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HomePod Hands-On: Unboxing and Overview
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Thank you thank you very much. I’ll be here all night. Tip your waitress
Trying to figure out the logic of purchasing this device over the other, well established and superior alternatives.
Other than trying to justify the purchase due to heavy investment in the Apple EchoSystem, the jury is out on this one.
It sounds good, but the assistant (Siri) still sucks & it hasn't seen any real development since it's release.
TLR - Buy a Google Home Mini, buy a decent superior audio system: Profit.
What logic is there to understand?
I own an iPhone and am subscribed to Apple Music. The HomePod is a no-brainer for me just for Siri and airplay alone.
Seems like people are really grasping at straws to find fault with Apple here.
I just noticed that if you have music in Itunes that someone else in the household bought, the HomePod won't play it even if it's in your playlist.
Clearly the other guy doesn’t understand that the main purpose of HomePod is WiFi audio without the need for an iPhone.
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Really. Wow. That’s crap.
After watching the video I'm really not seeing the justification to spend $350 on this versus $85 for a second generation Echo. I could essentially buy four Echos to put throughout my house for this cost of one of these. The Echo has good sound quality (will not replace a proper receiver set up but neither will a HomePod), Alexa is as good or better than Siri at working as intended, and the Echo is shaped like a more attractive, slim cousin of the portly HomePod.
Trying to figure out the logic of purchasing this device over the other, well established and superior alternatives.
Other than trying to justify the purchase due to heavy investment in the Apple EchoSystem, the jury is out on this one.
It sounds good, but the assistant (Siri) still sucks & it hasn't seen any real development since it's release.
TL
Everyone keeps saying Siri sucks but I sat down with an Echo the other day, and used google assistant and Siri on my phone to see how they all faired with answering questions or doing tasks. They all understood me and had certain strengths, but at no point was Siri useless.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Siri + HomeKit is way simpler and satisfying to use for home automation than Google Home or the Echo. I don’t have to set up custom commands or say a command in a certain way for lights to come on like I did with the Echo. Apple’s use of zones and rooms and device organization puts competitors to shame, and I don’t have to dive into third party services like IFTTT to get automations like with Google Home. My Ecobee sensors can turn on my Hue lights, I can geofence to have my leviton porch switch come on when anyone arrives home but only during the night, “goodnight” will simply turn off selected hue lights, turn on a porch light, set my thermostat temp... all in one app and taking seconds to set up and without needing to set up IFTTT. Siri seems to control all my HomeKit stuff flawlessly. Google Assistant and Alexa struggled in that area the most.
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Love the look of the Echo... and that’s it. They sound like tin cans.
Siri is ****.
Until apple gets its S together and improves siri dramatically i'm not interested.
Don't get me started on the price!
Until apple gets its S together and improves siri dramatically i'm not interested.
Don't get me started on the price!
But it is a smart speaker. The idea of a smart speaker is to do everything without your phone. Siri = Fail. $349 = Fail which equals overpriced speaker!
My understanding is that HomePod works just fine without ever using Siri at all.
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Unless you want to have a HomePod on your living room table, non-functional, for decorative purposes, it doesn't really matter whether the power cable can be removed (and re-attached).
The Echo is three times less than the Home Pod and has better smart features. Home Pod may sound great but it should for $349. However I can buy a much better speaker without smart features that is better than Home Pod and less money. Homepod Fails . It needs cheaper price and better functionality outside of the apple ecosystem. Also need to be able to lose the phone for airplay to work. First Apple Product I am not impressed with.
Which is fine because you can't hear where lower frequencies come from anyway. A 30Hz sound has 10 meter wave length. Your ears cannot locate where it comes from better than 10 meters.
I agree, or Sonos Play 5.
[doublepost=1518273522][/doublepost]What about folks that don't use it at all for music? A cheaper option needs to be offered.
I can provide a personal anecdote. My wife has the Echo Plus and I have the HomePod. She liked her Echo a lot, until yesterday that is. Within minutes of hearing the HomePod she asked if we were still within the time-window of returning the Echo (I think we are). Yes Amazon wins in the value arena, but you’re kidding yourself if you think it sounds anywhere close to the HomePod.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
You apparently don't know how things work here. As soon as Apple steps into ANY pond, all of the long-established players in that pond suddenly collapse into crap. Every possible thing that can be spun up as wrong with them (and then some... and then some stuff we might even make up or outright lie about and try to sneak through) will become VERY IMPORTANT features/issues unless Apple's cut at something is lacking there too.
There was a time that we completely LOVED Google Maps, until Apple Maps came along and then the former suddenly had flaws. We used to collectively LOVE Spotify and similar. Then Apple rolls out AM and Spotify suddenly became crap. Even when we have to really stretch to make such stuff appear to be crap, we'll go as far as spinning up profitability & viability as if that should be in the way of consumer enjoyment today. Just anything & everything we can say to try to help Apple sell their entrant against established players is what must be said.
And things that are hard to argue- such as the relative "smarts" in this case will be marginalized away as barely important at best and/or we'll start pounding away that they are no smarter and/or in fact dumber than Apple's cut. We'll also hide behind the ultimate crutch: "just one software update away" even if we know that sometimes the particular things imagined to be on the other side of such updates never actually arrive. In other words, we're happy to imply the hypothetical "what it could become" while holding all competitors to "what they are" (or "were" in some cases).
Specs won't matter unless some Apple spec is superior and then that particular spec will matter. However, let Samsung roll out a HousePod clone with an extra tweeter and/or a bigger sub and then the tweeter count and sub size will no longer matter in future discussions. In fact, we'll probably just flip that to Apple superiority based on "thinner" or "smaller." And note: the Samsung tweeters will be inferior even if they are sourced from the very same place and are in fact the very same tweeters. If that becomes too obvious such that it's hard to argue something different, we'll just promptly stop talking about tweeters altogether other than griping about Samsung's copycat ways.
It's like a rule. Apple could roll out Salsa or TP or Air and all Salsas would suddenly taste rancid, all TP would completely lose it's effectiveness and a number of people here would smother if they ran out of Apple air vs. daring to resume breathing normal air. We are collectively AMAZING that way.
Step back a few weeks and let this HP be a Samsung new product rollout and the collective take- even if it was exactly the same product- would be dramatically different. It's weaknesses would headline most ever post. It's strengths would be beat down as not so strong. What a difference a (brand) name can make.
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So "stereo-like" things is actually fake stereo then? I read somewhere that it plays the center channel audio in the tweeter facing straight out so I thought it would play left channel on the left side tweeters and the right for the right channel.
"Mono" and "Stereo" don't really apply. One HomePod has seven tweeters, measures your room automatically, and sends signals in different strengths into different directions, reflecting from the walls, to give you sound that tells your ears that sound comes from different directions - even though everything really comes from one HomePod. So it's better than mono. It is different from stereo. Two speakers with updated software should produce something that is better than stereo.
But does it sound 4x better? We're not talking about a 50% premium for better sound. It's a 400% premium! And like I said, neither will ever replace a proper audio setup (I have an Onkyo receiver setup for that) anyway.
If Apple was clever, then your HomePod would obviously know what it is playing, then take its microphone input and subtract the music it plays itself - so only your voice would be left. You could do an experiment: Turn on your TV very loud (on a music channel with no voice to be fair) and see how well HomePod handles that. Since HomePod doesn't know what your TV is playing, it would be harder to understand you.
Does it sound 4x better? That’s subjective of course. My wife and I think it does. I was in the same mindset as you a few months ago, when considering if I should get the HomePod when it was released, versus several Echos. But after hearing it I know that I would be forever disappointed listening to music from the Echo, no matter how much money I saved. But everyone is different. My buddy’s wife listens to music from her iPhone’s speaker and is completely happy with that.