definitely not. read something about stereophonic reproduction..
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HomePod Updates Will Be Installed Over-the-Air Using the Home App
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I must be missing the point of these smart speakers. They're not truly portable, they can only be used to control connected devices, and I can use my phone or watch to set a timer or look up reference information.
There are plenty of great sounding rechargeable speakers on the market that will operate for hours on a single charge. I have four of them. I can take them outside or to another room while staying connected to the sound source. Two can be used as a speakerphone. I have one that I can strap onto my belt or bicycle handlebars and listen.
There are plenty of great sounding rechargeable speakers on the market that will operate for hours on a single charge. I have four of them. I can take them outside or to another room while staying connected to the sound source. Two can be used as a speakerphone. I have one that I can strap onto my belt or bicycle handlebars and listen.
They should change their marketing subject then (Create stereo sound with a second HomePod). It suggests one homepod = fake stereo or mono.
Just out of curiosity, have you heard the HomePod yet or own one? Or are you just basing this off of the existing Google Home and Alexa, of which the HomePod apparently sounds far superior to.
I wonder if this will extend to the Apple TV now that with 11.3 that shows up in HomeKit
Good stuff.
So that makes me wonder why some are reporting that AirPlay streams will not be able to be controlled by Siri. Perhaps, they are saying that specific tracks won't be able to be played, or that sessions with other music services won't be able to be initialized by voice.
But the basic "Pause", "Fast Forward" verbal playback controls should work for AirPlay streams the same as it works on every current version of Siri. Granted, it's not the ability to play particular songs via voice, but at least one will be able to skip, pause, etc. tracks on AirPlayed playlist. I think for some that's better than nothing.
So that makes me wonder why some are reporting that AirPlay streams will not be able to be controlled by Siri. Perhaps, they are saying that specific tracks won't be able to be played, or that sessions with other music services won't be able to be initialized by voice.
But the basic "Pause", "Fast Forward" verbal playback controls should work for AirPlay streams the same as it works on every current version of Siri. Granted, it's not the ability to play particular songs via voice, but at least one will be able to skip, pause, etc. tracks on AirPlayed playlist. I think for some that's better than nothing.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Short Answer: Does Apple make any of those? Now that a portable speaker has an Apple logo on it, all other speakers will increasingly become crap, much as our former love of Spotify and similar devolved into hate.
Related note: it doesn't matter that HP doesn't do some of the things you reference. Why? Because nobody- including apparently you- need their speakers to do such things. What HP does is all that anyone should want from any speaker... until Apple rolls out HP2 with some other features and then THAT becomes all that anyone should want from a speaker.
Alt Answer: Think cool factor. Friends of mine think it's cool to be able to ask one of these speakers to play something and it does it. Or ask it a variety of questions and get a correct answer. Yes, they can do the exact same with their phone but everybody has already seen that trick. This is still a new trick to some people.
Related note: I was able to order a pizza on
TV the other day and it blew someone's mind that it was possible to make a custom pizza and place an order on a television. It's still kind of like that.We can basically do about any of this niche stuff with an iDevice. But now it seems to be about taking a little thing or two we can do on a phone we already have and break it out to a separate device. We'll line up to pay hundreds for that... again and again. But key to that gaping wallet? See "Short Answer."
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A flop in sales at start so that they may consider letting people without apple music manage their network libraries using Siri, or use different services...There was a time when I could ask Siri to call a friend on Skype, after iOS10 that stopped...now I don't know since I don't own an iPhone anymore.
A lot...enough about me though, as the company keeps admitting (even recently) they've dropped the ball in terms of quality.
Good to know you don't have to connect it via lighting to a 'real computer', download the firmware and install.
(sarcasm)
(sarcasm)
People like this are bizarre. Imagine wanting devices you're not interested in to fail (Apple Watch thread, AirPods thread, full of these sort of people) just let people buy the devices they want to buy and stop being so negative about everything.
I disagree regarding Sonos. As a Sonos user for many years, with several rooms of paired Sonos speakers , I find Sonos more and more limiting... The new app is NOT great. and if I want to send any audio to the speakers and I can't.. only the services they support in their app. this is why bluetooth is so great... So, if airplay 2 works as well as bluetooth with awesome audio quality, and no crappy dropouts like the current , it has the possibility of being a great solution as long as the speaker quality is great.
Buying a Nest was the problem. You should’ve went ecobee. Personally, I love my thermostat setting itself back when nobody is home, saving me on energy costs. Also, coming home to lights already being turned on, and being able to turn them all off while laying in bed is pretty nice too.
Interesting. Due to bluetooth, must you stay within a certain proximity of the master speaker? or is does it work like a mesh network where as long as you're bluetooth range of one of the speakers, it'll play through all of the speakers you designate without a problem?
There are a few reasons people may want non-portable speakers rather than the portable variety:
1) Generally, the portable speaker solutions out there don't support multi-room audio like Sonos or (after Airplay 2 is released) HomePod.
2) Generally, a non-portable, always plugged in speaker is going to be able to produce better results at higher volumes than portable speakers.
3) The source for bluetooth speakers needs to be kept fairly close to the speaker for non-interrupted playback. If you've started music from your phone and then go to a different part of the house or outside, it could stop playing for the other people who were listening to it.
It sounds like these don't really apply to you, which is great. But other people have different requirements that portable speakers can't always match.
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Existing Sonos speakers are going to support Airplay 2. So as long as AP2 works well, as you said, you'll just need to update your firmware and you'll be able to use your current system with any AP2 source.
It’ll play from any device capable of sending sound over airplay—including Macs.
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Create stereo sound with a second HomePod.
Put another HomePod in the same room and they automatically detect and balance each other. With advanced beamforming capabilities, a HomePod pair is able to create a wider, more immersive soundstage than a traditional stereo pair.
Anything beyond that is open to interpretation.
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Apple says,We keep posting this but Apple themselves IN WRITING says the path to stereo is by buying 2 (TWO) HPs. A clip of that right off of Apple's site is in the original post of this thread. I don't know why we keep trying to do this but every thread gets the same posts. I guess some of us know better than Apple and apparently even want to call Apple a liar about their own product.
Create stereo sound with a second HomePod.
Put another HomePod in the same room and they automatically detect and balance each other. With advanced beamforming capabilities, a HomePod pair is able to create a wider, more immersive soundstage than a traditional stereo pair.
Anything beyond that is open to interpretation.
I haven’t used a light switch in my house in 6 months and I couldn’t be happier. There’s something to say about the lights coming on whenever you get home. You never have to walk into a dark house. I can lay down in bed and just say goodnight to Siri or Alexa and the whole house goes dark. So I would like to argue that this stuff isn’t useful. It’s a huge up front investment but it’s about as useful of an upgrade as you can make to your house.
I would like to know if you can use several of them in a multi room setup?
I have 5 Sonos devices and would consider replacing them if those will act like a set up like Sonos.
I have 5 Sonos devices and would consider replacing them if those will act like a set up like Sonos.
I don’t think it was the hardware that caused the delay to begin with. If you think about it, the hardware inside the HomePod is something we’ve had for years. Sure it’s built built to Apple specs, but there’s only so much you can do to customize a speaker. But the software in the HomePod is a custom version of iOS and needed a lot of tweaking to get it working right on a completely brand new product type that also needs to play well with all other Apple products. They’re releasing the HomePod now because the software is working at an acceptable level for consumer use. Though it’s still missing some features, disappointing, but I understand.
In other cases like the iMac pro, the delay was because the hardware conponents from party companies wasn’t ready for mass production. It runs the same version of macOS as other Macs, this the hardware wasn’t ready.
So apart from not having heard it and having no idea how good it is: One HomePod = beam forming. Sound doesn't seem to come from one direction. You can hear where instruments and voices are supposed to come from. It's not stereo, it's different. Nobody knows if it is as good as stereo, better, close or nowhere near.
Two HomePods = sound from separate speakers (aka stereo), plus beam forming. Should be better than stereo.
oh, but the perils of when someone turns off the light switch manually, and you didn't realize that until you were comfortable, lol. *sighs* #laziness #imnotgettingup
Just saying: With Hue lights, every single light bulb comes with a dimmer, and you have the choice between plain lights, lights that adjust the temperature to give warmer light in the evening and colder light in the daytime, and lights that can produce any colour you want.
And until Sonos actually ships Airplay 2 for older 1/3/5 units as they claim they will, HomePod will have that advantage (direct stream to hardware).
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Each Sonos unit works as a WiFi-based "client" that you enable music services on; the Sonos app on the iPhone is merely a controller app that is the interface you use to control the hardware. Once you start something playing, it's streaming from the Internet directly from the Sonos hardware, not your iPhone.