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Apple Says HomePod is Delayed Until Early 2018

Royksöpp said:
This is a very niche product. It's not your typical Apple product.
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I don’t think Apple would have released it if they didn’t think there was a huge potential market for it. This is Apple after all. Any product they do sell will have to sell in the millions at least to justify the resources that went into designing it. They aren’t going to bother with niche.
 
Abazigal said:
I don’t think Apple would have released it if they didn’t think there was a huge potential market for it. This is Apple after all. Any product they do sell will have to sell in the millions at least to justify the resources that went into designing it. They aren’t going to bother with niche.
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I edited my post.
 
Royksöpp said:
This is a very niche product. It's not your typical Apple. Remember the iPod Hi Fi? It was actually a solid and useful product. The Homepod is nowhere near as functional. Siri is unreliable, and a pain to use. I'm sure nobody is dying to have a Siri Speaker, not even Sheeple.
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Which is why Apple appears to be focusing their marketing on its sound quality, not so much the utility of Siri.

https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2017/6/14/homepod

If you can spare a few minutes, I would recommend you reach this article. The writer has been pretty spot on with his analysis on Apple, and he offers a pretty compelling argument on what Apple is trying to achieve with the HomePod.

A smart speaker is simply the icing on the cake here.
 
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Abazigal said:
Which is why Apple appears to be focusing their marketing on its sound quality, not so much the utility of Siri.

https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2017/6/14/homepod

If you can spare a few minutes, I would recommend you reach this article. The writer has been pretty spot on with his analysis on Apple, and he offers a pretty compelling argument on what Apple is trying to achieve with the HomePod.

A smart speaker is simply the icing on the cake here.
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I'll give it a read. Thanks.
 
Uofmtiger said:
It sounds like you have a lot of Apple devices, but you don't appear to use Apple Music or Airplay, so that limits what the HomePod can do for you if you don't care about the sound quality.

Google and Amazon have their advantages in this area. However, a lot of people trust Apple with an always listening device in their home more than they trust Apple's competitors.

I have Dots around the house and will keep them, but I will most likely get the Homepod for the area that can serve the living room and kitchen. It isn't because I don't like the Echoes, but I want to be able to use Siri with Apple Music and send the audio by voice to my main system with Airplay2...the other systems can't do that. Siri already works great with Hue lights, so that will fit in just as well in the living room.

That isn't to say they Google isn't right for you and Alexa isn't right for others. However, Apple is leveraging their ecosystem which has always worked for them in the past. Whether it works here remains to be seen.
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I fully intended to get apple music, but its much of a muchness between the music services.
 
Abazigal said:
Which is why Apple appears to be focusing their marketing on its sound quality, not so much the utility of Siri.

https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2017/6/14/homepod

If you can spare a few minutes, I would recommend you reach this article. The writer has been pretty spot on with his analysis on Apple, and he offers a pretty compelling argument on what Apple is trying to achieve with the HomePod.

A smart speaker is simply the icing on the cake here.
Click to expand...

Going to refer to a few quotes from the article and why Apple's sense of purpose is all over the place:

Instead, a more relevant HomePod comparison would be dedicated speaker systems from Sonos and Bose. With HomePod, Apple is aiming to sell the best speaker someone has ever owned.
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Does this really make sense? "The best speaker someone has ever owned". The author clearly has no idea what he's talking about here. Why would they directly compete against Sonos/BOSE? Subjectively BOSE/SONOS sound quality is tolerable and to even compare to those seems odd from someone claiming they known what the "best speaker" sounds like.

Apple has the opportunity to do quite a bit with HomePod and the concept of augmented hearing in the home.
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Raise your hand if you care about augmented hearing in the home.

However, the fundamental difference between HomePod and iPod Hi-Fi quickly becomes obvious as Apple silicon allows the HomePod to do revolutionary things with speakers and microphones.
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Most audio people would not appreciate Apple artificially manipulating sound to make it sound to how *they* think it sounds like. This is one of the issues that BOSE has.

After reading the article, it's clear that both the author and Apple are confused. If their main goal is sound, they should focus only on sound and not even bother add R&D for Siri on it. But no, their niche is all over the place. Is this a smart speaker, a multi-room speaker, an augmented reality speaker, a high fidelity speaker, or all of the above? Its niche/brand is all over the place, and it seems to be doing too much with too little results in each of the areas.

I feel it's in Apple's best interest to make their ecosystem more cohesive and connected. As recently evident by the USB-C and lightning port debacle with the iPhone <-> macbook, they seem lost. It's very clear, aside from fanboys and the bay area, their products lately haven't really addressed problems that people are desiring to solve.
 
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ersan191 said:
Multi room airplay has been built into iTunes for years,
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I know. Not sure what your point is, but I agree.

I'm not really sure what this very specific definition of "built in" has to do with anything, but for all intents and purposes Apple Music IS "built in" to Sonos.
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"Built in" is how it has been described in the post I quoted. Apple Music is not "built in" to the Sonos speaker.

ersan191 said:
You don't need iOS/macOS/third party software to use it
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How do you tell the Sonos what to play without a third party device/service?

A more accurate statement would be the HomePod will be the only way to get SIRI on a speaker, and with all the hate Siri gets here that isn't exactly a major selling point.
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What people hate around here has zero to do with the market. There are people around here that hate the watch, the MBP, the iPhone, iOS, Airpods, Tim Cook, etc. This site has a lot of complainers. Yet, Apple is still having record quarters.

You said "It is the only option for Apple Music users unless you want to live with Bluetooth from phone to device." which is incorrect, people do have options.
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Yes, that comment was in the context of talking about digital assistants, not every other speaker or receiver in the world, which I already explained. Here is the quote I was answering when I said that:

"It almost sounds as if the homepod is the only option if you explicitly use Apple Music. If someone uses literally any other streaming services, it would be better on other platforms like Google/Alexa."

The rest of my paragraph that you left out referred directly to the Google/Alexa platforms:

"Google doesn't have Google Play Music on the Echo and Amazon doesn't have Amazon Prime Music on Google Home. None of them currently support Tidal. So Apple Music isn't the only service available only on their own platform"

Sonos does not have their own assistant platform or music service (in the context of Apple Music, Google Play Music, or Amazon Prime Music)....so I wasn't really discussing them in the context of the paragraph. If that still doesn't make sense, not much more I can say.

"Quoting out of context (sometimes referred to as contextomy or quote mining) is an informal fallacy and a type of false attribution[citation needed] in which a passage is removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to distort its intended meaning.[1] Contextomies may be both intentional, as well as accidental if someone misunderstands the meaning and omits something essential to clarifying it, thinking it to be non-essential."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quoting_out_of_context
 
Last edited:
Being in
[doublepost=1512253546][/doublepost]Being in Canada I was hopefully expecting it early next year. Now since it’s delay I’m betting will be 2nd half of 2018 until we eve seen this.

Since Apple is missing the boat here for me by focusing on music quality (I don’t need a music player at home) and lagging in home automation, I’ve gone ahead and purchased four google home mini on sale for $39 ea. The google home mini work good with my ISY994i and Insteon. Also they work great with my Ecobee thermostat.
 
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