What was the strategic value in acquiring Beats Music? And please don’t say Jimmy Iovine.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
First Impressions From New HomePod Owners: Siri's Voice Detection is 'Phenomenal,' Audio Quality is 'Immediately Evident'
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
There must be more than that? I’ve definitely seen thermostats, radiator valves, security cameras, and locks.
Not sure how much you can do with the phone. I know you can tell Siri on the phone to skip tracks though, and they’ll skip on the HP.
Apple has no competitors? That's new.
I recall Steve Jobs during the iPhone debut discussing how the iPhone compared to competitor's products.
For the money, a profitable headphone company, a music streaming service that could be readily scaled to Apple’s needs, as yes, Iovine’s deep ties to the music industry and Hollywood.
It was certainly a better deal than acquiring spotify at any rate, especially when the deals would have to be renegotiated at any rate and there was no guarantee that the original subscribers would have stuck around.
The echo plays shockingly well with an iPhone. I just would like to be able to go all in on the HomePod, but it needs to mature. I usually listen to music through all of the echos at the same time. I know that feature is coming to HomePod, and I would do the same. It would personally annoy me to have echos and homepods. I can’t give you an exact reason, but it would.
A sales pitch against competitor's products. If they were not competitors, why not do a sales pitch against a gas oven instead? If they weren't competitors, there would be little need for a sales pitch to show how much better it is to use your fingers over a stylus.
When they make one i'm sure they will. Apples business model doesn't revolve around competition as you understand it. This is quite obvious.
Do you believe Apple, or any company for that matter, completely ignores what their competitors are doing at all times?
Mine just arrived. As other reviewers stated, setup is a breeze and all you have to do is have it powered on and bring your phone close to it. Apparently, as of the Apple Watch, it does not support enterprise graded wireless network authentication (WPA Enterprise/WPA2 Enterprise).
First sounds impressions, it really sound good. For a portable speaker. Cannot expect a deep bass as I got on my 5.1 Klipsh HT system or my car stereo, but hey, there is no subwoofer on such a small device. But it sounds rich and might for it’s size.
Siri can hear me from the hallway, with a song playing in full volume. Not that I am planing to do it often but that is pretty darn sensitive. I do not expect to use it for more than the HomeKit home automation, but your needs might be different from mines. So far, I seem happy with it. Time will tell how good or bad it will end up being.
First sounds impressions, it really sound good. For a portable speaker. Cannot expect a deep bass as I got on my 5.1 Klipsh HT system or my car stereo, but hey, there is no subwoofer on such a small device. But it sounds rich and might for it’s size.
Siri can hear me from the hallway, with a song playing in full volume. Not that I am planing to do it often but that is pretty darn sensitive. I do not expect to use it for more than the HomeKit home automation, but your needs might be different from mines. So far, I seem happy with it. Time will tell how good or bad it will end up being.
Attachments
A person’s point of view will determine how much that person is prepared to spend on something.
But it a good sounding speaker is a good sounding speaker, and as such will have a value relative to how good it sounds.
My point is that if the HomePod sounds as good as it reportedly does, then it’s probably worth the money for that alone. All the Siri stuff is just icing on the cake.
I don’t see how you can say it is overpriced, if a comparable sounding speaker would cost just as much, with or without the smart stuff.
And of course AM or Spotify will or won’t be worth it, depending on the individual. I hate it when people (not you btw) try to say it’s expensive. At $10 a month it really isn’t. That’s the equivalent of one album really. What I love about streaming is that there are lots of albums Imight be interested in hearing, but wouldn’t necessarily buy. So with streaming I get back to hear all the stuff I would buy, plus stuff I might not have taken a punt on.
I don’t know that anything is against their DNA. Experience tells us they might not open things up straight away, but there is plenty on Apple TV that there wasn’t initially.
I can see them opening things up to HP in time too. They might shift a few more AM subscriptions if they don’t, but they’d likely shift a lot more HomePods if they do.
Last edited:
Completely? Of course not, but they aren't chasing same number, spec or whatever. If they did things like wireless charging, oled, sc cards and mnay other thing would be available on iphones since 2014 or earlier.
Apple will open up eventually ! They want us to be exclusive for a while I guess. It’s only fair though because we have felt what Spotify users are now with other smart speakers other than Sonos with Apple Music. And Siri does everything I used Alexa for feature wise, but she is significantly better picking your voice up than my amazon . I can softly say hey Siri with music playing and I had to scream at Amazon
When you get a chance can you share how the HomePod integrates with the rest of you HomeKit setup.
got to say the boom on this is incredible
This is why I got this thing being able to sit on my sofa and sort my playlists, podcasts and reminders from my sofa when I'm on my MacBook for example. The fact Siri hears me so clearly from this distance is great. This will do whats required
does all my lights perfectly too which is a big reason for it as I now have my whole house set up with them.
Will do more testing sound wise shortly.
During the setup it asked which room I had it in. It now shows under that room in HomeKit. I can ask it pretty much everything my phone/watch would recognize as a valid command: turn lights on/off, change thermostat temperature, to name a few.
I liked I can ask it to turn volume up or down, or skip to the next song while a song is playing and it just does it, with no voice feedback.
Again, for a portable speaker, it sounds great and it is handy. I don’t know if I want it to be a personal shopper/full featured assistant/secretary/spy. But again, those are my needs and expectations. I don’t expect Siri to tell me the secrets of life anyway
Attachments
Last edited:
Siri does literally all of these things, I don’t know what you’re talking about. In fact HomeKit can automatically arm my alarm when the last person in the family has left because it has GPS occupancy status for multiple users.
If you are “actually” invested in a smart home Siri and HomeKit are far more advanced than the basic interactions you get with Alexa and Google. And it even supports more devices and appliances than the competition via 3rd party programs: https://github.com/nfarina/homebridge
Yes you can add (and remove, unlike Alexa...) from your lists.
Last edited:
Meh. Before Apple acquired Beats I don’t remember anyone saying what the company needed was a profitable headphone company. Seems to me people are using it to justify the acquisition. Apple bought Beats at its peak popularity. I remember going in to Best Buy stores and seeing nothing but Beats on the shelves in the headphone section. Now go to Best Buy and Beats occupy one corner. Bose, Sony and high end cans from B&O, Audio Technica, Beyerdynamic, AKG, etc. have just as much prominence.
