Apple Explains Why HomePod Was Released Again, Wi-Fi 4 Limitation, and More

[roncron]

Apple has "heard more interest than ever for the acoustics of a richer larger speaker."

Have they also heard more interest then ever in spending $300 for one? Because that was the problem last time, not the HomePod's sound quality or size/form factor.

 

[Ctrlos]

“We had too many Apple Watch chips knocking around to used them to maximise profit margins. This is why it has WiFi 4.

 

[dannyyankou]

Still no 7.1 speaker setup. C’mon Apple it’s 2023 for crying out loud.

At $299 each, a 7.1 setup would be ridiculously expensive

 

[bmustaf]

Perfect corporate/marketing/speak/BS instead of saying "the WiFi 4 modules were available in quantity, cheap, and didn't require any board redesign, recertifications, or anything".

If there was a surplus and availability of 6 modules, we'd be getting the same BS.

It. Is. Economics. Everything else is a lie.

 

[greenmeanie]

Let me get my BOOTS on.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I thought it was possible to pair old and new. Interesting that it's not.

The WiFi 4 justification sounds like a made up excuse.

What he says about audio performance being better than the original doesn't seem to be the case.

Costello definitely has a future in DC.

1) No surprise, stereo pair has always required a stereo pair. Not different speakers from different generations.

2) Agreed. Even though personally I see no need for newer WiFI, the BS came through loud and clear.

3) All reviews I have seen agree that full-size HomePod sound remains excellent; similar to the original is the most common comment.

4) Agreed, Costello came across as DC-sleazy. Too bad because he probably is not.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

So, let me get this straight…the new HomePod sounds “largely” (vaguely) just the same as the original despite having fewer tweeters BUT it’s sonically incongruent enough that Apple won’t even let you pair the damn things? What kind of hopelessly cognitively-dissonant sap would believe this tripe?

If Apple sayeth it, some fans believeth.

So sayeth the Apple, so knoweth the truth.

Once one knoweths, one is charged with spreading that truth to the heathens who might seeketh to differ.

Objective facts & evidence that counters the word is merely sacrilege by heathens & barbarians not intelligent enough to know the one and only truth... as offered by the Apple.

Don't be doubting heathens. Don't "think different." Just trust the one & only giver of knowledge & truth... the most profitable giver of knowledge & truth.

 

[mytdave]

Having HomePods as an option for home theatre surround sound would be cool, but there's a lot of logic involved there. A stereo pair is easy. For true surround (not simulated surround) you would need at least 5 HomePods. Then, you have to figure out what device is going to do the processing for this setup. Is that logic going to live in the HomePods, or in a device like AppleTV?

For surround, not only do you have to decode the audio stream from it's Dobly, or DTS, or other encoding, but then you would need to calculate which HomePod to send the appropriate one of 5 different signals to, and you could not get it wrong. The complexity would also increase for a 7.1 system.

If a stereo pair (left and right) get confused as to which one is left or right, it doesn't really matter, the sound stage does not collapse. If you accidentally send center channel vocals in a surround setup to a rear speaker instead of the front center, then your movie experience gets completely destroyed, from a listening perspective.

Another thing to consider would be support for a subwoofer, which Apple currently does not make, and is kind of important in a home theatre setup. And cost is another factor. Five HomePods (not minis) would cost $1500. You can buy complete entry level home theatre surround systems, including sub, for less than that. The HomePod idea is an interesting one, but at this moment I don't think there is a value proposition there.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

The real test of this spin...

"HomePod features Wi-Fi 4 connectivity that allows us to target exactly what works best in the entire system," Costello tells TechCrunch, "making sure Siri requests are responsive, and ensuring a consistent experience for all you are listening to, controlling your smart home accessories and more — all while being energy efficient."

...is to alter the number and have it become obvious...

"HomePod features Wi-Fi 6 connectivity that allows us to target exactly what works best in the entire system," Costello tells TechCrunch, "making sure Siri requests are responsive, and ensuring a consistent experience for all you are listening to, controlling your smart home accessories and more — all while being energy efficient."

Once you read the latter version, it should be obvious. 🤪

However, if that was the truth, I now understand why Siri is such a moron. I've not been using wifi 4 for many years. No wonder Siri requests are unresponsive and/or inconsistent. I'm using the wrong wifi.

 

[Analog Kid]

The bandwidth should be plenty, but the support of old standards only slows down the net for everyone unfortunately.

Really? I mean, at most you're streaming lossless audio at what, 576kbps? Even at Wifi 4 data rates, that's 0.1% of the available 600Mbps bandwidth. Yeah, there may be a WiFi 6 datagram waiting in the queue behind your audio packet, but your Homepod would pretty much need to be in the same room as and right next to your wireless router with enough antennas to support the spacial streams to get the top end speeds over other the more modern protocols.

 

[ACHD]

THE WIFI part makes no sense.

wifi 6 supports lower latency, better QOS, scheduling, and handles more devices than any of the wifi 4 standards ever.

wifi 6 would absolutely be an improvement on 2.4 5 or higher 5 ghz bands.

they wanted more profit and refused to include wifi 6 chips.

lets be real.

 

[kyleh22]

The WiFi 4 justification sounds like a made up excuse.

It's not a limitation...it's a feature lol

 

[Tagbert]

The watch couldn't possibly max out the bandwidth of 802.11n, let alone anything faster, so there's no need for faster wifi in the S7 SoC for now.

Yes, and same for the HomePod. Audio streaming is fine on WiFi 4. The only reason someone might want a newer Wifi level might be to avoid RF band congestion.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I think a similar thing could have been said about the iPhone mini. Sounded like a lot of people wanted a smaller phone, but then not many people actually ended up buying it. Will be interesting see how the new HomePod fares over the next few years to see if the demand is really there.

It probably depends on how Apple determines what sales are minimally necessary to decide that "the demand is really there." Folks willing to pay for good sound in difficult smallish spaces using a pair of bookshelf speakers is a market, but it is a limited market. However those folks (me) who can hear the difference tend to love full size HomePods and will buy multiple pairs.

Certainly there are still some folks with good ears that appreciate the amazing (unique, actually) job that full-size HomePods do at providing very good stereo sound in small acoustically difficult spaces. No other speakers at any price do what full-size HomePods can do at providing very good stereo sound in small acoustically difficult spaces.

 

[Xano]

in 2023 Apple still playing this dumb marketing explanations.
So the 2023 HomePod still have wifi4, less tweeters, less microphones, same design.
Once more, Apple find a way to make more money and give less, as usual!

 

[turbineseaplane]

All the babble aside, these should be $199 products

 

[Eldaerenth Faexidor]

in 2023 Apple still playing this dumb marketing explanations.
So the 2023 HomePod still have wifi4, less tweeters, less microphones, same design.
Once more, Apple find a way to make more money and give less, as usual!

Yeah this is your typical ‘Apple mocking and insulting their customers intelligence’ interview.

 

[atomic.flip]

it really confuses me why anyone is upset over wifi 4 and not wifi 6, and why none of the writers have pointed this out. it is simply a bandwidth issue, wifi 4 has more than adequate bandwidth to support airplay and therefore wifi 6 would not provide any value added whatsoever. This is like a repeat of the really old appleTV using a slower ethernet. the ethernet selected at the time had more than adequate bandwidth to support the 1080p limitation of the older appleTV, yet there were those whiners who were upset. But really, would it have operated any better? NO. Once adequate bandwidth is achieved, case close, additional bandwidth provides 0 benefit

It’s not about bandwidth. Many WiFi (actually MOST) routers do not handle mixed environments so well. Meaning the more slower devices you have on the network the worse the network performs in general. To get the best performance you should try to isolate 2.4ghz Wi-Fi devices to their own router entirely.

It’s a real pain in the rear when dealing with heavily congested environments or environments with many connected and passive devices. You won’t see this happen so much if you have say 10 devices on your network. But in a modern home with lots of computers, smart phones, connected appliances and switches…. It becomes an issue fast.

Putting yet another piece of garbage 2.4ghz device on the network is just sloppy and stupid. I have LED connected lighting that runs in 5ghz Wi-Fi ac.

 

[HorstBockman]

It takes at least a year for a company like Apple to bring an updated model to market. This was all planned. The original HomePod was obviously discontinued because the updated, cheaper-to-make version has different acoustics that wouldn't work well in a stereo pair with the original design.

 

[aloyouis]

The answers did themselves no good. Both issues (wifi/pairing) revolve around the S7 chip.

1 - We all would have been happier with an honest "we used a faster, but older SoC that has slower wifi embedded. No big deal. We get it.

2- I think the S7 and the A8 are probably not able to provide the same timing for integrating the advanced computational audio that is such an important part of these devices. Each can but not in concert.

Just my .02

 

[TehFalcon]

C'mon, study up. Surround sound systems are a totally different beast than what the HomePods do. Literally Apples and oranges.

7.1 systems are designed to make theatre-type surround sound around a seating point in a medium to largish good-acoustically space, using separate main speakers, separate satellite speakers and separate subwoofer(s) to achieve surround sound. Note specific seating point, medium to largish space, good acoustics, typically seven or more individual speakers are all required.

Full size HomePods are a different speaker type, designed to use two self-balancing speakers to provide good stereo sound in acoustically difficult small to small medium sized spaces using just two speakers.

HomePods do spatial audio, so while on paper it's just a 2.0 system, the sound does surround the room on supported atmos content.

But still, true surround will always sound "Better".

 

[Jankie]

At $299 each, a 7.1 setup would be ridiculously expensive

I was thinking if they did so, they may sell as a 5.1 or 7.1 set with a discount for the set. Additionally, maybe 2 or 3 HomePods for the front and center channels and the small ones for satellites making the overall purchase cheaper.🤷‍♂️

Not my cup of tea as I prefer higher end audio. However, I can see the attraction for some Apple users. With Apple's room calibration tech, they could potentially create something greater than the some of its parts.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

3) All reviews I have seen agree that full-size HomePod sound remains excellent; similar to the original is the most common comment.

We haven't seen any real, objective reviews yet... only the friends of Apple pre-release "reviews" where the reviewer has a great financial incentive to stay on Apple's good side. What do I mean by that? By being first with reviews, they get large volume of eyeballs. Their models are generally advertising models getting them paid for high volumes of eyeballs. There's lots of future cash on the line if they lost that gravy train of first "reviews."

Be objectively critical and they may lose their "friends of Apple" status and thus no longer get to have first "reviews." That will cost them a LOT of advertising cash revenue. So they offer what I consider fluff reviews where even if they have something negative to say, they quickly downplay/marginalize whatever it is.

Real reviews will soon be posted by people who have purchased one themselves and do not have huge numbers of eyeball-driven advertising money on the line. These may lead to the same "excellent" and "sounds similar to the original" but I bet we'll see at least some that are more critical than the pre-release batch... because they are free to be objectively critical.

This doesn't mean these are dud products or anything- just poking at the idea that we've already seen trustworthy reviews. We have not. Those are coming soon.

I see that group of pre-release "influencers" as an extension of Apple Marketing. There is great income dependent on them never sharing anything negative enough to lose the lucrative advantage of staying in that group.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

It's not a limitation...it's a feature lol

...like "it's not a notch, it's more real estate to the left & right."

 

[atomic.flip]

I can only assume the people disliking/laughing at our comments on this probably also think casually listening to music through their phone speakers sounds good.

Any “actual” audiophile or even a true “audio professional” or an “audiologist” would know that NO ONE has perfectly identical hearing in both ears.

If the two speakers are sonically similar enough you WILL NOT NOTICE THE DIFFERENCE!!!

35 years of working in professional audio, production and composition here.

And their speakers can and do compensate for room correction which again negates the sonic incompatibility factor. We’ve use room correction algorithms for mixed audio environments for decades. Large venues with different sized speakers at different locations. Compensating for delay, cancellation and echo.

People complaining about the speakers needing to be exactly identical Don’t know what they’re talking about. Close enough will work for 99.999% of human hearing.