.com/ios/feature-availability/#siri-neural-...

Kinda sucks. Here in Poland there's no siri in polish. I'd wish apple would give users an option to mark "yeah, I can handle english, sell me the damn device". Same with upcoming fitness service.

Not available here in Ireland though. A predominantly english speaking nation.

Oh, but that would EN-GB, which has nearly no similarities to EN-US. No way Apple can sell you a HomePod that would tell you to bring an "umbrella" because it is going to rain today. Though I imagine Apple is more worried about localizing the electrical plug than they are about what to call the large, wheeled vehicles used to haul cargo.

I think you want en-IE; boy howdy is localization a fraught subject!

It's been years since localization has been any defined part of my role, so I thought I'd go Wikipedia[0] just to make sure I didn't screw it up. Should have gone with my gut because Ireland wasn't listed in the page I went to. :-( "I'd swear Ireland has its own code. But Ireland is in GB, right? Or is it just UK, and GB is something else? Aww, screw it, I'm not putting this much effort into a smart arse comment, EN-GB it is."

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_localisation#Language...

>But Ireland is in GB, right?

No, Ireland is in Ireland, which is the island next to Great Britain. Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales. Those and Northern Ireland are in the United Kingdom, and Great Britain, Ireland and a bunch of irrelevant islands make up the British Isles. The British Isles are in Europe, but the United Kingdom isn't in the European Union, except they kinda still are for the next month and some. But one of the Irelands definitely still is, but the entire island of Ireland isn't fully in the European Union, except that they don't want a hard border despite the fact that it's now one of the outer borders of the EU.

But Ireland is in GB, right?

No. But that's a subject we really shouldn't get into here.

I mean, I think it's safe to get into matters of geography. Ireland is very much not in Great Britain, and is a separate island.

Let's not mention the UK though...

You've gotten some great answers so far so I'll just underscore that it's fraught. Maybe less so than "what do we call that language that they speak in what was Yugoslavia" and "are Hindi and Urdu dialects or registers of the same language or different languages." My favorite bit of trivia on this particular bit of political history is that James II of England was James VII of Scotland. You can start at Wales on here and follow the non-hyperlinks to the other parts of the page[0]. Compared to the weirdness in the past it's probably easier these days to make a non-offensive "list of countries and languages" and it's still hard!!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_union#Wales

> Or is it just UK, and GB is something else

Neither. For anybody curious, Northern Ireland is part of the UK, the Republic of Ireland is not. Great Britain is the island consisting of Scotland, Wales and England. The UK consists of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Ireland refers to both the island, and also to the state also known as the Republic of Ireland. The state has been independent from the UK since the 1920s.

Ideally EN-IE, but I'd settle for EN-GB or EN-US. Although to be honest, there's no real differences between those three locales for most people other than keyboard layouts and the arse-backwards way the US uses to write dates, neither of which apply to a HomePod.

I'd like to think that speech parsing "give me the cra(ck/ic)" would have different results depending, but I'm not sure HomePod is really ready to oblige that in either case.

HomePod is available with EN-GB. Both of mine are configured that way (though in the US), and I just ordered one in the UK store to ship to the UK.

It's available in Ireland, but maybe not to the Irish. As far as I know all of the European Apple online stores ship from Cork, and some of them sell Homepods.

> As far as I know all of the European Apple online stores ship from Cork

Not all of them. There's a big warehouse in Czech Republic where all my orders usually come from (To Germany).

Not available in New Zealand.

They would need a time machine too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HomePod

I wonder if jailbroken homepod would still do the audio enhancements on the fly with, let's say, spotify. Or the detection of commands in google assistant even while playing music very loud.

Spotify doesn't currently support HomePod, which is really annoying since the HomePod Mini looks awesome.

You can vote for HomePod support on Spotify's community site:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/iOS-Implement-Na...

FWIW, if you're playing from a computer, there are applications (Rogue Amoeba makes one) that can route the audio from Spotify (or anything) and send it over Airplay. Works great with a HomePod.

It does. I just tested proximity handoff from iPhone to HomePod.

Doesn't that essentially just route the audio stream from your phone to the HomePod? You can do the same thing from an AppleTV. That's nice, but not the integration I'm looking for.

Spotify support would mean you can ask Siri to play a song from Spotify and it works directly, without using a Spotify app on a second device.

It's available in Europe, just not in all EU countries.

Being available in three European countries (out of 50) is not really "available in Europe".

I'm being pedantic, but technically, it literally is "available in Europe."

It is not available throughout Europe, however.

How do you jailbreak a homepod with no ports and no input devices?

hidden 14-pin connector https://www.macrumors.com/2018/02/12/homepod-teardown-ifixit...

Has anyone removed the rubber foot and if so was it destructive?

I don’t think it is, since the HomePod needs to actually work for that connector to be useful. You may need to stick it back on to “fix” it, though.

It's not destructive, it's held by a few clips and glue. Use hot air to heat up the area and it snaps out.

Any recommendations for an aesthetic single speaker with high quality audio that takes Airplay, Chromecast, and bluetooth? You know, without having to jailbreak a HomePod? Stunned it has to be this difficult.

I'm considering replacing my HomePod with either Denon Home 150 [0] or going DIY route with HiFiBerry DAC [1]

[0] https://www.denon.com/en-gb/shop/denonhome/denonhome150

[1] https://www.hifiberry.com/shop/boards/hifiberry-dac2-pro/

Thank you for the Denon recommend. That’s an excellent alternative. I wonder why they didn’t elect to also include chromecast.

Does this create any notable HomeKit or home automation interoperability possibilities?

For example, the Lutron Caseta line requires their proprietary bridge——could the HomePod be augmented to remove this dependency?

I've always been so interested in Darwin/iOS/macOS internals yet I can't find any good resources.

I find it so interesting how they use that OS across all their devices.

I think you would enjoy the http://newosxbook.com/index.php series.

This is an amazing resource! Thank you so much.

That it is necessary to jailbreak consumer devices is grotesque. I can totally understand that a car has a software / OS that is locked down. But a consumer device? - Apple is slowly moving the whole industry in a direction where in a couple of decades we can use electronic devices only in a way that the producer wants it to be used. Locking up systems, not allowing departure in any way, taking each and every freedom to tinker with devices we own: despicable.

Edit: I absolutely hate Apple‘s vision for computing devices. Don‘t tell me it‘s good for my grandma because she can‘t mess up with her computer. You can build machines that are both easy to use and give us the freedom to do whatever we want to do with them. Extend them, change them, hack them, open them up, change parts, install other OSes, and whatnot.

> a car has a software / OS that is locked down

For as long as cars (and other motor vehicles) existed people have been able to work on them including on safety systems such as brakes, and the lack of widespread accidents because of this doesn't support the idea of locking them down now.

People make this argument a lot, but the main counterpoint is that if you sell faulty brakes, it's hard for someone externally to exploit that on a massive scale. If you sell faulty car software, it's easy for someone to exploit that remotely on a massive scale.

How exactly does blocking car owners from working on their cars stop someone from exploiting them on a massive scale?

I mean if I sell faulty brakes, that could be easily disabled by someone doing something to them physically, it is still pretty hard to disable -everyone's- breaks. I have to go and physically, car by car, break them.

With sofware, it is as simple as pushing a faulty OTA update. A large portion of all the cars will _instantly_ be impacted.

And yet, that does not answer the question "How exactly does blocking car owners from working on their cars stop someone from exploiting them on a massive scale?"

If the OTA is buggy, it can be exploited on a massive scale regardless.

If you have a hardware switch that needs to be pressed while updating software, there is no possibility for massive scale exploit.

I don't see how it is grotesque. No one is forced to buy these products, they can just as easily buy a competitor's or go the distance and build their own.

I prefer to have my devices work with minimal effort on my part, and with "good enough" security I can trust.

> I prefer to have my devices work with minimal effort on my part, and with "good enough" security I can trust.

I mean, everyone has their own acceptable definition of security, I also don't use Apple devices because I cannot check the security of it and any action I could take regarding securing it better means I need to exploit my device...

How do you check the security of _any_ device (e.g. Android, laptop, TV, watch, etc. basically anything that contains software that communicates with external servers) that you purchase?

Even with open source projects, it'd be a Herculean task to confirm that your purchased devices actually contain the same source code that's published (e.g. imagine trying to confirm that the firmware on your wifi card is actually what it says it is).

> How do you check the security of _any_ device (e.g. Android, laptop, TV, watch, etc. basically anything that contains software that communicates with external servers) that you purchase?

I generally try first to buy hardware I can install myself the OS, that removes the temptation of the manufacturer to use the product as a data gathering tool.

> Even with open source projects, it'd be a Herculean task to confirm that your purchased devices actually contain the same source code that's published (e.g. imagine trying to confirm that the firmware on your wifi card is actually what it says it is).

When it's open source, there are always more eyeballs on the system, it's not perfect but it's always a better guarantee of security and privacy.

Awesome! Now let's turn it into JARVIS.

I second this haha

The meat:

“ As it turns out, there’s no escaping the clutches of the ubiquitous checkm8 exploit (and by extension the checkra1n jailbreak)”

Promise good audio. Never was. Or were as I have a pair. Lag meant no use of movie sound with Apple TV. I considered these a loser. Can this job save it. Not sure as the smart part is the selling point.

I still love jailbreaking. I got an iPhone when they first came out in Canada. They guy who sold it convinced me to change my plan to include video messages. When I got home I realized the phone didn’t have the ability to take videos. Those who are unaware there just was no video app when the phone first came out as crazy as that sounds. I started searching how to take a video and to my surprise you can not unless you happen to jailbreak it and use the camera app on cydia. From that point on I saw the benefit of jailbreaking. I am considering jailbreaking again after my device suddenly became blocked from tinder I am a gentleman and not sure why I was banned but it annoyed me and one day will probably jailbreak again just to bypass the ban. I think if the iphones ever fully locked down I would try a different brand.

> Those who are unaware there just was no video app when the phone first came out as crazy as that sounds.

Considering it was a poor quality 2 megapixel sensor with fixed focus up until the iPhone 3GS, you weren’t missing much by not having video. Like to put it in perspective, even the photos it took were utterly horrid in comparison to today. But we also need to keep perspective, in 2007-2009 no phone I can think of had a better camera, let alone a mainstream one.

> you weren’t missing much by not having video

The point is that even though it was not great quality you could do it by using a jailbreak. The other advanced feature I used a jb to do was... add wallpaper to my homescreen

> The point is that even though it was not great quality you could do it by using a jailbreak.

A point I did not dispute. Hence why I quoted the part I was referencing, rather than his entire post.

Sony Ericsson Cybershot phones had decent cameras back then, at least compared to the initial iPhones

I found an old backup of videos shot on my jailbroken 3G iPhone. She passed away a fews year after I recorded a day in the park showing here what my phone could do. And I'll watch the shit out of those slightly grainy 30 second clips until the day I die. That camera wasn't great and would be considered barely passable but it was in hand and it could do the job, in 2007.

Lol Apple still released a video app afterwards for it so not so useless that Apple didn’t utilize it and some of my greatest memories which I still watch were captured with said camera. It worked just fine I can assure you. I captured many of my kids first moments on it. For it’s time, I was very happy with the camera. Sure compared to today it is a joke but so are many computing devices from that era. Also the point for me was I was a little upset I was sold video messaging and my phone couldn’t even do that. Not Apples fault the guy sold me something the phone was not capable of but it was the catalyst that showed me breaking the walled garden does have its appeal and uses.

the phone didn’t have the ability to take videos

It did. But you had to get an app from the App Store for it.

Apple's Camera app didn't do videos. But others did.

Were these available at launch? The earliest references I can find are from Dec 2009[1], over a year after the iPhone launched in Canada.

[1] See, e.g., https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/tips-tricks/original-iphone-ip...

You are mistaken. The iPhone 2g and 3g could only do videos for a long time by jailbreaking the phone and using a program call cycorder or another one called video recorder both available on cydia. It wasn’t until 2009 with the iPhone 3GS that Apple approved video recording and opened up the older iPhones as well allowing use of a recording app from the App Store. Prior to that you had no choice but to jailbreak. Again the catalyst to why I jailbroke my phone in the first place. Here is one source: https://www.redmondpie.com/apple-approves-video-recording-on...

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