HomePod Supplies Limited at Launch, but Foxconn Coming on Board in 2018 to Increase Production

[Anuba]

Still picking one up on day one though right?

If it lets me use US English Siri, sure. If it's restricted to Swedish Siri like the ATV4, no, because it renders it useless, literally, no matter how much I want one. I have no use for a voice controlled music speaker that doesn't understand English song titles or artist names, any more than I have for a microwave oven that refuses to heat any food containing H2O.

 

[EdT]

They're definitely wired.
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3.1 and 5.1 refers to the numbers of speakers, not to any particular form of surround sound. Homepod, either one or in a pair, will give you virtual surround as well as virtual stereo.

But can I hook it into my DVD/tv/streaming system, parts of which are not Apple? I don't need another vendor dedicated hardware/software system. I want to use the music or video sources that I already have as well as whatever might be coming down the pipeline. This isn't just an Apple problem, everyone is trying to lock customers into their ecosystem and make it difficult or expensive (usually both) to venture outside of it.

 

[Winni]

Limited at launch. Where have we heard that before... oh, right, with every Apple product released in the last few years. And the head of the company is supposed to be a supply chain genius.

Sarcasm aside, I really don't get how can they not manage anymore.

It's a marketing strategy, folks. Products are much more desirable and interesting when not everybody can have them right away. And the company can always claim that they have been "overwhelmed" by the demand. That's the reason why every Apple product launched with only a limited supply.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

I’m really skeptical about stereo/surround sound. Because well physics. I’m hoping to be proven wrong.

It's as much psychoacoustics as physics - the manner in which the brain processes sound - whether you're fooling the eye or fooling the ear... it's all happening in the brain. I had a long career in audio recording/broadcast. Nothing about this violates physics or the principles of sound recording/reproduction.

The best a recording engineer (or photographer) can do is create the impression of "natural" (or explore the possibilities of the unnatural).

If you start from the premise that two-speaker stereo is "natural," then there's room to be skeptical. But stereo is only a rough approximation of the acoustical environment. In a live musical venue, sound emanates from multiple sources in three dimensions (each instrument and voice in the ensemble) and those sounds radiate in many directions, bouncing off every surface in the room. You hear a mixture of direct and reflected sound, and precise localization of a particular sound element can be difficult without visual confirmation of its location (and vice versa - we also use sound localization to direct our visual attention).

It's a well-established principle of acoustics that low frequency (bass) sounds are hard to localize, whereas higher frequencies (midrange and treble) are easier to localize. That's why many speaker systems have a single sub-woofer that can be placed fairly indiscriminately in the room, while you have a pair (or more) of additional speakers to cover the higher frequencies. HomePod uses a similar approach - one woofer, seven highly-directional tweeters. Presuming the stereo signal is distributed in varying proportions among those various tweeters, a person will still get a multi-dimensional/multi-directional sound field. Like the original Bose Direct-Reflecting speaker systems, which debuted in 1968 and are still popular today, sound is intentionally directed towards nearby walls to add reflected sound to the mix; a closer approximation of the live sound environment.

The HomePod also comes equipped with six microphones. While one purpose is to listen for Siri commands, another is to measure the sound environment to tune the sound to the conditions in the room - increasing/decreasing the volume to each of those seven tweeters so that there's the right balance of direct and reflected sound (if the nearest surface is highly reflective, less sound energy has to be sent in that direction).

Overall, as long as the execution is up to Apple's usual standards, I have no doubt that this can work.

 

[garrick2007]

Why do Apple suck so bad at supply? Like...I don't get it. They're running out of excuses with the cash pile they're sitting on. Other companies seem to manage just fine with supply.

Other companies don't function and sell like apple products do that the issue lol

 

[verniesgarden]

It's as much psychoacoustics as physics - the manner in which the brain processes sound - whether you're fooling the eye or fooling the ear... it's all happening in the brain. I had a long career in audio recording/broadcast. Nothing about this violates physics or the principles of sound recording/reproduction.

The best a recording engineer (or photographer) can do is create the impression of "natural" (or explore the possibilities of the unnatural).

If you start from the premise that two-speaker stereo is "natural," then there's room to be skeptical. But stereo is only a rough approximation of the acoustical environment. In a live musical venue, sound emanates from multiple sources in three dimensions (each instrument and voice in the ensemble) and those sounds radiate in many directions, bouncing off every surface in the room. You hear a mixture of direct and reflected sound, and precise localization of a particular sound element can be difficult without visual confirmation of its location (and vice versa - we also use sound localization to direct our visual attention).

It's a well-established principle of acoustics that low frequency (bass) sounds are hard to localize, whereas higher frequencies (midrange and treble) are easier to localize. That's why many speaker systems have a single sub-woofer that can be placed fairly indiscriminately in the room, while you have a pair (or more) of additional speakers to cover the higher frequencies. HomePod uses a similar approach - one woofer, seven highly-directional tweeters. Presuming the stereo signal is distributed in varying proportions among those various tweeters, a person will still get a multi-dimensional/multi-directional sound field. Like the original Bose Direct-Reflecting speaker systems, which debuted in 1968 and are still popular today, sound is intentionally directed towards nearby walls to add reflected sound to the mix; a closer approximation of the live sound environment.

The HomePod also comes equipped with six microphones. While one purpose is to listen for Siri commands, another is to measure the sound environment to tune the sound to the conditions in the room - increasing/decreasing the volume to each of those seven tweeters so that there's the right balance of direct and reflected sound (if the nearest surface is highly reflective, less sound energy has to be sent in that direction).

Overall, as long as the execution is up to Apple's usual standards, I have no doubt that this can work.

Seriously thank you for the awesomely informative post. Quells some of my worries.

 

[ErikGrim]

It's as much psychoacoustics as physics - the manner in which the brain processes sound - whether you're fooling the eye or fooling the ear... it's all happening in the brain. I had a long career in audio recording/broadcast. Nothing about this violates physics or the principles of sound recording/reproduction.

The best a recording engineer (or photographer) can do is create the impression of "natural" (or explore the possibilities of the unnatural).

If you start from the premise that two-speaker stereo is "natural," then there's room to be skeptical. But stereo is only a rough approximation of the acoustical environment. In a live musical venue, sound emanates from multiple sources in three dimensions (each instrument and voice in the ensemble) and those sounds radiate in many directions, bouncing off every surface in the room. You hear a mixture of direct and reflected sound, and precise localization of a particular sound element can be difficult without visual confirmation of its location (and vice versa - we also use sound localization to direct our visual attention).

It's a well-established principle of acoustics that low frequency (bass) sounds are hard to localize, whereas higher frequencies (midrange and treble) are easier to localize. That's why many speaker systems have a single sub-woofer that can be placed fairly indiscriminately in the room, while you have a pair (or more) of additional speakers to cover the higher frequencies. HomePod uses a similar approach - one woofer, seven highly-directional tweeters. Presuming the stereo signal is distributed in varying proportions among those various tweeters, a person will still get a multi-dimensional/multi-directional sound field. Like the original Bose Direct-Reflecting speaker systems, which debuted in 1968 and are still popular today, sound is intentionally directed towards nearby walls to add reflected sound to the mix; a closer approximation of the live sound environment.

The HomePod also comes equipped with six microphones. While one purpose is to listen for Siri commands, another is to measure the sound environment to tune the sound to the conditions in the room - increasing/decreasing the volume to each of those seven tweeters so that there's the right balance of direct and reflected sound (if the nearest surface is highly reflective, less sound energy has to be sent in that direction).

Overall, as long as the execution is up to Apple's usual standards, I have no doubt that this can work.

/End thread

 

[ke-iron]

Yeah, only this isn't going to be much of a "world wide" launch. HomePod is the beginning of a depressing new era where Siri readiness will dictate availability internationally.

It used to be that the only thing preventing Apple from making a product available worldwide on day one was that when it came to iPhones, they needed to work out deals with a gazillion different carriers, plus that every country has its own FCC equivalent that needs to test and approve the phone. Hence the staggered rollouts of iPhone models.

However, starting with the ATV4, Apple began to cripple functionality on non-mobile products for the international market. For well over a year, the mic on the Siri Remote was dead weight in many countries, as for the first time Apple wouldn't allow customers to use an English version of Siri unless their ATV was located in a region where English is the official language. I'm a Swede, but I use the US English version of Siri on my iOS devices and my Mac (why, because Swedish Siri sucks, particularly when it comes to dealing with English song titles or artist names). The ATV won't allow this – Siri remains greyed out until two conditions are met: The selected system language _and_ the selected Siri language must both correspond to the geographical location of the ATV.

It's almost guaranteed that they will destroy the HomePod experience for international users in a similar (or worse) manner, by 1) Keeping them waiting for X number of months while the localized versions of Siri are being fine tuned, and then 2) forcing them to use these non-English editions of Siri (which will still suck even after the supposed fine tuning).

The more Siri-reliant products Apple creates, the more this model will become the manner in which international markets will become acquainted with new Apple hardware: 1) The interminable wait for Siri tweaks, followed by 2) the suckfest created by forcing international customers to interface with Siri's foreign cousins with partial brain damage. American Siri is dumb enough as she is; Her foreign cousins are practically braindead.

This will be a world wide launch. It will sell more than amazon, google and Microsoft smart home speakers in less than 6 months. The reason for the delay is tweaking of the iOS that runs on it. The hardware technology to make this is already out there. The design has long been finalized, already built final models and demoed the sound quality, for the exception of the Siri interface because the software side isn’t ready yet. Apple probably already began mass production on the speakers and will just give them a software update before putting it in the final package to ship in December. Or they could ship it as it is and it will update the first time it connects to the internet and turned on.
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It's a marketing strategy, folks. Products are much more desirable and interesting when not everybody can have them right away. And the company can always claim that they have been "overwhelmed" by the demand. That's the reason why every Apple product launched with only a limited supply.

That is illogical and makes absolutely no sense at all. Apple does not profit from restricting supply.

 

[Cigsm]

Other companies don't sell anywhere near the amount of product that Apple does.

Why do Apple suck so bad at supply? Like...I don't get it. They're running out of excuses with the cash pile they're sitting on. Other companies seem to manage just fine with supply.

 

[Cigsm]

LOL this is the stupidest thing I've heard a few times and is a business 101 fail. No business would hold billions of dollars worth of product back that could be selling like hot cakes in some warehouse just to artificially be able to say the product is in demand. They'll lose a certain % of people and they'll anger others. That's not a business strategy any multi billion dollar company has.

It's a marketing strategy, folks. Products are much more desirable and interesting when not everybody can have them right away. And the company can always claim that they have been "overwhelmed" by the demand. That's the reason why every Apple product launched with only a limited supply.