Yeah it could have a inner rapid charge battery that has stronger output power, but still not by very much!
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Apple Says HomePod Consumes Less Power Than Average LED Bulb During Music Playback
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I wasn't born in the 1960s, so I have no basis for comparison.
However, one of the criteria I used to use when evaluating speakers (I'm good, now) was whether they could reproduce the NPR voice-- that deep resonant sound of a very serious man telling the news; accurately and without a distorting "hump" at the lower end. When streamed, that's 128k MP3, at best. And yet, this simple criterion weeded out quite a few speakers.
However, depending on your choice of music, the amplifier section may not matter much. That McIntosh amplifier probably spends a good chunk of it's active life in the 0.12 to 1.2 Watt range, only bringing out the 1.2 kW when it's time to fire the cannons for the 1812 overture.
And the loudness wars have ensured that most recorded music uses a very compressed dynamic range. If you happen to have a good amplifier, it just sounds VERY LOUD. Not exciting, not thrilling, not "live". Just LOUD.
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Good old poorly implemented Wall of sound. Thankfully it was mostly used for dance music.
Now they toss in Auto-Tune as well. -Drives us old guys nuts as it sounds like Nugent's phase shifter on Journey to the Center of the Mind.
People used to love that big hump at 60Hz. They thought it was really good base response.
Can't remember if it was JBL or JVC that thrived off that distortion for a couple of decades.
When choosing speakers, it's best to listen to piano, kickass Bach organ, flute and Leo Kottke or Renbourn acoustic to decide if your speakers accurately handle the full range of sounds. Rock, Electronica, Hip Hop are nice, but they all put out so many frequencies and so much intentional distortion that you can't tell if your speakers are good or mediocre. Bad can easily be bad enough to pick out by listening to Electric Wizard.
Music for prepared piano and Ryoanji are likely no goes, unless you really know your instruments.
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Not so much poor implementations of Wall of Sound, but rather recording engineers and/or mixers being ordered to crank the bejeezus out of everything to make the resulting mix as loud as possible, in the belief that this made it stand out more during airplay. It's been a continuing problem for decades (or was last I paid attention). See Loudness War.
Because if it doesn't get traction, they will kill it.
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It will, but only for certain things like music. You can't access your reminders, messages, notes, etc for each iCloud account.
As for being an audiophile—they're touting it being better than a Sonos. If you can tell the difference between a Sonos and this thing, then there's a chance you're pretty above average when it comes to discerning audio quality. You might not be that guy that carefully curates a library of uncompressed music with studio monitors that cost thousands of dollars, but you're still pretty niche compared to what Apple wants to sell.
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I'm talking about a broad population. If you're already in the Apple ecosystem then this thing isn't very useful. If you're outside the Apple ecosystem, why would you buy a $350 speaker that only connects to services you don't use? Does that make more sense? I'm sure some people will find this useful, but not enough to justify Apple continuing to make it without drastic changes.
Not necessarily - their idea of being worth it might be different to people on this forum. They might consider 15% of Sonos market share as being worth it.
Nowadays they barely consider the Mac to be worth it, lol, and that has to be a bigger market than Sonos.
Well judging by the amount of people who think £300 is a lot of money for a speaker Apple have firmly and knowingly placed it in a niche market. For them it might just be a way to increase the iOS/macOS eco system - honestly the iPhone has spoilt it for everyone - it makes any other device seem pointless to Apple's bottom line as it's going to be minute in comparison and seem not worth doing, so i'm just thankful they are releasing more products that they obviously don't expect to be more than a few percent of their overall turn over.
Yeah, the more random things they add, the less likely they are to kill off the Mac first! Though it does make me sad that they seem to be shutting down operations for their AirPort routers. I was upset when they stopped making displays and advertised that ugly third party garbage that couldn't even be near a WiFi router. At least there are rumors that it's coming back later this year.
Yeah it is sad they've killed off the Wifi Router - they were simple and stable and I'm still using mine - at least they never need rebooting. I've had to use a different router now but I have my Airport Extremes for the actual wifi still. It's a shame really.
Yeah and there was a lot of room left to innovate. I’m still using mine but will probably upgrade to an eero when 802.11ax comes out and I have devices that can use it.
What I’ve thought they would do is put true wireless charging into a WiFi mesh network that can cover your house with internet and power. Maybe they still will someday?
I *think* i'll eventually go to a Ubiquiti UniFi, at least they're rock solid and built for an enterprise setting too - so you should be able to avoid reboots. I'm contemplating fitting them to the ceiling out of the way too.
You will not regret putting in the UniFi. I started with a USG + US-8-150W + 3x UAP-AC-Pro (one for each floor at home). I get signals 20ft away from home (brick walls outside), and if I ever lose internet connection indoor it's the ISP's fault, not the UniFi products. I only have to reboot when there are firmware upgrades.