HomePod Hands-On: Unboxing and Overview

[H.E. Pennypacker]

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.
[doublepost=1518272443][/doublepost]

Love the look of the Echo... and that’s it. They sound like tin cans.

Apple user to the fullest extent here. MacBooks iphones, ipads, iMacs airpods etc, but I’m not sure how you say HomeKit is easier then echo. It’s simply not. HomeKit isn’t supported by nearly as many product lines. My echo and Alexa work flawlessly every time. Not to mention there is always a delay with Siri and HomeKit when turning on lights and adjusting thermostats where Alexa is instantaneous. Saying that setting up custom commands for custom settings is a bad thing is not realistic. Not every Apple fan wants to be locked into one way of doing things. There is a reason echo and google home are miles ahead of Siri and HomeKit in the smarthome race. Good luck though.

 

[gnasher729]

No but if someone was going to p***s away $349, I think most of us could find much better ways to spend that money.

Posts like that make me wonder. Is $349 a lot of money to you? I know someone who spent about three times that on Hue lights. I know that Daimler-Benz sells an in-car entertainment system to keep the kids quiet for about £2,000. It's the difference between an iPhone X and an iPhone 8, and also the difference between an iPhone 8 and an iPhone 6. Maybe you are thinking of botox injections. Easy to spend more than $349.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

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.

Some of "us" here spun those kind of ideas up to help Apple sell as many as possible. Some had it as a 7.1 surround sound speaker in a single little box too. At least one posted a question about it being Dolby Atmos in a single little box. Apparently it's count the tweeters and that is the same as individual speakers.

There were people arguing it would use the magic of "beamforming" to beam the left channel to the left wall and the right channel to the right wall and thus accurately replicate a classic left-center-right setup: die, all soundbars and front 3 speakers, die!!!

Of course, the catch is this: how does the HP know where the listener is sitting? And in a 360-degree speaker, where is the "front"? And thus, where is "left" and "right"? Conceptually, one could say "front" is the tweeter facing opposite the electric cord. OK, so what if one puts their HP in a corner or behind their seating position- does that make its "front" the "back"? Are you "seating it wrong" or are YOU seating yourself wrong?

And then there's the problem of sitting somewhere else. What if you sit far left of the speaker? Are you drowning in the left channel beam?

And then there's the problem of 2+ people in the room. How does HP beam left-right-center for each of them assuming they are not sitting in each other's lap?

Joking aside, this product is meant to be an Echo Deluxe. It's objective it to try to make a typical-sized room seem full of good-sounding-music. Apple is not pushing it as some kind of home theater speaker at all- that's all US trying to blow it up into something much more than it is. I think if Apple would have held off the launch another week or two, expectations would have risen to curing cancer, raising the dead, etc too.

IMO- a classic audio term twisted to seem best fit for this product is mono-plus, meaning more than a classic mono speaker. A bunch of people here are trying to spin it into being a stereo speaker in a single box too, mostly ignoring that Apple prominently conveys "it takes two" on their own website AND that Apple is downplaying even that with the phrase "stereo-like" themselves. Nevertheless, some of us really want to help Apple sell as many of these as possible, so we'll keep pounding away at the fringe bending & contorting classic definitions to maximize the puffery. That's selling at it's maximum (right at the border of crossing the line from truth to lies, but with at least a little room for defense vs. being an outright lie). Only Apple can motivate a big group of people to work so hard to sell other people anything Apple makes and do all that work for free.

Bottom line: go listen to one. You can try them out now. See what you think. Not every room is set up well for easy access to stereo or surround sound. Maybe someone doesn't even want stereo or surround in some rooms, but they would like an easy "just works" way to play quality sound in those rooms. Some of us might remember a time when we carried around transistor radios with a crappy mono speaker and enjoyed music in many places where otherwise there was none. Now we can have great-sounding music in all such places from this and/or it's competitors in this niche. IMO that's what this thing is: a very easy way to bring great sound to places where you may have none. Yes, it can be some other things too but I personally think it's mostly meant to be the former than it is to be a wide variety of the latter. And that's just fine.

If we're worried about helping Apple sell as many of these as possible, I would imagine the typical home has far more rooms without speakers than with them. There's plenty of places for a HP to go and be thoroughly enjoyed.

 

[fpnc]

The bigger annoyance to me is that you have to say “Hey, Siri” then wait for it to wake up, THEN issue a command. With my echo, I can just say “Alexa, play music” with no pause. Far better solution.

I don't have to pause with my HomePod. I can say something like, "Hey Siri play the Beatles" and it answers "Sure, here's some Beatles" and then starts the playback.

That said, Siri seems pretty dumb. It doesn't appear to be truly conversational. More like it just does simple pattern matching from a short list of pre-programmed functions.

The feature list is also very short, it can't do much. For example, there appears to be no way to wake to music or even change the alarm sound.

I've also run across a couple of very obvious bugs over a few hours of use. For example:

1.) Siri got confused about whether it should answer over my iPhone or the HomePod. It finally stopped responding to commands and I had to unplug and then replug the HomePod before it would again respond to Siri (the HomePod seemed to be locked out from Siri, always trying to default to the iPhone even after I removed the iPhone from the conversation).

2.) Every so often the music stream will just stop cold, sometimes in mid song. Looks like a network streaming error.

3.) In a dead quite room with no music playing and even when speaking clearly Siri will sometime not respond so you have to repeat yourself. Doesn't happen that often and usually it is very good at responding even when speaking over loud music. This could be related to issue #2.

4.) I had problems during the initial setup, got several different error numbers. Did a search on the internet and noticed that you have to have two-factor authentication enabled to use the HomePod. I enabled that on my iPhone and stepped though some other related settings and after another restart of the HomePod the setup completed.

Did I mention that Siri seems pretty dumb? It often makes embarrassing mistakes. Like playing an oddly titled song when you just asked about the weather.

As for the audio quality, it's good for such a small speaker, but it's certainly not great nor anything that special. Sounds to me like a pretty good, small, single speaker -- which is what it is so no surprise there.

It is, however, omni-directional meaning that you can place it in the middle of a room and it sounds pretty good no matter where you are.

 

[Applebot1]

I’ve talked myself into getting one. Now to convince wifey lol.

 

[citysnaps]

I’ve talked myself into getting one. Now to convince wifey lol.

Get one for her as well?

 

[anson42]

I found my HomePod took about an hour to pick up my playlists, so I can understand the initial frustration at something which supposedly "just works".

I noticed when I fired up iTunes on my Mac that there was some syncing going on between it and something in iCloud. I don't have iCould music enabled nor do I use Match but that activity that made my playlists visible to HomePod. Some sort of iTunes Match-like process is matching up the content of my smart and not so smart playlists and matching those albums that are present in AM. And it took about an hour.

Also, I noticed that all my playlists are now also on my iPhone. I usually only sync over a few playlists but all my "smart" playlists are also there now. That's a side effect I wasn't expecting and is cluttering up my mobile Playlists view. Though this seems more like an Apple Music side effect then a HomePod one. As a new AM (trial) subscriber this behavior is new to me...

 

[artfossil]

I’ve talked myself into getting one. Now to convince wifey lol.

I can help with that.

 

[KeithJenner]

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.

There is a lot of truth in that. It’s quite pathetic really.

Similar sorts of things, and just as weak arguments, go the other way as well. I generally read MacRumors for entertainment purposes these days. Neither side on this pointless argument is any better than the others.

As the end of the day, this is all just consumer electronics. People make their own decisions based on their own preferences. There is no right nor wrong.

 

[gijoeinla]

And your response is why posting on Internet forums is a sure fire way to smoke out the nutters...

I found my HomePod took about an hour to pick up my playlists, so I can understand the initial frustration at something which supposedly "just works".

Also writing in CAPITAL letters only really makes you look immature as does the use of the word "Fail" - how old are you?
[doublepost=1518259804][/doublepost]

Certainly not perfect by any stretch of the imagination - but its "good enough" for what it is - an additional and convenient method of listening to music in a room where a full system isn't desirable or practical.

Your experience of “it took an hour” for HomePod to find my playlist contradicts assertions that it “couldn’t play” a playlist or “my own music”. It does and it does.

Now you claim — for whatever reason that it took “an hour” to do it. I’m trying to gather what that means. My experience said and contradicted repeated assertions that HomePod does in fact easily play playlists and my very own uploaded MATCH libraries perfectly without any delay either from a Siri request and or my iPhone.

The capital letters is used to be direct and highlight this particular issue because some posters keep repeating wrong information as if it’s fact.

If that writing forces you to look at a post as immature or maybe assume I’m 3 years old then I’ll gladly wear that badge and proudly.

It doesn’t change the result of my experience with HomePod. It works as advertised, it’s exceeded my expectations, this product will be a success over time and so for me it works flawlessly and I’m thrilled to own it.

And I might add I won’t be deterred from posting responses that correct those that share certain experiences and assertions that are not endemic of Homepods true abilities.

So I for one can say that famous catch phrase “it just works”..... and for me it does.

 

[iMi]

The bigger annoyance to me is that you have to say “Hey, Siri” then wait for it to wake up, THEN issue a command. With my echo, I can just say “Alexa, play music” with no pause. Far better solution.

This is incorrect. I just said “Hey Siri, play music” all together and the HomePod immediately started playing. I tried the same with a weather query and it worked just fine.

What’s more, I am right now typing on iPad Pro and while issuing command, the iPad Siri would activate briefly and then let the HomePod handle the request. Pretty seamless. The iPad is right in front of me and the HopePod is about ten feet away. Yet, the request is clearly prioritized by HomePod, as it should be. Works great.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

With the various "which Siri?" (responds) gripes, I find myself thinking why didn't Apple just leverage the exact same Siri underpinnings by "renaming" Siri as "Homepod" here? Or- and yes, I know this is extremely crazy- let us users name our own Homepods (probably get banned forever for daring to write down such an insane idea as supporting user choice). Cue people in black suits with Apple logos on them at the front door. Bang, bang. "He's dead Jim."

Then, the "Hey Siri" and "Hey HomePod" call outs would be heard by the intended device. Anyone who is a parent of more than 1 kid knows so much better than naming all of them Bob or Karen... so that "Hey Bob" doesn't make all of your little Bobs respond and/or drive confusion of which Bob you meant. Give them different names and when you "Hey _______", the intended one will probably hear your "Hey..." and respond. Name them all Bob and how is the right Bob supposed to know that HE's the one you wanted.

But what do I know? I don't have "$2XX Billion in the Bank." All hail the Apple.

 

[anson42]

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.

To each his own especially if you think the Echo has good sound quality. I've heard both now and well, ignorance is bliss or a money saver. Granted, to you the Echo may have "acceptable" sound quality and that's fine, but it sure isn't for me. I do agree Alexa has more utility at this time. I do hope Siri increases her own usefulness over time and iteratively increases HomePod's ROI. I am glad that HomePod is able to control my HomeKit products today though.

 

[gixxerfool]

Last thought on AM vs. Airplay. I ripped all my cd's on my laptop years ago, so my 'local' songs are all at the bit rate I ripped them at. Could have 128, could have been 256, may have even been MP3, IDK. But as has been pointed out many times, iTunes match doesn't upload YOUR song if it is in the Apple music library already. It just adds their copy to your online 'Library'. So the Apple version that is 'downloaded' to you HP directly could be a much better quality than the one you ripped on your computer, synced to your phone and are Airplaying to the HP.

Although I guess no one, myself included, actually sync their phones anymore. But hey, it's just a thought.

On your last point, I still do for music I purchased a physical copy. I have been buying it digitally since though. I’m a little old school as I still use an iPod Classic.

 

[anson42]

HomePod's version of Siri does have a music bias. "Hey Siri turn off" – no pause necessarily for the poster who though it was required – shuts down the HP as expected. "Hey Siri off" hilariously does NOT; I now know there is a an LA punk band called Off. Who knew?

 

[Machead2012]

Great looking device but...No bluetooth? No Spotify compatibility (forget the back door AirPlay nonsense) a non detachable power cord? Deal breaker and no matter how great it sounds IMHO it still doesn't cut it especially at the offered price point.
Ill wait for these handicaps to be rectified (I don't expect a Spotify correction/Apple ecosystem is understood but again IMHO i'm not a fan of Apple Music).
Maybe next year.

 

[dogslobber]

Meh. How is this better than the iPod Hifi?
[doublepost=1518277302][/doublepost]Is the music in the video from the HomePod? Gotta love macrumors videos!

 

[deanthedev]

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.

You apparently have blinders on. I see just as much (if not more) on the other side. Trashing every single thing Apple comes out with.

 

[Boatboy24]

I've looked, but haven't found anything clear. Can anyone shed light on how HP 'works with iTunes'? I don't have Apple Music and have much of my music burned from CDs, residing in iTunes on a Mac Mini. Will the HP only access iTunes music you have in the cloud, or can it get to music you have on a computer, like AppleTV can?

 

[anson42]

Great looking device but...No bluetooth? No Spotify compatibility a non detachable power cord? Deal breaker and
no matter how great it sounds IMHO it still doesn't not cut.
Ill wait for these handicaps to be rectified.
Maybe next year.

You may be waiting a long time. You can play Spotify over AirPlay but you can't get Siri to play Spotify music for you.

This is a product for Apple customers in the Apple Music ecosystem where the primary music source is streaming. It features AirPlay that all Apple devices support. It is also a product that Apple is using to try to entice non Apple Music members into the ecosystem and to keep them there. All this limits the target audience. If you don't want into Apple Music and prefer Bluetooth, you definitely made the right call.

I'll happily enjoy my HP and you your non-HP

 

[Texas26257]

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!

Been playing with it and Siri works wonderful which I was surprised

This speaker was in my bedroom and while cooking I yelled hey sir set timer from different room worked great.
Every song I ask for played well. Every thing I ask ed sure work flawless.

Do you own one is yours not working the same

 

[anson42]

I've looked, but haven't found anything clear. Can anyone shed light on how HP 'works with iTunes'? I don't have Apple Music and have much of my music burned from CDs, residing in iTunes on a Mac Mini. Will the HP only access iTunes music you have in the cloud, or can it get to music you have on a computer, like AppleTV can?

Have you streamed music from iTunes to a device before? When there are AirPlay capable devices on the same wi-fi network as your computer the AirPlay button appears at the top of the iTunes application. Look for this:

Click that to see your AirPlay playback options. The HomePod will appear there. You can select multiple playback devices though without AirPlay 2 they will all play the same thing. If the button is not there, you may have a networking issue.

HP is not able to directly access your iTunes library, only Apple Music and iCloud music. You have to use AirPlay to push your music at HP since it can't pull it.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I see just as much (if not more) on the other side. Trashing every single thing Apple comes out with.

I agree. There is another segment- a mirror of the "Apple is always right in all things" segment if you will- that seems to consistently be at the other extreme.

And then there's a segment that seems to be in the middle- a group I'll call the objective people who can see past a brand name and view a product for actually what it is vs. what it could possibly become and/or what it is definitely not. Those people can seem to swing from very, very positive about something from Apple to very, very negative about something from Apple but generally seem to have the power to actually "think different" instead of just towing the company line and/or only being able to fault the company.

Personally- and this could be just me- I find that objective crowd yields great value around here. The extremists- at both ends- tend to- IMO- just overly confuse topics and/or wage wars over next to nothing, for nothing.

 

[berrymetal]

remind me that I need to fix my icloud keychain on my primary iPhone so I can get my HomePod to work

 

[Boatboy24]

Have you streamed music from iTunes to a device before? When there are AirPlay capable devices on the same wi-fi network as your computer the AirPlay button appears at the top of the iTunes application. Look for this:

View attachment 750674

Click that to see your AirPlay playback options. The HomePod will appear there. You can select multiple playback devices though without AirPlay 2 they will all play the same thing. If the button is not there, you may have a networking issue.

HP is not able to directly access your iTunes library, only Apple Music and iCloud music. You have to use AirPlay to push your music at HP since it can't pull it.

Thanks. My Mac Mini is basically a home theater pc. Other than the television, it isn't even hooked up to a monitor. I just keep it on with iTunes open at all times so I can access content from AppleTV if needed. I could AirPlay from it as you mentioned, but that would involve turning on the TV, getting my wireless keyboard out, etc. I wasn't sure if there's an easier way to access iTunes content.