The only other real complaint you wrote is about HomeKit, which will surely work well with the HomePod. The HomePod is designed to be the best of both a smart speaker and, well, a music speaker. If it really achieves that goal, it will be worth the price. If not, then of course price will become an issue.
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Here's How Apple's New HomePod Speaker and iMac Pro Look in Person
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The only other real complaint you wrote is about HomeKit, which will surely work well with the HomePod. The HomePod is designed to be the best of both a smart speaker and, well, a music speaker. If it really achieves that goal, it will be worth the price. If not, then of course price will become an issue.
The computer might. But as we all know, Apple won't support it that long and they won't even fix it for money after five years.
I also spoke of dust issues and more. Siri is still in beta IMO, same w homekit. As fas as the Pod being the best of both, it falls short on being smart and for sound as well IMO. We shall see what happens, but to me this is the iPod HiFi all over but in 2017.
Per the McGill.ca study in 2009, it takes a "trained listener" to distinguish 256 Kbps MP3 from CD and an "expert listener" for 320 Kbps. This was in a dedicated listening room using very high end equipment, i.e. ideal conditions, with the test subjects listening intently for differences. The slide deck where I got that info is probably still available online, but the paper was always behind a paywall, and I've never read it. I'm still unclear as to how often they were able to tell differences, e.g., could you pick a random piece of music, let them listen to it for 30 seconds, and they would reliably tell a difference? I suspect not. It should also be emphasized they were using MP3, and AC3 (AAC) is even better.
Dude, where do YOU shop? Buy me 10 of them! Besides, doesn't the *sound* of the speaker matter more than the look?
A real workstation basically is a server in a desktop chassis: Brutal compute power with lots of available upgrade options. Those iMacs are BTOs and cannot be upgraded later. At this price point, that's a no-go.
The old Mac Pros were real workstations, no wonder they are still being sold on eBay like crazy. The iMacs are beautiful desktops, but their hardware design is too limited.
My dad used to do that to get kittens out of his home-made Klipshorn.
It was like my birthday and saturnalia and eostre all rolled up into one. Apple finally made good. I happily take back the last three years of bitching I've done about them falling short in the high end.
Looking forward to filling the design office with iMac Pros to power the big Wacoms.
Looking forward to filling the design office with iMac Pros to power the big Wacoms.
ifixit will give you a complete tear down of all the components inside. I always look forward when they disassemble an Apple product and show you what's inside. It also shows you how well Apple products are constructed and so seamlessly put together.
The new iMacs released today have USB 3 ports and SD card readers, as well as Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports. And a headphone jack.
I think you may have missed the point I was getting at. It was simply to refute that streaming audio from Netflix and others is bad enough to warrant only using a sound bar. Most streaming audio is capable of producing much more than a simple sound bar is capable of and thus even people who only stream should get something of better quality than a sound bar. Most streaming audio is fairly decent. It's not Dolby Atmos or DTS:X, but it's generally capable of a good 5.1 surround sound.
No, I don't think I did, and I think we agree. It's ridiculous in general to be talking about the quality of higher bit rate lossy audio as compared to CD per the results of the study I cited, in which trained and expert listeners struggled to tell differences while intently listening under ideal conditions using very high end equipment in a special listening room. It's absolutely absurd to be talking about it for a tiny speaker like the HomePod, soundbars, or much of the typical equipment found in home theaters. The source format is not going to be the limiting factor for the vast majority of people and systems, and most people that love to talk about it are misguided at best. Different masterings, of course, can make a difference anybody can tell, but that's not what we're talking about.
Gotta love this
http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple...gle-home-nothing-nice-to-say-2017-5?r=UK&IR=T
Schiller trashes the competition , while apple just copies them . Sad times where apple is copying what others have brought to markert, and the only innovation is the huge price mark up ..... while missing the biggest issue the speaker faces, Siri. People don't need a music speaker.....which was what the keynote was about, they want a home assistant, and here Amazon and google kick apple's butt. Heck, chrome audio provides much better audio for people with speakers already in the house. Fix Siri!!
http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple...gle-home-nothing-nice-to-say-2017-5?r=UK&IR=T
Schiller trashes the competition , while apple just copies them . Sad times where apple is copying what others have brought to markert, and the only innovation is the huge price mark up ..... while missing the biggest issue the speaker faces, Siri. People don't need a music speaker.....which was what the keynote was about, they want a home assistant, and here Amazon and google kick apple's butt. Heck, chrome audio provides much better audio for people with speakers already in the house. Fix Siri!!
Ok I've got you now. I think I'm the one that misunderstood and yes I think we agree.
Anyway, much of what I was responding to wasn't so much about the HomePod in particular, but sound bars and other low quality "home theater" speakers. The HomePod probably sounds good for what it is.
Non iMac pro top model is now £5K, so these pro units will be pushing £10k fully spec'. Look like lovely machines, though the design is flawed, iMacs throttle due to heat, and apple have decided to turn them into workstations....best get AppleCare, cause they will burn themselves out.
I don't doubt that it sounds decent. I do doubt it's worth $349 to me. I've already got an Echo Dot, and I recently replaced my bedroom system (Denon AVR, Energy RC Minis) with a Bose Revolve at $199. That speaker has a battery and is thus portable, plus it can be a USB speaker if my main system ever goes down. I never thought I would own a piece of Bose gear, but that thing has really exceeded my expectations, both in absolute terms and in comparison to other Bluetooth speakers I tried. I was a little worried I'd have buyer's remorse when Apple released its speaker, but not anymore. I do look forward to the inevitable comparison!