Sure, some people will do like you are. But that is a pretty limited group of people willing to pay $350 for a speaker that limited. Once the initial group of early adopters buys in, they have to find a way to use the HomePod to attract users to iOS, Apple Music, etc if they want to make the HomePod a big player in this market.
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HomePod Reviews: Outstanding Sound Quality, but Siri 'Struggles at Smart'
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That's *exactly* part of the problem with Apple gear these days - nothing is consistent.
I have used Alexa to play music only a handful of times. Most of the time I use it to turn on lights, set timers, "Drop-in" my kids (not via video since we have a basic Echo) and remind them to do some stuff -- it basically can be an intercom system for the 21st century. An intercom that I can access anywhere I have Internet access.
The speaker side of things? Not so interested. It's okay to fill a small room with background music. But I don't really use it for that. When I am picking up my puppy (8 weeks old!) in the middle of the night to take him outside, I can simply say "Alexa, turn on ____ lights" and not have to worry about it. That's made a significant improvement in quality to my life and that's the kind of thing I love about it.
So to me, the "smart" part is more important than the "speaker" part. I understand Apple's play though. It's a good one and will capture a high-end customer. But this is the first Apple device which has to primarily be interacted with via Siri. And that's not a good sign. Most of our interactions with Apple products is really good because the UI is interacted with in areas Apple excels in. Frankly, no one but Google is doing a great job with voice recognition / processing -- but Apple is particularly lousy at it.
So this will be interesting -- they have a HUGE captive audience who will buy it, which always makes it difficult to bet against Apple. I have the original Apple Hi-Fi with iPod dock
. I thought it sounded great at the time, so I'm sure that HomePod sounds fantastic.
But without Spotify support, it is a no-go for me. I don't live in Apple Music. I can also upload tracks to my Amazon account (only 100? if you don't pay for Amazon Music) and have my Echos play my own music. I am not sure if the Homepod can do that, but either case -- my streaming service at this point is Spotify.
The speaker side of things? Not so interested. It's okay to fill a small room with background music. But I don't really use it for that. When I am picking up my puppy (8 weeks old!) in the middle of the night to take him outside, I can simply say "Alexa, turn on ____ lights" and not have to worry about it. That's made a significant improvement in quality to my life and that's the kind of thing I love about it.
So to me, the "smart" part is more important than the "speaker" part. I understand Apple's play though. It's a good one and will capture a high-end customer. But this is the first Apple device which has to primarily be interacted with via Siri. And that's not a good sign. Most of our interactions with Apple products is really good because the UI is interacted with in areas Apple excels in. Frankly, no one but Google is doing a great job with voice recognition / processing -- but Apple is particularly lousy at it.
So this will be interesting -- they have a HUGE captive audience who will buy it, which always makes it difficult to bet against Apple. I have the original Apple Hi-Fi with iPod dock
. I thought it sounded great at the time, so I'm sure that HomePod sounds fantastic.But without Spotify support, it is a no-go for me. I don't live in Apple Music. I can also upload tracks to my Amazon account (only 100? if you don't pay for Amazon Music) and have my Echos play my own music. I am not sure if the Homepod can do that, but either case -- my streaming service at this point is Spotify.
$350 is actually a mid-range price for a quality compact speaker. People who think the price is a barrier are mistaken. It's an aggressive price for the technology inside.
ONLY if most people care about the "Assistant" part of the device more than the music part, then yes a Echo or Google Home speaker is probably not only cheaper but good enough.
We have a year old full size Echo. It replaced our Bose Sound Link BT in our kitchen. Not even 30 days later the Bose was back and my youngest son has the Echo. #1 reason the full size Echo did not sound as good. The Assistant piece got a ton of play for the first 7-14 days by my kids, probably more like the first 72 hours. After that is was a BT speaker. Even today in my son's room 99% of what it does is play Apple Music off his iPhone over BT.
For audio/music I have no doubt the Home Pod crushes any Amazon product and the only Google product that can compete is the $399 Google Home Max and most reviews are saying it is better than the Max and $50 cheaper.
How about you try it first?
For most tasks that you would use the HomePod for will fit it’s need.
Me too basically. Even if Siri got super powerful I doubt I would use even 10% of its ability. Maybe someday I will get into Homekit, if Nest ever decides to natively support it.
Fully agree - I'm actually even more interested in their own App ecosystem being able to more natively use it.
For instance, I'd like Overcast (podcasts) to be able to use Siri to be called up.
If I have to use Airplay and a phone/ipad all the time, the HomePod isn't doing enough to justify a purchase for me. I already have plenty of great sounding speakers in the house tied into Airplay...
[doublepost=1517946023][/doublepost]I can't believe they don't allow Bluetooth streaming to it.
Airplay only is severely restrictive, especially in 2 or 3 years if Apple moves on from this device.
Siri has managed to be the same as it has been since Apple acquired it 8 years ago. They have done literally nothing to make it work more reliably.. they just changed the voice and added homekit integration.
So essentially, how is this any different than the iPod speaker they made 10 years ago? If Siri is even more worthless on the HomePod than an iPhone, you're just paying $350 for a mono speaker? $700 for "stereo like" experience? Sheesh
There are a few motivations it seems from this design:
Apple, first and foremost, makes hardware that sells their services. Apple Music, iTunes, iTunes Match. Whatever your choice, all of their hardware is designed to push their services.
They didn't want to make just an AirPlay speaker. There are plenty of those like there are plenty of bluetooth speakers. That would be redundant and the cost they would charge would make it not viable.
They want the product to be able to work on it's own. Yes, you can control what goes to it from a phone, but it's better if you can just tell it what you want.
That requires Siri.
The moment you introduce Siri, you raise expectations for what the product can do "smart"wise. Attaching Siri to a product means the user expects to get smart functionality out of that product.
The problem with Siri, as a previous poster pointed out, is that it is broken up over multiple platforms. iPhone/iPad, Watch, AppleTV, Mac, and now HomePod.
Siri can't possibly operate the same across so many different screens when the output requirement is different. This is where Apple has slowed down their development of Siri. By constantly being forced to adapt to new formats, they haven't taken the time to broaden Siri's capabilities overall.
If you ask Siri something on an iPhone, half the time it will show you a screen. How can that work on a speaker only device? The functionality isn't there yet. In order for that to work, Siri has to be able to audibly answer your question on devices with screens and without. And if there is a screen, it needs to show you something along side that audio, whether that screen is watch sized or iPad sized. That's three different forms of return information from the same service.
My fear is that decent sales will drop HomePod into the AppleTV "hobby" category when people are happy to just control their music and the basics from the speaker. It probably doesn't need to do much more than that. But until Apple figures out a way to serve Siri equally across all devices, the HomePod's smart functionality will be limited to voice commands and not much more.
So, after million words written about it, does any real standalone over 100-bucks speaker have better mid range than this pod?
So they are calling in stereo-mode when using two pods. But does it really mean that having only one pod you music gets summed to mono? That would be absurd...
Need to wait till the HomePod arrives in consumer hands. I'm sure the true audiophiles will dig into this a lot more.
On a side note -- I thought this techcrunch article for a decision tree was pretty humorous:
"Sorry I am not up to date with any news about that"...Alexa fails at > 50% of any query she gets from me or my kids. Alexa, Order me an Uber... Echo order me some more tampons? no thanks..... I can order my own the old fashioned way with an app..
Need to wait till the HomePod arrives in consumer hands. I'm sure the true audiophiles will dig into this a lot more.
On a side note -- I thought this techcrunch article for a decision tree was pretty humorous:
They should alter the Apple Music part though..
Either AM or just being an iTunes Match subscriber are each good reasons to say "yes" at that step
pretty sure they should've concentrated on the cpu and not just the speakers
imagine this with an apple tv 4k cpu ??
not a crappy A8
my iphone 6 has that... eeurgh
imagine this with an apple tv 4k cpu ??
not a crappy A8
my iphone 6 has that... eeurgh
Yep - Locked into Airplay only for input and with an A8..
This product will not age well
Try the “Hey Siri turn off the lights” first. By that I mean ignore the ding and speak naturally. The ding was initially distracting to me and interrupted my train of thought. Once I learned to ignore it SIRI actually heard my requests and functioned well. Of course YMMV... and the problem with homepod is *drumroll* SIRI!
hey siri t.. DING
HEY SIRI - DING
HEY SIRI - nothing happens
hey siri, turn off the lights
(me every evening talking to my iphone, while my gf is laughing at me)
no thanks i stay with sonos for now
[doublepost=1517947486][/doublepost]
The A8 is really a good fit for this device. The cpu really doesn’t have all that much to do here. No screen to manage, no major iOS apps to run, no video to decode.
Need to wait till the HomePod arrives in consumer hands. I'm sure the true audiophiles will dig into this a lot more.
On a side note -- I thought this techcrunch article for a decision tree was pretty humorous:
Only the first two points are actually relevant as yes/no questions in terms of buying.
Assuming that’s really true, you’re comment ignores the fact that SIRI can and is being enhanced as time goes on.
[doublepost=1517947933][/doublepost]
Do we know for sure that Bluetooth isn’t supported? I suspect you’re right and I’m still catching up with all the reviews (and may have mist this point in the ones I read) but I’d like to see it said by someone that has one.