Yeah honestly a lot of aspects of HomePod are confusing. I can only imagine how many other people feel confused about what it actually does. I’m gonna order tho.
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HomePod Disables Calendar, Messages, Notes, and Reminder Features When Owner Isn't Home, But Apple Music Account Remains Accessible
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Yeah honestly a lot of aspects of HomePod are confusing. I can only imagine how many other people feel confused about what it actually does. I’m gonna order tho.
Waiting a month or two doesn't change what I was ranting about: Apple's half-assed information drip.
It being a speaker is immaterial. Details about it's full functionality should be a minimum expectation for any product.
Yes, one step forward, two steps back. I really would like a full fledge SiriKit speaker to work with all my Homekit gear. Apple is so annoyingly slow and without roadmap to string us all along.
I agree, this is a very strange product launch for Apple. To be honest, a few days ago I wasn't interested in all (My house is already outfitted with a few Sonos speakers and Alexa.) But after seeing these random tidbits being revealed I am becoming more interested, my main question is on sound quality. If it can stack up to a Play:5 I might be onboard because I like the design a whole lot more, and to be honest I don't really like Sonos on the software side (Though they will supposedly get AirPlay 2 support in the future.)
Honestly, if it's just a speaker there are much more revered, respected long-time audio brands I would pick over an Apple speaker. Apple holds the keys to Homekit and Siri though, so yes, I need that to work 100% with or without an AM subscription as an incentive. Otherwise I can as my iPhone to play a song on my actual stereo speakers.
It's funny, but I have a really nice 5.1 home theater setup (Paradigm floor speakers, SVS sub) and I almost never listen to music on it. 95% of the time I use my Bose mini-speaker. Part of the reason is that I listen to music early in the morning or late at night and don't want to disturb the rest of the family. That's part of the reason why the HomePod is appealing to me.
So, "everyone" can enjoy music, but nuts to anyone else for any other feature.
Funny how much Apple is Trumping up the idea it can be used by everyone when in reality it will only fully benefit one user in the house. It's Apple's usual tactic of spinning and downplaying a negative into a feature. I guess Apple wants you to buy many $400 HomePod's for each iCloud user to set up in their own room.
Why can't they just duplicate what both Google and Amazon devices do, let you pair multiple iCloud user accounts and then use "i-n-n-o-v-a-t-i-o-n" to identify different voices and link actions and skills to that user's account? Why can't two users in the same household ask an "assistance" product what their next appointment is without having to go into earshot of their own specific HomePod?!?!?!? Or what are people going to do, line up 2 or more of these in a row and hope they response properly to each "owner" without the other one hearing?
It's not rocket science, and it shouldn't be for a near 1 trillion dollar company, and yet Apple keeps dismissing the capabilities of their, supposedly, inferior competition while struggling to implement their own less capable version.
But sure, HomePod will sound the best...yay...it's not like I don't have access to numerous great sounding speaker products already.
Funny how much Apple is Trumping up the idea it can be used by everyone when in reality it will only fully benefit one user in the house. It's Apple's usual tactic of spinning and downplaying a negative into a feature. I guess Apple wants you to buy many $400 HomePod's for each iCloud user to set up in their own room.
Why can't they just duplicate what both Google and Amazon devices do, let you pair multiple iCloud user accounts and then use "i-n-n-o-v-a-t-i-o-n" to identify different voices and link actions and skills to that user's account? Why can't two users in the same household ask an "assistance" product what their next appointment is without having to go into earshot of their own specific HomePod?!?!?!? Or what are people going to do, line up 2 or more of these in a row and hope they response properly to each "owner" without the other one hearing?
It's not rocket science, and it shouldn't be for a near 1 trillion dollar company, and yet Apple keeps dismissing the capabilities of their, supposedly, inferior competition while struggling to implement their own less capable version.
But sure, HomePod will sound the best...yay...it's not like I don't have access to numerous great sounding speaker products already.
A family device that doesn’t support multiple iCloud accounts. What?
HomePod doesn't look to extend HomeKit support. If HomeKit doesn't currently support Wink/Nest, I'd be highly surprised if adding a HomePod to the house fixes that...
I use HomeBridge + the ISY plugin to add some zwave to my HomeKit environment. Looks like there are Wink and Nest plugins available.
... and You're waiting for an Apple product? Many great sounding small speakers out there.
This is very strange to me.. it's in the family home, in my case 4 people each with their own iPhones, iPads and iCloud accounts.
I can see no point in a device in the living room / kitchen which is only linked to a single account. It really needs to understand all the family members and react to them according to their accounts and preferences.
This is what I don’t understand. It’s likely going to be used in a common shared space / environment. Tying it to a single iCloud account is going to be weird in this situation.
I get how when the user of this iCloud account is not home it will not allow access to all their content (except music), but if they’re home, yet elsewhere in the house, someone else can use Siri to get access to their content?
Of course though, I’m sure this is just 1.0 and Apple will likely work toward some form of voice recognition (and maybe proximity via Watch?) to respond to specific users with their own content/info.
Not just this, but we also need some information about audio inputs. Airplay is a given, sure, but what about friends who visit with non-Apple devices, wanting to share music that is not on Apple Music? Does it work as a regular BT speaker? Really, I would love a 3.5mm jack as a fallback option.
Also, does the HomePod then not count towards your normal number of concurrent streams? It would suck if you couldn’t listen to music because somebody at home was, too.
Disagree. I don’t think people are buying smart speakers for the sound quality. What Echo provides is good enough for most people. Even if Apple is targeting Sonos and not Echo or Google Home, the fact that Amazon and Google are competitors much more so than Sonos is means everyone will be comparing HomePod to Echo and Google Home. I share some of the concerns analyst Ben Bajarin has (and he’s usually pretty pro-Apple):
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think sonos sounds very good. You do not need to be an audiophile to hear it. So from that point of view, I am intrigued to see how well this will do.
Plus the whole HomeKit hub thing (my Apple TV / and AV equipment is turned off most of the time. (As in: no power), integration into the ecosystem, etc.
Exactly this! I don’t see what people’s issue with this is, you can buy one of these and try it with 14 days return no questions asked! It’s only £319 hardly Apple’s most expensive product.
Apple Music is apparently still available, but with whose playlists, preferences, etc.? It sounds like it has no support for family music profiles? Based on the information so far it’s not at all suited for use in families. Just like the Apple TV’s “tv app.”
Apple continues to be terrible at software for their own products.
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Another reason I’m skeptical about this product. The majority of people buying Echo’s aren’t audiophiles and the sound quality is good enough for them. And audiophiles will point out all the better options with superior sound. So I guess what’s left are those who would purchase something like a Bose Soundlink Mini or Sonos. But how big is that market?
I still wonder if it was Apple’s intention all along to focus on sound quality over smarts or if they knew Siri isn’t where it needs to be to compete so they’re focusing on sound instead. Kind of like how they use privacy to cover up their inferiority when it comes to ML/cloud etc.
likewise. I think a big reason for that is my theater room is actually a room and not set up in my living room. I go into that room to watch a movie, not listen to music. I have 5 echo devices that I use for music and stream it through the entire house when I want to listen to it.
I'm sure multi-user support is something Apple will work on, but it faces serious technical challenges like how to identify the user. If two family members have similar sounding voices, Google will happily read the wrong calendar, the wrong note, the wrong email, or the wrong list because they don't care about privacy or security. Apple does.
Yes, this. Those here parroting Apple's "superior sound" line don't seem to get it. That's not really a killer feature with this type of product. It's not an audiophile device, and not priced as one either. It's geared to play compressed audio and use voice commands to control audio streamed from Apple Music. It does do some Siri commands, but not all. That's like a niche market of a niche market.
OTOH Echo, also not audiophile, doesn't market itself that way, easy to use, does all sorts of tricks, and multiple price points, none really outlandish that has attracted users to that platform. That is Echo's secret sauce. The only issue with Echo for me is I don't trust Amazon enough. But most people are unfazed or unaware on the security issue.
It really does baffle me that Apple is targeting HomePod for it's 30 million AM subscribers rather than it's hundreds of millions of device users. I mean all those Apple device users have had lots of time to sign up for AM but declined. Does Apple think a speaker more expensive than the Echo but with less features other than "superior sound" is going to convince the rest of us when that speaker with Siri can't do much else?
I wasn't buying it once I had my time with it at the keynote announcement. Now with these software updates and single user linkage, yikes! Apple probably should clear it up if that's not the case. But they've said basically nothing about this product and assume people are going to run out in droves to get it. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure tons of people will buy it. But as a hardcore Apple crazed buyer, I can't support this product based on my personal time, known software issues and well SIRI not exactly being able to do much of anything useful. Almost every other digital assistant is better than SIRI, that simply should not be the case.. sadly in 2018 it is. Time to get software design going again Apple, you're lagging well behind!