I’ve often wondered this but... why the hell would guests to my house be connecting their phone to my speaker?! If I had guests helping themselves to my speaker system they wouldn’t be invited back!
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HomePod Struggling to Gain Market Share Alongside Cheaper Amazon Echo and Google Home Speakers
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I’ve often wondered this but... why the hell would guests to my house be connecting their phone to my speaker?! If I had guests helping themselves to my speaker system they wouldn’t be invited back!
There's so little use for these that even the tiny risk isn't worth. You can use other speakers and turn on the lights with the regular switches, which is faster anyway.
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Yeah, it seems like a weird use case. I don't try catering to guests with my tech. Better to just serve some tea instead.
I have no desire to use those other non-Apple worthless services you are referring to but it sounds like you do...so I’ll help you out a little bit - AirPlay 2, look it up.
Oh I agree. I just don’t like people having this iydilistic image of Steve and tearing down Tim at the same time.
I live in a mixed iOS and Android household so even if I thought the HomePod's sound quality was good enough to justify it's price point (I don't), I still wouldn't buy it due to it's lack of connectivity with other devices.
My husband isn’t really interested. As long as he can request songs and ask about the weather he’s happy. We do however have some echos and google home minis around the house that he could use with his android phone if he wanted to.
Probably because you can't export playlists from Apple Music. Yet. I prefer Spotify. Works well on Android and iOS. I did not find Play Music any good. Amazon and Spotify seem to do well, and they both carry obscure artists and tracks the other services may not carry.
Deezer and Tidal are decent alternatives, though. Both offer lossless quality, but at a higher cost and obviously more data use. See if your husband would be interested in either. These services with lossless streaming really shine in older music that has nuances that would otherwise get lost in a low quality stream.
Your husband certainly would be better off with Spotify on Android as who can tolerate lack of gapless playback in 2019
As far as UI are concerned, I use(d) several music Players, Spotify, Google, Apple Music and Gonemad Music (Android music player) and going from one to the other is not an issue except when features are missing.
Being unable to advance track by swiping across album art is only with Apple Music.
Interface not rotating to landscape is an Apple only as well. (I cannot recall if Google Music had this problem. Only has a short free trial )
Spotify really scores for curating personal play lists as it compares music you play to the play lists of all its users so you get really good choices and mainly music you like or hadn't discovered yet.
Is that the good start to lower the product's price-point? The miracle won't be happened for sure. Their cheap cable even costs you not USD5 but starts at least USD19! Cool.
At the end of the day, the homepod is a small, relatively inexpensive speaker.
The sound is good, for its size. But the sound objectively is not ‘amazing’ by any stretch of the imagination.
I already have a solid sounding bose soundlink, which is way more flexible and can be moved around and runs on hatteries so it can go anywhere. If I ever want a MAJOR upgrade in sound I’ll save my money for some truly amazing sounding speakers and add an amp.
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Because they are your friends and want to share some music/audio with you? Or just because every single device owned by yourself, your partner, or other family members isn't made by Apple?
Non-Apple world:
-"Can I connect to the speaker?"
-"Sure"
-Press bluetooth pair key on remote, ask Alexa to enable pairing, etc.
Apple world:
-"Can I connect to the speaker?"
-"What version iOS do you have?"
-"Um..."
Lol, Ask about the weather, that’s me. As long as I know the weather I’m happy.
Pairing is with bluetooth. Maybe one day Apple will get their proprietary pairing method to catch up and support having more than one device connected at a time.
Wow. You are quite the host.
Quick example for you, my sister will be visting, we’ll be out on the porcch with a fire going, having wine, and we’ll be listening to music on my conpletely wireless bose soundlink.
For a while I’ll play DJ with some of my music, but then maybe she’ll say ‘theres this band you gotta hear’. I’ll say ‘coo’! and then in 30 seconds have her phone connected to the Bose. Then she gets to be DJ for a bit and I hear some stuff I hadnt before.
Thats part of being a good ‘Host’ imo, and its fun!
None of which would be easy or practical with the Homepod.
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This is not something I’ve encountered before. If someone wants to share audio with me they either send it via WhatsApp or show me on their phone.
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I wouldn’t be listening to music when guests came over. Listening to music is a private activity you do either when you are at home on your own or you use headphones if you aren’t.
I’ve never thought imposing my music choices onto other people was a very polite thing to do. It also kills conversation, which is what guests are usually there for.
It's not something that I do but I know some people like music as background noise when they have guests over.
Wow. Is there a sign on your door that lists out these 'rules' of proper socialization during visits? I'm sure you also have limits on having a third drink: 'not polite'. Telling dirty jokes: 'not polite'. What about watching a movie together with friends, that kills conversation! NOT POLITE!
I imagine a visit to your house being a nice setting at a dining room table with a white tablecloth, sipping tea, quietly discussing the important issues of people's lives and matters of international importance.
Meanwhile, my girlfriend and I, along with the couple we invited over that we've known for years, are drinking wine and beer, telling jokes, and occasionally turning up a song that's playing so we can all sing along and dance to it.
Different worlds
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Wow. Is there a sign on your door that lists out these 'rules' of proper socialization during visits? I'm sure you also have limits on having a third drink: 'not polite'. Telling dirty jokes: 'not polite'. What about watching a movie together with friends, that kills conversation! NOT POLITE!
I imagine a visit to your house being a nice setting at a dining room table with a white tablecloth, sipping tea, quietly discussing the important issues of people's lives and matters of international importance.
Meanwhile, my girlfriend and I, along with the couple we invited over that we've known for years, are drinking wine and beer, telling jokes, and occasionally turning up a song that's playing so we can all sing along and dance to it.
Different worlds
I see you are resorting to silliness now.
Singing along and dancing to music is not the sort of thing I would do with friends, or even on my own! Friends are more likely to come over for a nice home cooked meal, drinks and a chat. Catch up, touch base, find out what’s been happening if their lives since we last saw them.
But more often than not I’d be meeting friends outside of the house to go for a meal.
The "best sounding speaker ever produced" will probably cost you $20,000+ and require special concrete foundations to be installed in your living room - and nobody who has one will deny that it is truly the best sounding speaker ever (but the deeds to the Brooklyn bridge that are inn the post right now will be even cooler).
Point is, $300 for a premium-quality wireless speaker is barely midrange. I already linked to a couple of $500+ examples from B&W, Bose and NAIM. Note that even Google have launched a 'premium' speaker that costs more than the HomePod (and, going by a couple of reviews, is the only one that compares with HomePod on audio quality).
But you assume that Apple was expecting to get a big market share c,f, Amazon's and Google's probably-subsidised home cash registers. The article here is roughly equivalent to comparing iPhone X sales with free-with-contract Android smartphones.
I could give a list of reasons for why I wouldn't buy a HomePod but price isn't one of them (and I'm actually reasonably confident that the audio quality would be good by small speaker standards).
Airplay is for Apple only and even on Apple devices it's is much easier, nicer and more straightforward to use bluetooth.
there is zero logic and reason why it doesn't;t support bluetooth when Apple's other audio device AirPods uses bluetooth.