I have Amazon Echo (Alexa) devices for each room and whole-house audio and it's extremely impressive.
Physically speaking, it obviously can't rival audiophile quality, nor is it designed to.
However, with an announced down-firing woofer and seven-tweeter array it could still sound amazing and be a great improvement over the multitude of inexpensive 'junk' powered speakers a lot of people use for shared listening.
But if it flops they'll just cover it up like they did with the Apple Watch. I actually hope these surveillance speakers go the way of the dodo.
Apple Watch is currently a $6 billion a year business - I'm sure Apple would love to see HomePod be as big a "flop."
Yes I agree. But Apple Watch is only that popular because it is an Apple product, and not on its own merit, I would argue.
I still am not understanding how this product, without being hooked up to an e-commerce site, is going to be better than the competition in a space that has been flooded by a more affordable product with more features.
Have you ever used the HomePod? When would you expect the consumer to actually purchase the HomePod if it's not on day one? Day two?
Why does Steve Jobs name have to be brought into the equation for every Apple product/marketing when it doesn't have to be?
Watcha got to hide?But if it flops they'll just cover it up like they did with the Apple Watch. I actually hope these surveillance speakers go the way of the dodo.
Yes I agree. But Apple Watch is only that popular because it is an Apple product, and not on its own merit, I would argue.
Tell that to the people who are buying up Bose speakers!No, it's a fact you can't get great sound in small speakers, this is common knowledge/physics.
Tell that to the people who are buying up Bose speakers!
I still am not understanding how this product, without being hooked up to an e-commerce site, is going to be better than the competition in a space that has been flooded by a more affordable product with more features.
Thank you for the tip. Unluckily it's not a new software by a start up. We're talking about Apple and a 2010/11 feature. It's a shame.An older article as to why Siri on Apple TV only in a few countries. I would imagine the same reason for the Homepod. An explanation for what is worth.
“This is despite the fact Siri on iPhone is actually available in 30 countries, so it wasn’t clear why Apple had pinpointed only a subset of those. It turns out, according to a chat with Apple by MacPrime, that there are some clever optimizations Apple makes with Apple TV Siri to improve speech recognition.
Because a core feature is the movie and TV show search, Apple tunes Siri in every country by teaching it about pronunciation characteristics for movie and TV show titles. Phonetic speech of actor names, films and directors vary drastically in different countries.
So Apple has to go through each country, add the differences in speech to the Siri database, so the overall user experience of searching for things is faster and more accurate. In the post, MacPrime uses the example of actor name Matthew McConaughey as something that is often pronounced in wildy different ways across languages and dialects.
It doesn’t do this for Siri on iPhone specifically because movies and TV shows is not a core function of using that device. But for Apple TV, it’s almost essential that those features work well so Apple will only add Siri for the country once it has gone through those training steps. In addition, on Apple TV there is no keyboard input for Siri so accuracy with voice recognition is doubly important so you can successfully find the content you are looking for.
Apple has therefore started by training Siri in the eight most popular countries (like USA and UK) and is working on expanding more soon.”
Agree with half of that. Without good extended bass, I’d certainly not call it amazing.Physically speaking, it obviously can't rival audiophile quality, nor is it designed to.
However, with an announced down-firing woofer and seven-tweeter array it could still sound amazing and be a great improvement over the multitude of inexpensive 'junk' powered speakers a lot of people use for shared listening.
I'm still in shock after learning that the Apple Homepod is incompatible with my Apple Mac and that my legally purchased music collection, acquired outside of iTunes, isn't accessible through Homepod. If I'm wrong about this I would love to corrected. As it stands my $15 bluetooth speaker offers more functionality for me than the Homepod, which appears to be just an Apple Music subscription funnel device.
So in other words: there‘ll be many countries that‘ll never get Siri on their speakers, as is currently the case with Siri on AppleTV.
It‘s a shame that such a big company is unable to support all of their markets within reasonable time. Non-english speakers are always second class customers.
Interesting you've already heard how it sounds and played with it to come to such a conclusion. Since we don't have your access, we'll have to wait to reserve judgment on value.What a ridiculous price.
Think about what you just said.Yes I agree. But Apple Watch is only that popular because it is an Apple product, and not on its own merit, I would argue.
Never ever forget that Apple is an extremely USA centric company.So in other words: there‘ll be many countries that‘ll never get Siri on their speakers, as is currently the case with Siri on AppleTV.
It‘s a shame that such a big company is unable to support all of their markets within reasonable time. Non-english speakers are always second class customers.
Never ever forget that Apple is an extremely USA centric company.
English will always be their primary care. Secondary languages will always take a back seat to releasing their products at home