HomePod Now Available to Order in United States, Australia, and United Kingdom

[HobeSoundDarryl]

I wonder if I might suggest that it can sound very different in your home. Even if something sounds great in the Apple Store; Best Buy; etc.,etc. the sound will vary greatly depending on flooring, ceiling height, furnishings, and window dimensions, among other things.

I completely agree with this. For the ultimate test, there's no place like home and nothing like our own ears hearing our own audio source selections.

It probably is best to purchase one and try it out in your home to determine whether or not it meets your personal audio preferences (also highly individual).

I disagree but only per my own purposes. I personally would rather let some reviews answer some open questions about it first. Then, I can easily visit a store and play with it there for something a little closer to a personal review. Then, take it home if it gets past both of those filters. However, that's just driven by a smallish lack of desire to box things back up and send them back if I don't like them. If someone else doesn't care about that, see the first answer.
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The discussion I saw about the really expensive speaker comparison, was from The Loop based on a reddit thread.

http://www.loopinsight.com/2018/01/24/on-homepod-and-audio-quality/

OK, thanks for the link. Basically, that's just speculation from available information. Everything we're reading in these threads could be just as right or wrong about this product.

In speculation: technically, this can be a box of crap or the best audio speaker in the world. It's probably somewhere between those 2 extremes. The cheerleaders here are spinning it as the latter. The naysayers/bashers here are spinning it as the former. But nobody knows (yet)... except some people inside Apple and some hand-picked reviewers who have shared only select opinions, that may or may not be somewhat biased to keeping themselves on the early reviewer list.

I hope it's fannnnnntastic. New competition is always good for us consumers. Odds are favorable it will be a good smart speaker- how often does Apple just completely miss a target? They're smart, skilled, hardware makers that have ridden about 5 distinct tech products to become the richest company on the planet. But none of us can make strong pro or strong con comments about this unreleased product and be definitely right at this point. We have a sense of what is. Reality is coming very soon. Reality may be better or worse than our sense. None of us know which yet.

 

[Bryan Bowler]

Sorry, but I'm not a snowflake. He didn't melt me, I just noted OP's faux pas in good debate. What he said was the equivalent of saying "shut up," yes. I was the one trying to have a conversation. He responded to a post I made to someone else, not him, I responded to him with other facts, he responded, ending with that bit. I'm happy to be refuted. He told me to stop talking and go away rather than tell me where I was wrong. You have your facts backwards here.

He never told you to shut up. He tried to offer help. I guess you’ll only hear what you want to hear, which is a shame. Best of luck to you and have a nice day.

 

[44267547]

#HatersGottaHate #HatersGonnaHate

While I understand why someone wouldn't want a Homepod, I'll never understand why people gotta hate on other people's interest.

"I hate what you like and you must know it."

Why bother clicking on the link to this forum if you know it doesn't appeal to your interest?

Anyway, I don't have a smart speaker and I am knee deep in an Apple ecosystem so I'm in (Pre-Ordered). Looking forward to what the reviews keep referring to as great sound. I also like that it can act as a Hub for my homekit devices. Siri may be lacking in capabilities, but thats ok. I'm sure Apple will improve Siri as the need for it to grows.

I think the sound will deliver. Siri will always an evolution of an improvement process. But for somebody who uses Siri every day, I'm confident if it will mesh nicely with the HomePod. I mentioned before, Apple will continue to improve the HomePod through software updates and roll out features to enhance it. It might start off limited, but I would rather have Apple take their time in rolling out other features in the later months versus push everything all at once for something that doesn't work right.

 

[Macaholic868]

I’m interested in purchasing one of these but I don’t have an Apple Music subscription. I signed up for the three month trial when it first came out but after reading horror stories from people who were using iTunes Match and what it did to their libraries if you have different live versions of songs on an album I never enabled it in iTunes.

Have they worked out all of those kinks? If I subscribe to Apple Music with iTunes Match enabled and then decide I don’t like it and end the subscription will my original library still be there as is? Can I reenable iTunes Match? Can you purchase tracks and/or albums you really like from the iTunes Store so if you stop subscribing you’ll keep what you bought?

 

[Sheza]

The discussion I saw about the really expensive speaker comparison, was from The Loop based on a reddit thread.

http://www.loopinsight.com/2018/01/24/on-homepod-and-audio-quality/

What you've done here is misinterpreted the Reddit post. He was saying that the HomePod has a version of a feature that appears on $40k speakers. He was not saying that the HomePod sounds as good / better than $40k speakers.

 

[CjonesHouston]

Woke up at 7:15 am central. Wasn’t goin to buy at first. Saw it was a delivery date for the 9th and I would be off that day. Pull the trigger for the white Home Pod. If it’s the quality of sonos with integrated Siri. I’ll be happy.

 

[edlex]

Alright I'm in! 2/9 delivery Space Black. Looks like they're building a bunch of them.

 

[H.E. Pennypacker]

But Wait!........don't you need to purchase 24 so that you can have stereo in your mansion?!?!....well, maybe the bathrooms don't need stereo but can be used to order toilet paper......:0))

Oh no! You’re right. I’ll order another 12 now, anyone else want some, my treat.

 

[Z3man]

Ordered Space Grey here in the UK, delivery 9th Feb as expected.

I currently use a Loewe Speaker To Go which has excellent sound quality for its size, expecting the HomePod to be quite a bit better though. If it isn't it will be getting returned.

 

[bigjnyc]

Any word on FM Radio? sorry if its been asked, too many posts to go through. Would be nice if you could ask siri to play a radio station.

 

[GTDaveMac]

I’m interested in purchasing one of these but I don’t have an Apple Music subscription. I signed up for the three month trial when it first came out but after reading horror stories from people who were using iTunes Match and what it did to their libraries if you have different live versions of songs on an album I never enabled it in iTunes.

Have they worked out all of those kinks? If I subscribe to Apple Music with iTunes Match enabled and then decide I don’t like it and end the subscription will my original library still be there as is? Can I reenable iTunes Match? Can you purchase tracks and/or albums you really like from the iTunes Store so if you stop subscribing you’ll keep what you bought?

I have had no problems with my music. I had iTunes Match and luckily never saw an issue. I just cancelled iTunes Match after reading articles that as of June 2016 the matching for Apple Music is the same for iTunes Match and downloaded matched personal tracks no longer have DRM, which was a main issue people had a problem with. I confirmed with Apple that as of now there is no reason to have both unless I cancel Apple Music, double checked that I have all music downloaded just in case, and now can cancel an unnecessary subscription.

 

[xdhd350]

Space Gray will be delivered on February 9th. Early reviewers are praising the audio quality of this thing.

 

[anson42]

Nope. This is very limited. Can't even be a BT speaker. Can't use as a speaker from Mac. Apple TV can't use it. Can't be turned into a sound system with more of them. The integration kind of blows.

I believe you'll be proven wrong about this. BTW, apple's specs have this listed:

• Bluetooth 5.0

They don't talk about it, but I would guess that debunks your statement about it not being a BT speaker. We'll see.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

The discussion I saw about the really expensive speaker comparison, was from The Loop based on a reddit thread.

http://www.loopinsight.com/2018/01/24/on-homepod-and-audio-quality/

Thanks. I never saw that until you posted the link. I definitely saw that reference on a thread here. But I tried doing several advanced searches and can't find it anymore. I challenged the point when it popped up and the author probably edited it out after realizing that was quite a BIG (puffery) thing to write down. Having looked at that reference at that link, I wonder if it was just some guy who may have seen that and was basically referencing that in the post here? Oh well, no big deal either way.
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Any word on FM Radio? sorry if its been asked, too many posts to go through. Would be nice if you could ask siri to play a radio station.

No sarcasm tag?

If it's a real question:

• I've tried to follow this product closely and have seen nothing about FM
• Speculatively I always think about how Apple can make money from a feature that would otherwise compete with another thing they sell. So- speculatively- I would guess pretty strongly "NO"

FYI: Apple sells tens of millions of devices that apparently ship with FM radio circuitry inside already, but explicitly do not make FM available. I've heard that's about antennas but I suspect it's more about the money in AM and iTunes.

Correction Edit: see post #195- thanks Sheza. No FM circuity in iDevices anymore. SOOOOOO, I'm guessing there is probably no FM circuitry inside this HomePod either.

 

[cardfan]

I believe you'll be proven wrong about this. BTW, apple's specs have this listed:

• Bluetooth 5.0

They don't talk about it, but I would guess that debunks your statement about it not being a BT speaker. We'll see.

HomePod is equipped with AirPlay 2 compatibility (coming soon). The good news is that your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and any device with AirPlay support works perfectly with HomePod. The bad news is that you can't connect it directly to your Bluetooth devices, like a T.V. set, game console, or Android device. Though HomePod does have Bluetooth 5.0, it's not currently capable of streaming audio from Bluetooth devices.

 

[Sheza]

Thanks. I never saw that until you posted the link. I definitely saw that reference on a thread here. But I tried doing several advanced searches and can't find it anymore. I challenged the point when it popped up and the author probably edited it out after realizing that was quite a BIG (puffery) thing to write down. Having looked at that reference at that link, I wonder if it was just some guy who may have seen that and was basically referencing that in the post here? Oh well, no big deal either way.
[doublepost=1517000923][/doublepost]

No sarcasm tag?

If it's a real question:

• I've tried to follow this product closely and have seen nothing about FM
• Speculatively I always think about how Apple can make money from a feature that would otherwise compete with another thing they sell. So- speculatively- I would guess pretty strongly "NO"

FYI: Apple sells tens of millions of devices that apparently ship with FM radio circuitry inside already, but explicitly do not make FM available. I've heard that's about antennas but I suspect it's more about the money in AM and iTunes.

Apple hasn't shipped device with FM radios for a while. https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/28/whose-fcc-is-this/

 

[Phil77354]

Regarding FM via HomePod, don't you essentially have the ability to use HomePod as a connected speaker to your computer or iPad or iPhone, thus anything you are listening to on any of those devices can be directed to the HomePod speaker?

 

[JTR555]

Where’s the updates and articles about delivery times slipping on account of the deluge of preorders for this?
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Would be interested at 199.

$349 is ridiculous.

You can get a Sonos for $200

They’re running a limited special of 2 Sonos for $349 right now.

 

[bigjnyc]

Thanks. I never saw that until you posted the link. I definitely saw that reference on a thread here. But I tried doing several advanced searches and can't find it anymore. I challenged the point when it popped up and the author probably edited it out after realizing that was quite a BIG (puffery) thing to write down. Having looked at that reference at that link, I wonder if it was just some guy who may have seen that and was basically referencing that in the post here? Oh well, no big deal either way.
[doublepost=1517000923][/doublepost]

No sarcasm tag?

If it's a real question:

• I've tried to follow this product closely and have seen nothing about FM
• Speculatively I always think about how Apple can make money from a feature that would otherwise compete with another thing they sell. So- speculatively- I would guess pretty strongly "NO"

FYI: Apple sells tens of millions of devices that apparently ship with FM radio circuitry inside already, but explicitly do not make FM available. I've heard that's about antennas but I suspect it's more about the money in AM and iTunes.

Correction Edit: see post #195- thanks Sheza. No FM circuity in iDevices anymore. SOOOOOO, I'm guessing there is probably no FM circuitry inside this HomePod either.

Thanks for the info, I was being serious.. Wasn't aware of the history with apple unwilling to activate FM circuitry, very interesting. I guess the option would be to stream from your phone using one of the radio apps via Airplay.

 

[sofila]

I signed up for the three month trial when it first came out but after reading horror stories from people who were using iTunes Match

With "Horror stories" you've clearly described the topic. A nightmare.

 

[purplehaze0]

£££

 

[lakerchick4life]

Will order from best buy since Im an elite member and will get a longer return time..just not sure on the space grey vs the white will have to wait til the 9th when I see it in store..I read that HomePod does NOT work with the macbook pro is that true..I got a 3 month free trial of apple music with my beats headphones so would love to use it with the homepod

 

[341328]

I’ll wait for the reviews and in-depth speaker comparisons. I looks good.

 

[[AUT] Thomas]

More languages will be supported in future software updates, including French and German this spring.

Let me correct that for you:
More languages may be supported in (very) future software updates, including French and German probably this spring (maybe later) -in some regions we deem worthy of our product.

Seriously... fool someone else... That's what they said on the Apple TV as well...
In Austria and Switzerland still no Siri on that device at all. Neither German NOR English. And that's after 1year+ after launch. And they already launched 2nd gen of that product. Shame on you Apple...

Conclusion: Don't buy a HomePod unless Siri is practically confirmed in your country.

 

[Tech198]

Why would Apple limit language support in future ? That would mean limited to certain users who can only use it. But it would happen.