I thought the Echo Dot was designed to be plugged into your existing sound system or speakers?
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HomePod May Support Multiple User Accounts and HomeKit Scenes That Mute Siri
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That's ASSUMING the HomePod actually supports input connections - other than bluetooth - that would make this possible.
What is Apple doing to make the HomePod special? It looks like a decent speaker with Homekit capabilities. It will sound better than the Echo, sure. It's also about 2.25x more expensive than the most costly Echo model. It should sound better. But it certainly doesn't have any new tricks. Echo supports multiple accounts too.
It was/is, but supports a very small internal sound output. That approach does have at least 2 challenges though.
1. The tiny internal speaker is great for voice i/o but your iPhone will have better sound output.
2. Connecting the Dot to your home stereo makes it sound much better, but routes ALL voice output through the stereo. Users have long requested sending all output to the stereo except for direct Alexa i/o.
The Dot is primarily a low cost coaster-sized speaker with Alexa. It retails for $50 but recently Amazon has been pushing them for $25-35. It plays audio but not well. It's mostly to give people a low-cost, easy way to access Alexa when a full fledge speaker like the Echo is overkill.
I think it's all about the ecosystem as well, if you have Apple devices then you may be more likely to buy the HomePod, also personally i don't trust Google or Amazon with privacy at least not as much as i do with Apple.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Hopefully not. The draw/success/popularity of Apple products never leans solely on commodity hardware. The real draw is always in the only-available-here software. No matter what quality "really good sounding speaker" ships within this cylinder, the ability of competition to upgrade speaker quality is trivial. Ever changed the quality of your speakers at home or in your car? Pop out the old, pop in the new, and you have upgraded the quality of your speakers. There's no coding & debugging tasks involved. Remove old, insert new, and listen to better quality sound.
To date, Apple has spun the primary justification of this thing on exactly that: "better quality speaker." The time it will take for Amazon, Google, etc to swap out their speakers with something equal to or better than Apple's will probably be about as long as it takes you or me to swap out our car's speakers with better ones.
Apple loses when the gist of the proposition is on commoditized hardware alone. Any competitor can easily match or exceed Apple's choice of quality speaker in a matter of days.
To some degree, the "dot"-type products ALREADY do that by shifting the choice of quality of speakers out of the box (brains). Buy a dot, pick ANY quality of speaker you want (or already have) and now you've got the brains + the quality of speaker you desire. The retail on 2 HomePods does offer a lot of room for buying some great speakers instead plus dot-type products, if one does not already have some spectacular speakers to which to connect a dot.
Which brings us to...
I suspect that it MUST be this. What makes Apple products a success is the exclusive software, not the underlying hardware. Since the other players can easily stick higher quality speakers in their products (if their's turns out to be inferior quality vs. Homepods- none of us know this to be true yet), it seems this eventually comes down to Siri vs. Alexa vs. Google, etc. Hopefully Apple has been hard at work making elements of Siri that best match what one expects out of this kind of product best in class.
After one gets done playing with an AV device UI, it does come down the quality of that device's output. If all players can line up on quality of sound- and they can- the UI becomes the differentiator. If this smart speaker is coming to market with the highest price, it better bring the smartest UI. Trying to win on commodity hardware alone- or commodity hardware with an inferior assistant- seems a high hurdle to leap at the highest price. Sure, the staunch "Apple is always right" fans will gush and spin whatever Apple spins in the marketing about it (I've already seen a post from some guy claiming one of these sounds better than a $40,000 speaker
) but the masses who don't worship this corporation will likely need to be wooed on an overall experience (akin to the perceived lift driven by iOS on commoditized hardware and/or macOS on commoditized hardware).If Siri still feels a few years behind, I question adoption beyond the "I'll buy anything Apple offers"... "and gush about it as hard as I can to try to sell others" crowd. If the software is inferior but the price is highest in the space, the proposition likely struggles with the masses beyond the fringe that only care about a logo in terms of justifying or motivating a purchase. The masses not seduced by the logo may see the proposition of a "good enough" Echo in every room vs. 1 or 2 Homepods in one room... and the Echo works with not just Apple Music (as rumored to be a potential issue with HomePod).
I'll conclude with this potentially big positive: assuming Apple knows this well, they probably HAVE been working hard to get Siri functionality out ahead of Alexa, Google, etc. (which, if you are objective, you know is no small challenge). Further assuming so, a smarter Siri is probably not going to be locked into only this one product. In other words, if big investments in Siri's functionality have been made here, a smarter Siri probably comes to all Siri-capable devices with- or soon after- this launch. That seems like a big win for everyone regardless of if one buys this particular thing or not.
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The only problem I have with this is, Siri on the wrist only activates when I turn my wrist and the screen turns on. While this works for a lot of scenarios, times where I'm carrying something (laundry, etc) and can't turn my wrist make a scenario for a Dot-like device perfect. Otherwise I totally agree, I love having Siri on my wrist since it goes everywhere with me.
Our, and I know nobody wants to hear this, perhaps Apple have misfired. Perhaps Amazon have covered every base known to man and just dangling Apple music will not be a draw.Hopefully not. The draw/success/popularity of Apple products never leans solely on commodity hardware. The real draw is always in the only-available-here software. No matter what quality "really good sounding speaker" ships within this cylinder, the ability of competition to upgrade speaker quality is trivial. Ever changed the quality of your speakers at home or in your car? Pop out the old, pop in the new, and you have upgraded the quality of your speakers. There's no coding & debugging tasks involved. Remove old, insert new, and listen to better quality sound.
To date, Apple has spun the primary justification of this thing on exactly that: "better quality speaker." The time it will take for Amazon, Google, etc to swap out their speakers with something equal to or better than Apple's will probably be about as long as it takes you or me to swap out our car's speakers with better ones.
Apple loses when the gist of the proposition is on commoditized hardware alone. Any competitor can easily match or exceed Apple's choice of quality speaker in a matter of days.
To some degree, the "dot"-type products ALREADY do that by shifting the choice of quality of speakers out of the box (brains). Buy a dot, pick ANY quality of speaker you want (or already have) and now you've got the brains + the quality of speaker you desire. The retail on 2 HomePods does offer a lot of room for buying some great speakers instead plus dot-type products, if one does not already have some spectacular speakers to which to connect a dot.
Which brings us to...
I suspect that it MUST be this. What makes Apple products a success is the exclusive software, not the underlying hardware. Since the other players can easily stick higher quality speakers in their products (if their's turns out to be inferior quality vs. Homepods), it seems this eventually comes down to the Siri vs. Alexa vs. Google, etc. Hopefully Apple has been hard at work making elements of Siri that best match what one expects out of this kind of product best in class.
After one gets done playing with an AV device UI, it does come down the quality of that device's output. If all players can line up on quality of sound- and they can- the UI becomes the differentiator. If this smart speaker is coming to market with the highest price, it better bring the smartest UI. Trying to win on commodity hardware alone- or commodity hardware with an inferior assistant- seems a high hurdle to leap (at the highest price). Sure, the staunch "Apple is always right" fans will gush and spin whatever Apple spins in the marketing about it (I've already seen a post from some guy claiming one of these sounds better than a $40,000 speaker
If Siri still feels a few years behind, I question adoption beyond the "I'll buy anything Apple offers"... "and gush about it as hard as I can to try to sell others" crowd. If the software is inferior but the price is highest in the space, the proposition likely struggles with the masses beyond the fringe that only care about a logo in terms of justifying or motivating a purchase.
I'll conclude with this potentially big positive: assuming Apple knows this well, they probably HAVE been working hard to get Siri functionality out ahead of Alexa, Google, etc. (which, if you are objective, you know is no small challenge). Further assuming so, a smarter Siri is probably not going to be locked into only this one product. In other words, if big investments in Siri's functionality have been made here, a smarter Siri probably comes to all Siri-capable devices with- or soon after- this launch. That seems like a big win for everyone regardless of if one buys this particular thing or not.
Sure, that's a function, but even still it's not what the HomePod is intended to be, going back to the original post here. HomePod is competing more with the full fledged Echo.
Alexa has exactly the same problem. I have an Echo Plus in the living room. Sound great for music, but when I try to use it for kitchen-related tasks - for example, setting a baking timer - the living room device doesn't always hear me. Fair enough, so I put an Echo Dot in the kitchen. With the volume low it fills in music a bit and makes it sound better, plus now I can be in the kitchen and ask for a timer. Except... sometimes NEITHER device hears me and sometimes BOTH devices hear me.
One of the challenges of the Echo ecosystem is that they are not really aware of each other. In theory the device hearing your voice first should be the only one to respond, but in practice... not so much.
Apple really needs to knock this out of the park by permitting multiple devices around the home that are both functionally and spatially aware of each other as well as having an awareness of where YOU might be.
Imagine the baking timer scenario, except that while X is in the oven I go back to my home office to work. HomePod detects my presence and outputs the alert wherever I am! That's a really simple use-case for a very powerful feature.
Now imagine a parent asking Siri "please tell Susie it's time for dinner". HomePods detect that someone is in Susie's room... and starts the following conversation:
Siri: "Susie..."
Susie: "Yes...?"
Siri: "Mom says it's time for dinner"
Susie: "OK, tell her I'll be right there"
Sure, we're a long way from this, but it's not a technological roadblock as it is simple logistics. We just need to get all of the existing pieces put together in a way that make's it work.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Could be. I'm of the mind that Apple could box up air right now and a crowd will lay out the money to buy Apple air (perhaps even a subset of them suffocate because they accidentally run out of Apple air at some point and refuse to breathe the inferior air). So I expect this to sell well to that crowd that would buy anything Apple would box. However, if it launches still clinging to mostly justifying the highest price on "better quality speaker," I think it struggles beyond the "I'll buy anything from Apple" crowd.
It's definitely about the ecosystem. But that doesn't make the product itself special. It's just Apple's take on the smart speaker. It doesn't do anything we haven't seen before. It's a work in progress still.
It has the ability to adjust itself automatically to your room to improve sound. It has real-time modeling. No other speaker I know of (outside of professional live sound reinforcement) does this.
Except the that Echo Plus already has great sound (in relative terms), can read books, tell stories, control smart devices, play games, provide intelligent responses based on an ever-growing connection to knowledge, etc.
We - Apple loyalists - have been conditioned through years of neglect to have low expectations for AI and Voice I/O... namely Siri.
I don't think the intent of the HomePod is to replace your expensive home audio system, to be honest...
I know that, other members have been asking for a Dot style add on from Apple.
I am interested to see what Apple brings to the table with their smart speaker, but right now I am happy with my Echo and I already have a good home stereo set up.
I think software wise it will get better over time, they will add new features Tim Cook more or less confirmed this during an interview
"There's a lot Siri can do from the phone, we will start with a patch of those this year that Phil talked about at the keynote and you can bet that there is a nice follow on activity there as well" - starts at 1 minute into the interview
That's not the point. There are three different business models at work here:
Apple make consumer electronic products. Theuy buy advertising to promote their core business of selling those products (that's exactly what you've just said). The services they offer (music, video etc.) are primarily designed to sell iPhones, iPads and watches.
Google sell advertising and customer data. The - mostly free - services they offer to consumers are primarily designed to gather that data and deliver that advertising. Their hardware products are primarily designed to promote their services.
Amazon are a retailer selling everything from aardvark husbandry supplies to zombie costumes. Their computing products are primarily designed to promote and sell Amazon retail products (and are often heavily subsidised loss-leaders).
(Microsoft - as far as I can tell - have a business model based on the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in which their most profitable division is the complaints department. Their products seem mainly designed to annoy people for no obvious benefit to either the customer or the company. Share and Enjoy
)...now, yes, there is some convergence here: both Amazon and Apple are moving in on Google's turf to some extent, and both Amazon and Google have been tentatively seeing if they can get double-bubble by selling their ad delivery systems at premium prices and still coin it in from ads and data gathering... but they're still clearly coming from three different directions.
Currently, I trust Apple to treat me as the customer rather than the product slightly more than I do Amazon, Google or Microsoft... in much the same way as I trust {politician A} over {politician B}. I.e: ask me again in six months.
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On my screen, the caption at the top of the video says
"Apples Cook Says Homepod's Quality will Blow..."
(F'nar, F;nar, yuk, yuk, oink!)
Pretty sure I read that the beam-forming will work only with iMusic tracks which Apple has re-encoded to take advantage. Not sure about this, but makes sense given Apple's focus on their walled garden.