I will say though, that with regards to the HomePod and HomeKit, I don’t think that people that have a HomePod(s) should be forced into using the HomeKit app. The HomePod should have a (deletable) standalone app or a dedicated section in the Settings app for updates and other settings with the option to use HomeKit if you choose to. However, this leads me to believe that Apple is/was pushing HomeKit on HomePod owners giving them a taste of what they can do with it (scenes and automations).
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HomePod HomePod Discontinued... Discussion.
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Shortcuts are a blessing in this regard. I have several for various configurations of HomePods + Apple TV’s + Playlists. Pool, Patio, Dinner, etc. there are so many taps and apps to whip through otherwise.
I agree that Shortcuts is a great app in this regard. It’s now somewhat tied in with HomeKit though. I have a HomePod permanently living in my Pool House and an AppleTV connected to an amp powering a series of dumb outdoor speakers surrounding the pool/patio area. With one Siri command, I turn on the amp powering the speakers (smart outlet), turn on the AppleTV (for AirPlay 2 to the speakers), start music playing on my phone, Airplay that music to the AppleTV thusly to the speakers, open the music app (in case I want to change the playlist) and set the volume to a certain level. Then I have my Apple Watch giving the ability to change tracks or volume levels while in the pool. Very powerful integration.
You think the ‘worlds best streaming speaker’ is a £299 HomePod? Lol. Have you ever even looked at what is available in that market?? People spend thousands on the high end streaming speakers and the HomePod doesn’t even rate in the top 5.
Reading the rest of that post where you claim the smart assistant market is dead and hasn’t delivered innovation in the last decade suggests to me you’re not completely serious here. That market is experiencing an enormous boom at the moment and innovation is at an all time high. It’s reminiscent of the smartphone race of 2010-2015 and Apple have struggled to get a footing against the likes of Amazon and Google. If you’re the type of person who is an audiophile and solely cares about sound quality, there are plenty of better alternatives to the HomePod.
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hmm I have the possibility of getting one of the gray ones for a ok price 280 EUR local still boxed unwanted gift still with apple warranty. I have a stereo set of mini an love them. I am now unsure after reading this thread would be the sound be worth the extra money?
Something is worth only what someone is willing to pay. Sure the HomePod sounds much better than the Mini but everyone has a different idea of what good “worth it for the cost” sound is. Same like the taste of foods. Now whether it’s worth the cost for you to get a HomePod based on the way it sounds can only be determined by you.
I was agreeing with your point that if HomePod was not encumbered by IoT support and instead had its own standalone app that HomePod "automation" could be much easier. To get my HomePod to behave the way I want, I need to configure the Home app, the Shortcuts app, and the Music app. One could imagine a HomePod-specific app that could handle that type of configuration far more easily and intuitively.
I'm not talking about speakers with AirPlay support or Bluetooth, I have no interest in having to use my iPhone in the equation or having Bluetooth's limits on dynamic range. I'm talking about plug-and-play speakers I can throw in my trunk with the luggage, plug in the wall, and instantly have access to 50 million songs and my 100's of playlists streaming for my beach house guests indoors while I'm outside listening to something else on my iPhone. HomePod is the best sounding solution, the only one that sounds even close to what used to be called a stereo system.
That's not innovation. That's just expansion. In a pandemic where people are not spending money on vacations and are living and working from home there has been a surge in purchases of dishwashers, ovens, refrigerators, hot water heaters, and other home improvements. And going along for that ride are IoT devices. Problem is, once someone buys a thermostat or a doorbell, that's it, its done, you're good for the next decade or two.
The list of top IoT devices hasn't changed since the beginning circa 2009- thermostats, doorbells, lightbulbs, power switches, security systems, door locks, smoke alarms, etc. Those are one-time purchases for a household, it's the same stuff for the last 12 years because its the same stuff people have been putting in their homes for the last 100 years.
And Apple has nothing to do with it. They aren't in the IoT game. They are reluctantly supporting other people's products and they aren't fully vested in it because they aren't innovating in it. Nor are the IoT suppliers. Same ol' doorbell, same ol' lightbulb.
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Firstly, the HomePod is really not 'audiophile-caliber'. I say that in all astonishment at how well it performs sonically, but as an engineer responsible for the design of 'audiophile-caliber' loudspeaker systems in the 70s and 80s, I can say that the HomePod is (very) cleverly engineered to sound impressive, but it is not particularly acoustically accurate, either in frequency response or soundstage.
Secondly, why bother with HomePod and an Alexa device? The Echo Studio is almost as good as the HomePod, sonically, and does everything Alexa can do on any other device. And as a stereo pair is both much cheaper, and much more flexible.
I have a pair of both, on the same stand as the living room TV. Echo Studios on the top and HomePods on the shelf underneath. The HomePods for Apple Music - they sound remarkably good, and the Studios for radio and Amazon music - they sound pretty excellent too. But on balance, if I had to have one pair only, I'd go with the Studios - it isn't even close, thanks to the lack of HomePods capabilities outside Apple Music.
Let me rephrase- as a streaming speaker, the HomePod is the only speaker that produces the type of fidelity that an audiophile could embrace. I consider myself an audiophile, I'm the guy who purchased many of those great component systems and speakers back in the 80's, thousands of LP's, then thousands of CD's, and I could never imagine abdicating that sound quality to streaming (yuck) and a small wireless speaker (yuck) as late as 2018. But then I discovered HomePod and Apple Music and it was whoa, really? Got rid of all the old analog gear, all the old digital gear, stopped ripping CD's, and between HomePod and CarPlay I am fully onboard with having my cake and eating it too- Streaming 50 million songs, sacrificing only a tad of sound quality, and picking up convenience and new music discovery 100x.
I'm all-in on Apple Music. Because I've been using iTunes for 15 years it knows my listening tastes as I've been very dedicated with the likes, dislikes, plays, skips, and requests to Siri in that span. As God is my witness, all Summer I streamed my HomePods 12 hours a day by the pool and on the back deck playing their stations like Mellow Rock Radio and Road Trip Radio and it never played a dud track, not once. Hundreds of songs all day, thousands over the course of a month, never a dud, never a rush to the skip button. Sacrificing a touch of audiophile-caliber sound quality for that type of magic is well worth it.
An Echo Studio makes mostly the same compromises in terms of acoustic and musical performance. I don't consider myself an audiophile any longer because honestly, the bit rate and compression used for most digital music streaming sources simply isn't good enough to compete, but I am a critical listener, and the Studio is perfectly good for this use in comparison to a HomePod (or indeed, pairs of both).
It is in those compromises that audiophile quality is itself compromised. Speakers this small are not capable of producing extended bass response, for example. Not everyone is bothered by that of course, and I am not, but what Apple (and the others) do, is to boost the response in the upper harmonic frequencies to create an aural impression of bass. Then to ensure the speaker doesn't produce unpleasant midrange, that part of the response is lightly attenuated, then a spike in lower-mid treble to add sparkle and sharpness.
This makes the speaker really quite inaccurate in musical performance, but, ironically, actually sound better musically.
Not being an Apple Music subscriber myself - though my wife is - my HomePods were typically for airplay of iTunes music, and streaming my purchased music too. For that, HomePod is really good, and why I still have them. But I also like to stream radio for background while I'm working, and HomePod is hopeless for that - I suspect because I don't have Apple Music, judging by the fact that every time I ask Siri to play a station that ought to be in TuneIn, (and actually is) I get '...... not found in Apple Music' as a response. It might be that Apple no longer supports content from TuneIn, or only some of it, but their lack of information to the consumer to explain what is and isn't available to stream outside Apple Music is enough to make the HomePod pretty useless for my general listening needs.
Same here. And that's a great way to put it.
Again, a great observation. And that's all that matters to me- what sounds great. I've belonged to audiophile forums that get way too caught up in oscilloscopes and ProTools and compression and its pointless because HomePod just sounds great and I don't care why.
Apple Music has 100s of radio stations- not the traditional FM kind but modeled after them- they're random assortments of music within genres, just like FM but without the commercials. And because each is tailored to each users likes and dislikes, it can be an amazing experience if you invest the time in it. Just a few weeks of listening to, say, Classic Rock Radio and being diligent in clicking like and dislike and listening all the way through on songs you love and skipping the ones you don't and Apple Music will fine tune that station to the point where you are hearing great old song and new (to you) songs without ever hearing a dud or ever hearing a commercial. It's magic. Between SiriusXM and Apple Music I haven't used an FM radio for 10 years. Try it. Apple will give you 3 months free as a trial or you can spend a few extra dollars and upgrade your wife to a family plan.
That is an understatement. I am not being a smartass. I went to a local outlet mall about a month ago to find the shelves bare. The stores main focus was trying to make the shelves look full, not selling merchandise because all that was left was stuff no one wanted in good times. If this is an outlet mall imagine the hospitals, pharmacies, and doctor offices trying to procure real needed items for patients.
So by your metric the iPhone wasn’t even an innovation as it simply ‘expanded’ a product strategy that already existed within the market? Come on, the smart assistant market has brought plenty of innovation over the past 5 years but some companies have been better than others. If Apple aren’t interested with the general consumer as you claim, why are they now focussing on a £99 smart assistant rather than the £349 original HomePod? I think many of us realise it’s because it’s the least popular brand in that sector and Apple want a presence. That is logical and reasonable. The niche audiophile market is small and even then they won’t capture that entire market as there is competition.
Apple want appealability and success, not niche failures.
I understand that these are selling and people are buying them. But it's already a mature business, it hasn't been The Next Big Thing since 2011. We're 10+ years into smarthome and IoT and once you have a new doorbell you don't need another doorbell. Different than iPhone that can change markedly over the years and generations.
I actually don't think Apple is focusing on the cheap Mini. I think they announced that to get people who were waiting them out to jump in instead of prematurely waiting on HomePod Pro. Again, I believe that HomePod was hurting sales of Mini because in their stores the A/B comparisons would have been brutal. Short-term, with supply chain issues and a brand new Mini to ride, Apple is pushing people to the Mini. When the Mini has saturated its market and sales start to plateau, they'll launch HomePod II or Max or Pro or whatever they'll call it.
Apple is all about catering to the niches! OSX has 7% market share, every Macbook is a niche product, even iPhone is now approaching niche-like with the explosion of Android and Apple's own slow progress. AirPods Max is a $549 over ear headphone, caters to the near-audiophile crowd, the very definition of niche. A $300 HomePod Max in 2023 makes perfect sense. Sound quality focus. Especially now that Mini is there to be the smarthome companion.
Thing is, it makes perfect sense for the company with a tiny share of the computer space and a tiny share of the headphone space to support the tiny share of the speaker space. It's what Apple does. And let us not forget- with 15 million units sold and $4.5 billion dollars in revenue, the OG HomePod was anything but a failure.
There were several tests done where it measured pretty accurate. It does seem to exaggerate the bass on lower volumes. It's not a replacement for my full sized audio system, but it's better than a lot of the cheaper passive speakers today.
All low frequency drivers have what is called 'free air resonance', the lower the frequency the better. Large drivers like 12", 15" 18" have low free air resonance, small drivers like the one in the Homepod have a much higher resonance. You can hear it when you first start to listen to it. I don't have my 1/3 octave analyzer anymore, so I can't tell you the exact frequency, but up in the 200's. They do sound good for their size, but not Audiophile Quality. Low frequency response is a function of diameter and excursion of the cone. Which is why the original Bose 901 had no fundamental bass with their 9 tiny little drivers. Total cone area was less than a normal 12" driver, and excursion was very small compared to a 12" with about 1" excursion. It is the physics of moving air with a piston (bore and stroke). That is why they had to have an add on bass boosting device.
Acoustic suspension speakers had seal cabinets and relied on the air inside to be the spring to return the cone to it's normal position. Good bass response for smaller speakers. System had low free air resonance.
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I just bought my first HomePod from Apple after the discontinuation announcement. Unfortunately, I had it two days before it died with flashing volume indicators and I am unable to reset it. I had to set up for a replacement with Apple.
I don't know where these numbers are coming from for 15 million units sold. I was under the impression Apple does not itemize sales numbers for these smaller lines of business and lumps them all together. The serial number on my HomePod I bought "New" from Apple this week says it was produced in Feb 2018. If true, Apple has a warehouse full of these things sitting unsold for 3 years, which may have contributed to mines untimely death. I have seen other posts where there basically are no recent manufacturing dates on these.
Apple must have done an initial manufacturing run and waited to see the sales before making future orders, but they never met their threshold. Makes sense why they discontinued it.
I don't know where these numbers are coming from for 15 million units sold. I was under the impression Apple does not itemize sales numbers for these smaller lines of business and lumps them all together. The serial number on my HomePod I bought "New" from Apple this week says it was produced in Feb 2018. If true, Apple has a warehouse full of these things sitting unsold for 3 years, which may have contributed to mines untimely death. I have seen other posts where there basically are no recent manufacturing dates on these.
Apple must have done an initial manufacturing run and waited to see the sales before making future orders, but they never met their threshold. Makes sense why they discontinued it.
The 15M unit number has datapoints that support it, some illustrated here:
HomePod Discontinued... Discussion.
There are articles with datapoints one can use to make an educated guess: "HomePod shipments actually increased year-over-year during Q4 2019, going from 1.6 million units to 2.6 million units, accounting for 4.7% market share." 2.6M units in Q4 likely translates to 5M units for the full year...
forums.macrumors.com
Yes, it appears that Apple overestimated demand during the first few months of production. That doesn't mean it was a bad seller; it just means that Apple had bad purchase forecasting. Star Trek turned out to be one of the most successful franchises in TV history. NBC just put it in a bad time slot and misread its audience.
Therein lies the problem, because I am really not at all interested in the type of experience you get from listening to US stations, which are almost entirely genre-specific. I much prefer UK stations which are typically rather more (or very much more) fluid in their content. For this, TuneIn works pretty well as a source on Alexa, as does the Global Player skill, but nothing works on the HomePod.
And don't get me started on Apple's 'family plan'! We tried that, but it only allows one payment option, not two (or more), at least without having to juggle payment settings in our accounts. That does not work for us at all. But given we can't get the content I am looking for, particularly when at work, from Apple Music either, the HomePod just doesn't work anyway.
Frustratingly, it even leaves me with a HomePod in my office which gets zero use, because it even drops out randomly when streaming from my iPhone and iPad. The Studio in my office, and the stereo pair at home, however, work just fine.
I am not sure you can make confident estimates based off this. As stated in the linked article: "Apple doesn’t report unit sales for the HomePod, nor has it ever even hinted at the product’s performance. The data from Strategy Analytics is based on things like supply chain indications and market research."The 15M unit number has datapoints that support it, some illustrated here:
HomePod Discontinued... Discussion.
There are articles with datapoints one can use to make an educated guess: "HomePod shipments actually increased year-over-year during Q4 2019, going from 1.6 million units to 2.6 million units, accounting for 4.7% market share." 2.6M units in Q4 likely translates to 5M units for the full year...
Yes, it appears that Apple overestimated demand during the first few months of production. That doesn't mean it was a bad seller; it just means that Apple had bad purchase forecasting. Star Trek turned out to be one of the most successful franchises in TV history. NBC just put it in a bad time slot and misread its audience.
So your 15 million number is an estimate, based off another estimate made for one quarter over a year ago. Also, supply chain "shipments" do not necessarily mean "sold". My HomePod was shipped from China to a warehouse in California where it sat for 3 years before being sold.
It’s not the same old doorbell and same old lightbulb. Doorbells now have facial recognition, package delivery and retrieval recognition. If someone is at my door and I’m watching TV, the image of them pops up in PIP on my TV. In the end, a video doorbell is a button and camera. Not sure what kind of innovation you’re expecting. Lightbulbs are getting thread now and there’s one by LIFX that has a bacteria killing feature. You clearly know nothing about the topic but continue to bash it. There has been an increasing list of new devices that support the smart home.
We all know that you despise the smart home and it’s users. Have a buddy at work that I do the midnight shift with. He received a notification on his phone at ~3 am that there was CO detected in his house. He was able to leave work, dispatch the FD and save his sleeping family from the odorless, colorless, fatally toxic compound. I have an automation that in the case of a smoke or CO alarm, my garage doors open, lights go on to 100%, all doors unlock, all HomePods blare an alarm sound and my light strips flash red, and only when someone is home. If you don’t see the value in that, then I don’t know what to tell ya. Just a very very small sample of what I can do with it.
Yes, but that's what "My Favorites Mix" is for. If you listen to a lot of jazz and reggae, it will play a lot of jazz and reggae.
But the fun really starts here: You can create your own mashup playlist in about 5 minutes if you, say, go to the Essentials playlist for each of the Top 20 jazz artists and each of the Top 20 reggae artists, drag those 800 songs in together, call it "My Jazzy Reggae Station", and ask Siri to play it. That would give you a collection of the best reggae and jazz songs, 70 hours worth, and if you listen for 5 hours a day that's 2 weeks without hearing the same song twice. If it isn't diverse enough, go to the next 20 artists for jazz and reggae and drag those in too.
And Smart Playlists can do a lot of this automatically, just create a Smart Playlists with Genre = Reggae and Genre = Jazz and put in the parameters like star ratings, plays, top artists, most popular, year(s), etc.
Point is, you can create a very robust mashup channel in minutes in Apple Music and call it a "station" and call it up on HomePod, Apple TV, CarPlay, Mac, iPhone, etc. And unlike TuneIn which doesn't know you or what you like, Apple Music will only get better over time and serve you up even their own curated stations in a way that you will never hear a dud song, ever.
You are paying $10 USD a month now for your wife. It goes up to $15 USD a month for up to 5 more family members. You don't need to juggle payment settings, just pay the additional $5 for up to 5 more of you.
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Well, the data says that it shipped 1.9M HomePods to satisfy Q4 of 2019 and shipped 2.9M HomePods to satisfy Q4 of 2020. That indicates a product that is selling significantly better than the year before and would be tracking to 6M sales annually if one doubles the sales of Q4 to account for Q's 1, 2, and 3.
CIRP Says Apple Has Sold 3 Million HomePods in U.S., Suggesting $1 Billion in Sales - Voicebot.ai
A new report by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) says that Apple has sold 3 million HomePods in the U.S. and..
voicebot.ai
This article references a user poll, not shipping estimates, and stated:
"A new report by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) says that Apple has sold 3 million HomePods in the U.S. and nearly doubled its smart speaker market share in the second quarter of 2018. When you multiply that by three million units, total revenue is $1.05 billion. If these numbers turn out to be correct, Apple will have generated more HomePod revenue in first five months of device availability than Sonos’ total sales over its entire 2017 fiscal year for all of its products."
3M units in 5 months, HomePod was sold actively for 36 months, that would mean sales of 21M units, and in 2019 and 2020 the retail dropped significantly probably pushing it up near 30M units. And I'm claiming 15M.
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That’s what made Acoustics Research so popular. Their AR3 used an acoustic suspension design. HomePod is also an acoustic suspension design. The Mini uses passive radiators instead.
I have a Boston Acoustics sub that uses a passive radiator instead of a ported design as it allowed for a smaller cabinet.