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HomePod Reviews: Outstanding Sound Quality, but Siri 'Struggles at Smart'
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Still no reviews from audio magazines.
Honestly, anyone buying it before reviews on Head-fi show does it just because it's Apple product
Honestly, anyone buying it before reviews on Head-fi show does it just because it's Apple product
Until 3rd party services (cough, Spotify) are available on it, I'm totally not interested, no matter how good the dumb Siri sounds. That's the other thing - absolutely unbelievable how imprecise and dumb Siri still is in 2018.
I'll know Siri has improved when I don't find myself whispering "God, I hate you Siri" several times a week when it screws up a simple request.
Outstanding sound compared too?
Compared to other smart speakers? Or a AV system ? Or just in general ?
Compared to other smart speakers? Or a AV system ? Or just in general ?
But for playing your playlists it's nice or artists that you remember.
This is sounding very alluring. I could not care less about any of this smart assistant foo foo, but a high quality speaker that's a better audio technician than I am and will recalibrate on its own? Yes. I want that... but I don't want to subscribe to Apple Music to get it. I really hope the reason why it's tied to Apple Music is a technology reason that will be resolved later. If I can just play off of my iTunes library, I'd be placing an order as soon as I finish typing this.
Which easily loses its appeal after a short amount of timeSomehow walking around a home and asking random questions equals smart these days.
The tasks people are likely to use these home assistants are no different to what Siri can do.
I'm excited to hear how good the sound quality is. It's unfortunate that Siri is so far behind the other voice AIs though. Siri on my phone almost never works; I can't imagine siri on the Homepod being worse.
I'd say more Siri bifurcation, but it's actually trifurcation now: Siri's task list is different for iOS, Mac OS, and now HomePod. This IS a problem. I don't know enough of the technical issues, suspect its security related, but still annoying that I can ask my iPhone to turn on the lights, but I can't ask my Mac. Annoying that I can ask Siri on my Mac to play a song in my iTunes library but I can't (without extra cost) ask Siri on my iPhone, on my home WiFi network along with my Mac, to play a song from iTunes on my Mac, not my iPhone. (Meanwhile my car has SiriEyes so I can press a button on my steering wheel, and I can ask Siri to lock my door.)
It's like Siri speaks French on iOS, Swahili on Mac, and Mandarin HomePod.
It's like Siri speaks French on iOS, Swahili on Mac, and Mandarin HomePod.
I can't find in the reviews of the HomePod what are the digital music inputs it takes. What formats other than the Apple standards, and what bit length and sampling rate? Some of its competitors handle 24/192KHz in lossless formats, e.g. FLAC. Apple Music is limited in quality at this time, does that mean HomePod is as well? What comes out can't be better than what goes in. There is little mention of using them as a stereo pair, except Apple has said that pairing will be included in a future software upgrade.
All the YouTube reviews so far seem spot on understanding their voices.
I am not sure if I get one. Sound is really important but the price is too. Need to read the reviews myself. I am only using Apple devices and will not change that for the foreseeable future. But I am not subscribing to any of their services as I do not subscribe to thinks if not absolutely forced to do so. So for me it would be streaming through Airplay only.
WhatHiFi gave it 5 out of 5 stars.
It's nearly laughable, if it weren't so tragic, the complete disregard of Siri development by Apple. Steve Jobs would have fired 500 people over this, and rightly so. It won't tell you your next appointment, and IT CAN'T EVEN MAKE A PHONE CALL?!! This is a joke, right? Gah....
A lot of the reviewers are missing the point, it’s a music speaker first and foremost with the ability to have some smart features secondly.
All of the others recognize multiple users and won't let strangers send and read back text messages. The fact that Apple let's this happen on one of their devices is shocking considering their privacy stance.
Actually it can via your iPhone.
Siri does everything I need it to do. People really do overrate the importance of smart answers on a voice assistant. Questions you wouldn’t ask day to day
That Brian Chen review is bizarre. He actually says Google/Amazon had better "play some music" functionality because they would always default to playing the last thing he had on Spotify. Huh? That doesn't sound particularly "smart" to me. It will be interesting to test out whether his claims of Siri not choosing songs related to the Apple Music account it's registered with are really accurate. That part of his criticism sounds more like he never really set-up Apple Music to his personal tastes or even used it that much to generate recommendations.
Glad to see all the reviews saying great sound quality but Siri needs improvement.
Maybe this will get Apple to start working more on Siri.
Maybe this will get Apple to start working more on Siri.