Apple Unveils $349 HomePod Smart Speaker to be Available in December

[MacRumors]

Apple today announced its plans to "reinvent home music" with the unveiling of its newest product, HomePod, a wireless speaker powered by Apple's A8 chip with Siri integration that's just under 7 inches tall.

Apple reinvented portable music with iPod and now HomePod will reinvent how we enjoy music wirelessly throughout our homes," said Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "HomePod packs powerful speaker technology, Siri intelligence and wireless access to the entire Apple Music library into a beautiful speaker that is less than 7 inches tall, can rock most any room with distortion free music and be a helpful assistant around your home.

HomePod is a combination of high quality music playback speakers and smart speaker systems that are on the market today. The HomePod can intelligently detect the space it is in with "spatial awareness," which the company said provides better quality audio playback than its competitors.

HomePod has an upward-facing woofer and an array of seven beam-forming tweeters. It has a six-microphone array that can detect commands even when music is playing loudly. When there are two HomePods in a room, they will automatically detect each other and optimize music playback complementarily. Setting up a new HomePod works similarly to AirPods set up--simply holding an iPhone near a HomePod will pair it.

HomePod automatically works with an Apple Music subscription and can play back playlists, radio stations, and more content found within Apple Music. Siri commands will let users direct the HomePod to play music, add songs to playlists, and even answer music trivia questions.

Siri will also act as a home assistant and include support for News, Messages, Podcasts, Stocks, Weather, Reminders, alarms, timers, sports and traffic. HomePod will also be a HomeKit hub and let users control lights, blinds, locks, and other accessories by voice, even when users are away from home.

The HomePod will launch in December for $349 and will be available in white and space gray in the US, UK, and Australia to start.

Article Link: Apple Unveils $349 HomePod Smart Speaker to be Available in December

 

[Wackery]

lame, i guess they have a lot of those A8 chips sitting around

 

[B60boy]

There smoking something at Apple. This is a miss. Too high price for what you get. Disappointing.

 

[ryanmcv]

Would have bitten at $199. $349? Nope.

 

[Aluminum213]

$349 for doing what an echo does

 

[DualShock]

OMG this thing is so behind the Amazon Echo Show, and it comes out in December!

They must have **** their pants when Amazon announced the Echo Show, that has a screen, when they knew this was all they had for WWDC.

 

[Born Again]

well does it work with spotify?

 

[v0lume4]

The Mac Pro trash can design repurposed as a smart speaker is a funny analogy to the state of the Mac Pro.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Yes yes but will it make Justin Bieber any more tolerable?

 

[BeSweeet]

Sound quality aside, isn't the Echo a better device?

 

[tvguru]

Wow, that's some price. I'm sure it hears and sounds great, but hard to make up ground on the competition at that price point.

 

[sza]

Twice as the price of Amazon Echo, hmm...

 

[lwatson99]

Would have bitten at $199. $349? Nope.

Same - I was telling myself $200 was the highest and would compete strongly with Alexa. But this is wayyy to expensive for a 1st generation product, especially as Siri is still half broken.

 

[TwoBytes]

A mono speaker? How hi-fi..

 

[Spock]

I'm sure it sounds great but I think that Amazon and Google have the market in this space until Apple gets Siri working better and they release a lower price option.

 

[soupcan]

Remember the Apple HiFi everybody?

Yeah, that's this, but now you can talk to it, which makes you look like a big doofus

 

[Sirious]

Couldn't they have chosen a more ugly name?

 

[hinesmj]

$350?!?! For the same thing my echo dot does for $50? HAHA Apple get real. I'm obviously here cuz I like their stuff but c'mon. This is getting absurd. Breakthrough? Absolutely nothing about this thing is breakthrough. I really wanted this to be awesome and I just have such a blah taste in my mouth for it. There is literally nothing new or exciting about this thing. And the name. Good lord that name is absolutely horrific!!

 

[musika]

I'm keeping my iPod Hi-Fi.

 

[whsbuss]

How does "Hey Siri" work when I have my iPhone in the room with HomePod? Will it only recognize my voice?

 

[BradWI]

Does it support any non-Apple music services? If not, Sonos has nothing to worry about.

 

[deaddog]

I'm with everyone else. I was anxiously awaiting this but at $350,no way. $199 and I would have purchased.

 

[Slix]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Hi-Fi

But will it support my 4th gen iPod classic, that's the real question.

All jokes aside, it seems like it'll be really cool.

 

[jdclifford]

$349 for doing what an echo does

These guys have been on autoplay for 3 yrs now. This event was total BS.

 

[lwatson99]

Missed an opportunity. Releasing too late, at too high a price point for it to reach most homes.
Plus the UK will probably get it at £349, which very few people (in the grand scheme of things) can justify on a glorified speaker.
I have an airplay speaker, cost me £50 on eBay and works a dream. 7x that much just no.