Powerbook and HomePod

[andloph]

Hi everyone,

I got a HomePod as a present this Christmas and I want it to work with my powerbook obviously.
At first it just works as expected but after about 10 seconds the thing stops playing and comes back after a couple of minutes.
And so on and on.

Looking at the specs it says that wifi ac & bluetooth 5.0 are required and ( I quote):

"Peer-to-peer AirPlay requires a Mac (2012 or later) with OS X Yosemite or later, or an iOS device (late 2012 or later) with iOS 8 or later"

has anyone tried with a usb bluetooth thingy to see if t works ?

Thanks !

 

[eyoungren]

The only USB BT sticks that work as native BT (that I know of) are Belkin's F8T series. And those are max BT 2.1 (usually 2.0).

The PowerBook has Airport Extreme (if it's an Albook) which means 802.11 a/b/g max. There are USB dongles for N (I have a Belkin N150) but the drivers and software is not native, meaning you don't use the Airport symbol in the menubar to connect.

But that gets you a maximum of 802.11n only. No idea of an adapter for 802.11ac exists.

 

[Slix]

I had issues with my current MacBook and older PowerBooks when trying to AirPlay to my 1st gen Apple TV recently that I got. It turned out the wifi of the AirPort was too congested for it to play smoothly to the TV, so hooking it up to Ethernet seemed to work. Does it stutter still if you use Ethernet on your PowerBook?

I use much older iTunes/machines/iPods for AirPlay to all sorts of newer AirPlay stuff (Apple TV 4th gen, newer AirPort Express), so I don't see why it wouldn't work, but I don't have a HomePod to test myself.

 

[bjar]

I tested my Mac mini g4 with the HomePod and it was fine. I had it plugged in via Ethernet to an airport express that was connected to my network.

-edit: this was a few months ago. Not working now.

 

[andloph]

Hi everyone,
thanks for your replies.

i just tried with ethernet and it does the exact same thing ... i was actually expecting it to work just fine but it doesn`t ... looking at the network traffic that is being sent when a song plays on the homepod, it sends about 133 to 155 kb/s which should easy to handle for this wifi.

I´m really clueless now as this apparently isn´t related to the wireless connectivity ( or at least not the only problem).
iTunes is the lastest available for powerpc as far as i know ( 10.6.3)
Any hint ?

Thanks !

 

[Plett]

Hi everyone,
thanks for your replies.

i just tried with ethernet and it does the exact same thing ... i was actually expecting it to work just fine but it doesn`t ... looking at the network traffic that is being sent when a song plays on the homepod, it sends about 133 to 155 kb/s which should easy to handle for this wifi.

I´m really clueless now as this apparently isn´t related to the wireless connectivity ( or at least not the only problem).
iTunes is the lastest available for powerpc as far as i know ( 10.6.3)
Any hint ?

Thanks !

Alright, I don' know if this is related, and admit may not be much help, but since the last update to IOS13 I have experienced a similar situation when trying to airplay Apple Music from my phone, after a short period of time <10" it cuts off, doest happen with other media Airplayed from the phone. If I ask Siri to play the same playlist directly on the HomePod there is no issue cutting out. I have not investigated sufficiently, but am fascinated that you are experiencing what I read as a similar problem, if it is not hardware related.

 

[MagicBoy]

Since the iOS 13 upgrade I can't get the DLSD PowerBook G4 to work with an AppleTV 4. Used to be fine. Now see's it but won't make a connection.

An older MacBook Pro on OS X 10.9 and iTunes 12.x works fine.

When i get time I'll try a couple of other PowerBooks later. Had a TiBook running iTunes 9 working with it a couple of years ago on the original software.

 

[bobesch]

I tested my Mac mini g4 with the HomePod and it was fine. I had it plugged in via Ethernet to an airport express that was connected to my network.

Wich version of OSX and of iTunes are installed?

I didn't even think it was possible, to get any PPC connected to the HomePod, after my early-intel MBP4,1(Yosemite) refused to connect to the Pod (which was luckily resolved by upgrading the Wifi/BT card and upgrading to Mochave-Patch).
After reading this thread I tried to connect my PB-G4/Leopard/latest iTunes and was really surprised, that AirTunes/HomePod/Multiple Audio Devices was working instantly- alas, but only for about 10-20 seconds.
Having the HomePod as the only output-device, the controls went to "Pause" - with multiple devices (Computer/HomePod) only the HomePod stopped to work after that specific time.
Weird.

 

[bjar]

Wich version of OSX and of iTunes are installed?

I didn't even think it was possible, to get any PPC connected to the HomePod, after my early-intel MBP4,1(Yosemite) refused to connect to the Pod (which was luckily resolved by upgrading the Wifi/BT card and upgrading to Mochave-Patch).
After reading this thread I tried to connect my PB-G4/Leopard/latest iTunes and was really surprised, that AirTunes/HomePod/Multiple Audio Devices was working instantly- alas, but only for about 10-20 seconds.
Having the HomePod as the only output-device, the controls went to "Pause" - with multiple devices (Computer/HomePod) only the HomePod stopped to work after that specific time.
Weird.

Well never mind. I just tried it and I am getting the same symptoms as you, only plays for a few seconds. I also tried airplay to my apple tv and get the same result. I know I tried this a few months ago and it played through multiple songs.

 

[andloph]

i have ordered a wifi-n usb & bluetooth 4.0 usb thingy to see if that fixes something but at this point I am quiet sure there are additional software requirements. Probably a specific iTunes version is required ( maybe the one that shipped with Macs in 2012 ?).
Thanks

 

[andloph]

well, i tried and here are my findings, just for the record.

first of all : i tried the homepod with three different modern devices and bluetooth is NOT requiered to be activated. With only wifi enabled i could stream music without any problem to the homepod.

- the usb bluetooth 4.0 BCM based thingy was not enabled but just adding the pci & vendor IDs to the BCM HCI kext made it work. i desoldered the usb plug and attached it to the internal (1.0) usb port where the original one was.
It works just fine but didn´t help at all to get the homepod to work ( as expected).

- wifi N enermax usb plug : this one was easy to get running but didn´t help at all either.
It actually makes things worse :

1 - if i use this usb plug my timecapsule or the homepod cannot be seen by the powerpc. I have to look into this but my guess is that there is some broadcasting (afp?) going on that just isnt being lauched because im not using an apple product. Manually accesing the timecapsule works obviously.
2 - and this is my biggest concern : download speed is more or less the same as with the onboard airport and i have no idea why. I havent tested upstream but i suppose it is more or less the same too.
I mean, the original airport in this thing is -as far as i know- attached to the pci 33Mhz bus and the usb plug is attached to a 2.0 Usb port, which should speed up things a lot.
Sure, this thing is crap but even that doesnt explain the silly slow speed.
Has anyone tried one of these things and can you share the up and download speeds you get ?
Does anyone know if there exists a wifi N thingy that acually gets detected as if it was native ?
Any other hint ?

Thanks !

EDIT : forgot to mention that i also tried to use some airplay app to stream music to the homepod ( like Airfoil) but these just bail out with some unhandeld exception error.