My HomePods also no longer play local radio stations after 13.2.1. E.G “Hey Siri, Play triple j Radio”.... returns.... "Sorry, I can't create a station based on that."
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Hands-On With the HomePod's New Multi-User Detection and Ambient Sound Features
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My HomePods also no longer play local radio stations after 13.2.1. E.G “Hey Siri, Play triple j Radio”.... returns.... "Sorry, I can't create a station based on that."
Wow Tim really lowered your expectations
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Playing your own music requires a $9.99/month subscription. But that's less than 2 Starbucks a month so no problem right?
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Not totally true.
I have iTunes Match which allows you to play everything in your iTunes library for only $19.99/year. Siri works on HomePod using iTunes Match.
Fair enough they still offer the separate subscription for just Match
Works great in our family of kids of similar ages. They enjoy being able to choose their own music. Never really had any problems with them creating too much mischief - not sure what it would do if they tried to modify our personal data as it recognizes my wife and I as individual users yet still allows the kids to interact as well.
FWIW I’ve been using stereo homepods on a dual band Wi-Fi network for over a year with no issues (with the stereo part of things anyhow). Every once in a while Siri does seem to not be able to answer questions terribly well, but for the most part they’ve been great.
These questions might’ve been answered if this were an actual hands on article as the title suggests. That’s why I clicked it, anyway. But it isn’t.
It's nice to see them add features. It'd be even better if they had features that worked. Siri wasn't all that great before, but since IOS 13 it has dropped to an intelligence level between a rock and a flower. It misses 2/3 of the words said to it and misinterprets the rest.
This on iPhone. I've no interest to give Homepod another try. The sound (and overall) quality wasn't even close to matching the price. You could always argue that the reason is my broken English. Could be. Then again, Alexa understands me 95% of the time without a problem, and is able to do so much more than Siri ever could. Smart speaker finally made some sense to me - Homepod never did.
This on iPhone. I've no interest to give Homepod another try. The sound (and overall) quality wasn't even close to matching the price. You could always argue that the reason is my broken English. Could be. Then again, Alexa understands me 95% of the time without a problem, and is able to do so much more than Siri ever could. Smart speaker finally made some sense to me - Homepod never did.
So this still burns me up. To use the Siri feature to listen to MY OWN music I have to keep paying Apple indefinitely?! I think I also want to invoke the “greed” word... if Apple charged everyone when they tried to use Siri there’d be a public outcry. Why is the model for the HomePod different?
Homepod wasn't intended to compete in the Bluetooth speaker space. It wasn't intended to compete in the Smart speaker space. It wasn't intended to compete in the HiFi speaker space. It seems to be competing only in too-expensive-for-what-it-gives device space.
Weird how this argument doesn't apply to "Apple Watch was never meant to compete in the smartwatch space"
Then again Apple Watch is successful
Is HomePod supposed to compete in the flop product space?
Not at all, far from it. Perhaps you shouldn't speak for others?
I've been using them around four hours every day. Since they were released. With excellent sound and utility, complementing Apple Music.
How long have you been using yours?
The sounds are alright though seem like very short looped clips to me. I was hoping they were a good 15 to 30 minute files that had a little variety. Like when it rains there is variation in sound with light cracks of thunder but that isn't on the file. Which is more or less personal choice. Cool they added the feature though. I've played it a few times already but keep finding myself going to different apps from the app store because they just sound better overall. One thing I just started doing with my homepod was call transfers. My goodness that is so easy. Set your phone next to homepod, automatically moves the call over. Talk about seemless.
Probably should have been more specific, it was goodbot that talked about adding users to wifi it was you who said your friends could stream to AppleTV (which is via AirPlay same as HomePod) which implied you couldn't stream similarly to HomePod which to the best of my knowledge works the same way. And yes, there are only limited android devices that support AirPlay so that is a real limitation that you have to be ok with, but assuming you have AppleMusic, they can always just request something verbally.
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No, you can actually do this by paying $25/year with iTunes match. and save almost $100/year. This will also cleanup some of your library if you happen to have used a lower quality compression on some of it in the past.
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I agree that it seems they could have used family sharing to stream as long as your iTunes library was always on and properly matched to the meta data that siri needs, but by using iTunes match you are essentially paying for Apple to hold the songs on the internet with better Meta data. I get why it works this way, but you can always airplay to it. I'm not sure other voice assistant speakers offer anything better than iTunes match.
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Maybe because Apple Watch was intended to compete in the smartwatch space and it has defined much of what is expected from the category. HomePod was intended to compete in the high quality smart speaker space and it has struggled because of a high price point and more limited feature set. But it was not intended to compete agains cheap low quality bluetooth speakers. It is possible that apple didn't include bluetooth to drive that distinction home. I think they just knew their audience and felt they would be more receptive to the functionality of AirPlay.
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[QUOTE="goobot, post: 27971015, member: 333199"Why do you think they didn’t enable bluetooth?
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Because it’s lossy, and AirPlay isn’t. It means that if I’m playing lossless rips I’m getting CD quality straight from my HomePods, not a compressed Bluetooth signal.
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Because it’s lossy, and AirPlay isn’t. It means that if I’m playing lossless rips I’m getting CD quality straight from my HomePods, not a compressed Bluetooth signal.
No, Thunderbolt 3 is the future on Mac. The Lightning connector is superior in every way to the USB-C connector.
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Apple is charging you for the costs involved in storage space, redundancy, and internet data transfers for the music that they've been unable to match against their own files, for you, personally.
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I have had mixed experience. I used to have a Time Capsule for wifi and seem to have fixed Homepod stereo problems by disabling 5GHz. I now use a different router and they are working fine.
I am pretty disappointed by the performance of hand-off now that it works for me. It just is not consistent enough for daily usage. It would be much better if there would appear a toggle on the home screen to switch between playback on iPhone and HomePod. Or if it just worked automatically when entering/leaving home. It also seems to not work at all when playing music on the HomePod directly and then trying to transfer that playlist to the iPhone. Apple sure has some work left to do here...
Homepod doesn't include bluetooth equally as a visionary design choice and as an ecosystem lock.
This is very similar to the headphone jack on iPhone. (They want to encourage you to wirelessly connect and preferably with Airpods)
Maybe even more similar to the lack of volume buttons on Airpods. (They want to encourage you to trust/use Siri)
Apple wanted the HomePod to be a device operated predominantly by Siri. The device was invented to further push their customer base to trust and use Siri. Any guest can easily ask Siri to play music that they want to hear (that's on Apple Music
of course). One can argue that this offers more convenience for casual music playback over having someone put their bluetooth speaker in pairing mode for you to connect (then have to remember to disconnect because you will remain the default connection until they reconnect...)
Apple saw the flaws in bluetooth pairing and capitalized on it with the H1 chip in the Airpods. They choose to not offer that seamless functionality to all mobile devices because of hardware/software limitations and that's better for their business model. They prioritize their ecosystem and it's as simple as that.
People with iPhones have a better experience with Homepod. If you prefer to not have your guest on your wi-fi but you also must have the the ability to let them stream music in your house on command, then Homepod is not the product for you. Products get overly complex when a company tries to appease everyone's preference.
NOW CAN HOMEPOD BE BETTER AT WHAT IT DOES? YES.
13.2.1 hasn't been very smooth for me but I'm patient with Apple. I prefer it over the rest so I can wait.
This is very similar to the headphone jack on iPhone. (They want to encourage you to wirelessly connect and preferably with Airpods)
Maybe even more similar to the lack of volume buttons on Airpods. (They want to encourage you to trust/use Siri)
Apple wanted the HomePod to be a device operated predominantly by Siri. The device was invented to further push their customer base to trust and use Siri. Any guest can easily ask Siri to play music that they want to hear (that's on Apple Music
of course). One can argue that this offers more convenience for casual music playback over having someone put their bluetooth speaker in pairing mode for you to connect (then have to remember to disconnect because you will remain the default connection until they reconnect...)Apple saw the flaws in bluetooth pairing and capitalized on it with the H1 chip in the Airpods. They choose to not offer that seamless functionality to all mobile devices because of hardware/software limitations and that's better for their business model. They prioritize their ecosystem and it's as simple as that.
People with iPhones have a better experience with Homepod. If you prefer to not have your guest on your wi-fi but you also must have the the ability to let them stream music in your house on command, then Homepod is not the product for you. Products get overly complex when a company tries to appease everyone's preference.
NOW CAN HOMEPOD BE BETTER AT WHAT IT DOES? YES.
13.2.1 hasn't been very smooth for me but I'm patient with Apple. I prefer it over the rest so I can wait.
It doesn't matter how flawlessly and low-latency Siri works; it's only useful as a fallback for volume control. Hands-free, for example. It could never come close to proper volume buttons.
And I don't think Apple is under the illusion that it could. They just don't prioritize that as much as some others might. AirPods would be rather awkward with more buttons.
As long as that someone has an iPhone you don't need to let them connect to your personal WIFI to play to your HomePod or AppleTV. If you set Allow Speaker & TV Access to "Everyone", HomePods and AppleTVs set up their own network that is hidden and anyone with an iPhone can play to them. In fact, once set to "Everyone", take your HomePod somewhere away from your home network and plug it in. Although it is not connected to ANY network, you can still play music to it! Argue all you want about allowing non-Apple devices to use this hidden network, but for Apple users there is simply NO reason to use Bluetooth to connect to a HomePod.