Hmmm....Siri showed some unusual smarts with me...."You don't have HomePods in other rooms'...Then, try #2: "ok, intercom to everyone in my home'...must be a learning curve involvedš!
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Apple Releases 14.1 Software for HomePod With Intercom and HomePod Mini Support
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I updated my iPhone, iPad and both of my HomePods to 14.1 and I don't see anything for Intercom on it? Maybe that's a bug? Isn't it slated for 14.2?
I had that same error... I don't see anything for Intercom in the HomePod settings or the Home App either.
The lag on Siri is probably independent of the lag otherwise. For most requests, Siri has to talk to Apple servers to interpret the request and decide what to do; but other audio lag comes mostly from the massive buffering to have higher-than-Bluetooth quality audio (over WiFi instead of Bluetooth) without dropouts from bursts of network load (like someone else in your house doing a big download or streaming a movie). Smart players such as the TV app on a Mac or an Apple TV know to query what the latency is and delay the video to compensate; but the control responsiveness is necessarily affected by that, there's no magic to totally hide the latency. (If I play a video on a Mac with the Movist app and send audio to a HomePod, I have to adjust Movist for the audio latency, somewhere around 2 to 2.1 seconds worth.)
Given that the focus of a HomePod is really good audio, and NOT zero-latency stuff like gaming on your AppleTV (the latency probably makes that unusable and/or impossible, since a 2+ second delay between control input and response is no biggie for pause/play, but a killer in a game), I don't know that there's a different set of tradeoffs possible that would provide the same quality audio and almost no dropouts, without the latency. Maybe given that WiFi is more than fast enough, smarter buffering might be able to reduce, but not really eliminate, the latency (not low enough for gaming, but say 1/2 second instead of 2 seconds), by having a variable rather than fixed size buffer, so that initially it'd just buffer enough to have some safety margin right after starting, and then grow the buffer to full capacity while playing. I don't know enough detail of AirPlay 2 protocol, how busy it is when playing, etc, to be reasonably sure whether that'd be possible or whether it's a LOT easier said than done. Probably the minimum tradeoff from doing that, if it was possible, would be a greater risk of dropouts in the first few seconds of playing.
If you have Apple Music, I think you can make that the default on the Echo devices. Some things, like Philips Vue and iHome device control, can be set up to work with both. Some other things can be done via IFTTT and/or Shortcuts, so that they will more or less work with both. But don't expect them to act identical, they won't.
Too bad you can't say "Alexa, ask Siri xxx" or "Hey Siri, ask Alexa xxx", for a full handoff from any of them to another, but good luck getting Apple, Amazon, and Google to play that nice with each other.
Hmm, after updating my HomePods one at a time (I always do, so I don't risk bricking them all), I wanted to put the bedroom HomePod back on playing Stream from ambient sounds like it does most of the time, without getting up to do it. So I had the living room HomePod play that, and then used control center on the iPhone to transfer it. After doing that, it showed living room HomePod -> bedroom HomePod (streaming from one to the other rather than transferred). So I'm pretty sure HomePods CAN stream to each other, although since they also CAN transfer from an iPhone, I'm not really sure why they would. After the update, I had some account issues to straighten out with the HomePods; maybe they streamed rather than transferring because they thought the accounts were mismatched (they weren't, but if they mostly use a token rather than the password, and the token was expired or obsoleted, I suppose that could happen).
Anyway, while most of the time there's an illusion of simplicity, behind-the-scenes, things aren't really that simple.
Not too sure you do either, since they are called woofers not basses.
Youāre not supposed to wait for her to respond. It should be natural. āHey Siri turn off the lightsā as opposed to āHey Siri...(Siri saying mmhmm)...turn off the lightsā
Give it a shot. With the HomePod she can hear you from pretty far away.
Other than ābeingā a smart speaker...what else were you expecting a smart speaker to do?
- Full-range driver and dual passive radiators for deep bass and crisp high frequencies
Are mid range drivers still called "squawkers"? Haven't heard the term used for ages.
8 is the very Max you can steam to at one time without them going out of sync.
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i got mine to work by asking Siri on my phone (14.2) to make an announcement. And it told me to set it up then kicked me to the home app and a card slid up to set up intercom asking what people can make intercom announcements and if I want to receive only when Iām home or anywhere. Now in the home app in the upper right corner there is a button to make announcements. And in the āhome settingsā there is a section for intercom.
My goodness. It is sad how poor reading and comprehension of whatās been read has become these days. The patch notes for
HomePod 14.1 includes intercom.
iOS 14.1 does not include intercom.
HomePod 14.1 includes intercom.
iOS 14.1 does not include intercom.
This was posted a week ago and referenced 14.2 beta then. AI authors probably updated it thinking 14.1 included everything based on the mention of Intercom in the HomePod release notes but they are mistaken.Not a big deal either way but do we know for sure itās not just taking time to roll out on iOS 14.1? Apple Insider just did an intercom how-to and said āIntercom requires iOS 14.1, and the new HomePod 14.1 update, or newer.ā
How to setup and use Intercom on iPhone, Apple Watch, and HomePod | AppleInsider
Announced during its "Hi, Speed" event, Apple showed off a new feature for iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, HomePod, and HomePod mini called Intercom that allows you to easily communicate with your family. Here is how to set it up and how to use it.appleinsider.com
Adding to the confusion are people randomly posting it about "working" while failing to mention they are using 14.2 beta.
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never had latency issues at all...it always responses, now is the response correct or what I was looking for 9 out of 10 times yes...latency??? never heard that before, you should check out your network to be honest...latency is not an issue with homepod
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intercom is AMAZING!! ah the little things...no more screaming to get attention in the house...lol I wish you could just respond without having to say intercom, maybe siri can say āwould you like to respondā...hopefully they do something like that down the road