Hacker News Reader

Comment by thebean11 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com