So HomePod - remember HomePod? i sure didn’t - is available for preorder. HomePod - Apple
Not only is the name anachronistic - the only ‘Pod’ branded thing sells is their phone stripped of cell modem “iPod Touch” - but it seems so so late. Siri by all accounts is inferior to Alexa, and Amazon has been all but throwing Alexa-armed cheap music devices into the streets, the HomePod doesn’t seem to have a niche. You can even buy two and make a stereo system! $350 is a lot for a bluetooth wireless speaker but not really a lot for an audiophile level speaker, which is the market they’re a bit lamely trying to acquire.
An Apple-designed A8 chip powers the most complex audio innovations in HomePod. Like real-time modeling of the woofer mechanics. Buffering that’s even faster than real time. Upmixing of both direct and ambient audio. Beamforming so the microphone can hear you over the music. And advanced echo cancellation. So you get amazing sound without even thinking about it.
That’s just a bunch of words, right?
Much like the heavily overpriced iMac Pro seems all but dead in the water (it’s already discounted by $1000 by 3rd party sellers) the HomePod looks positioned to fail even before launch.
Apple is having tremendous problems with being ‘agile’ today, and they ponder along more like an old school bluechip stock of yore like IBM then a modern cutting edge company.
I sort of took it as aiming at the Sonos market. The Sonos app is fiddly and Alexa integration isn’t great. If you’re bought into the Apple ecosystem, Siri is good at managing calendars, reminders, and less marketing-oriented than Alexa. We’re pretty much all Apple with 2 Sonos units and some Echos. Frankly, I’d trade the Sonos units and Echos for 2 of these if they sounded good and weren’t as fiddly. I guess it comes down to whether they “just work” like Apple stuff used to. I guess if you use HomeKit they also could be convenient.
I want one, but not if it is a just an Apple Music player that it seems to be now. I don’t subscribe, or feel the need to when I own a lot of music. When it can play the music sitting on my Mac, I will buy two. Better sound quality (The Echos sound quality is not good, it’s very flat) and something that works with apps I use regularly will be great.
Having had an Echo for a couple of years I don’t understand the Siri hate/Echo love I see online. The Echo needs very specific question or it can’t answer. If it can answer, it is often it’s just giving me a generic answer which would be a lot more helpful with a screen (“Alexa, what is the chance or rain tomorrow?”, “Rain is expected with a high of…”). The microphones are amazing in a noisy room, but I find it to be about even with Siri at getting things correct. Which to be fair, for both of them is usually good, but both can be a pain in the butt as well. Plus Siri/Homekit is better at home automation in my experience. Easier set up and Siri can do more with my lights, like change colors which the Echo can’t do. I would love a HomePod with the same functionality of my phone in that area.
I may get a couple of the Sonos Ones instead. I already have Sonos stuff I like, and I think once they get the Echo stuff down it will be great.
I think the HomePod will also be great after a generation or two, and Apple has the money to ride it out. I just hope they don’t try to limit it too much.
Not sure what you are talking about with the iMac Pro, the people it is aimed at seem to like it from what very little I have read/heard about. It’s just an extremely limited audience.
I do think Apple really needs to pick up their game. Buggy software and lack of options is really starting to limit them. I love their hardware (and software for the most part) but I am getting a bit sick of the problems. The Homepod is just another example of this.
Exactly, as long as it only supports Apple Music it will never sell in volume, because most people use Spotify. It’s competing with Amazon, Google, and Sonos, all of which support every service except Apple Music. And they’d support Apple Music too, if they’d allow it.
Amazon and Google both have services competing directly with Apple Music (and Spotify, and Pandora Premium, and the rest) and yet they allow their users to use whatever service they want. That’s why they deserve to win this battle.
With the current discount you can purchase two Sonos One devices for less than a single Homepod. I have a Sonos Play:1 and it’s a seriously great-sounding speaker. I’m sure it won’t compete with a Sonos Play:5, Homepod, or Google Home Max, but two of them, giving stereo separation… I would be very surprised if you didn’t get a better experience out of that.
I picked up a Sonos One recently and love it. Sound is great and all of the Alexa stuff seems to be working now. I know initially it wasn’t fully baked but I can control Spotify and Sirius XM just fine with it for example.
Apple Music is integrated with the Sonos and has been for over a year. I use it through there all the time. You just have to do it through the Sonos app.
Coincidentally, I have the exact same setup. All Apple household with a couple of Sonos Play:1s (kitchen and master bedroom) and 4 Echo Dots (all purchased on sale for $29 each).
I have a couple of Lutron Caseta light switch dimmers, 1 cheapie Koogeek light switch, six Philips Hue bulbs (3 white ambiance, 1 colour, 2 white). My thermostat is an Ecobee3 and I’ve got a Harmony Hub and remote. Siri can control everything except for the Harmony Hub (and therefore not my AV system). The Echo has skills to control everything except for the HomeKit-only Koogeek switch. Plus it can now control my Sonos speakers as well. When I have to issue home control commands, 9 times out of 10 I will speak to Alexa. And it just works. I don’t even have to raise my voice. I think that’s largely due to the Dots scattered and listening throughout the house. And Amazon is just getting more and more Alexa capable devices out there (eg the Ecobee 4 has built in Alexa, or the Sonos ONEs). So, for a fraction of the price, I can get better home control than what Apple is offering. HomePod 0 : Echo Ecosystem 1.
I guess that explains why Apple is marketing the HomePod as an audiophile level speaker first. Except that I have a great stereo system in my home theatre for when I want to listen to music as a primary activity. When I want to be surrounded by music, casually listening with friends and family, well… My Sonos with Spotify setup is more than good enough for that. Playing under conversations during parties, or while I cook, why do I need to spend the money on an audiophile speaker? It doesn’t make sense. I’m afraid Apple’s addressable market is tiny. Wealthy audiophiles who are all in on the Apple Ecosystem who want the highest possible sound quality during casual listening. How many people can that be?
Apple can and does surprise often, but ultimately I expect the HomePod to be the next Apple HiFi.
I don’t think it will be that bad, it will be more like the Apple TV. It will get better with time and have it’s small corner of the market, where it will mostly be neglected because Apple only really cares about the phone…
Speaking of the Apple TV, I am really starting to hate that remote now that I am regularly using it to skip ads on Sling. Maybe it’s time to get a Fire TV?
You can get a Harmony Hub and use that to control the AppleTV. I love that little remote. It doesn’t have the voice control or touchpad though, obviously.
Amazon currently owns 69% of the market, according to the analysis. Google is gaining ground, but they’re also competing with Amazon on price. Those $20 Google Home Minis over Christmas were very attractive to the price-conscious.
Meanwhile, Amazon is flooding the market with speakers across all price ranges, as well as sales.
I went all-in on Google this past year, since I’m already on Android, and have a family Google Music plan (which provides YouTube Red as a bonus). Our Vizio TV and Soundbar both independently support Google Cast. We also have Hue lights.
We are fully hooked up to the corporate spying on US households surveillance system, w two Google Home’s and 3 Google Home Mini’s thanks to the cheap holiday discounts. So we can launch YouTube, Netflix on our main TV from anywhere. Control the lights. Broadcast messages to all devices in the house, call anyone domestically since national calling is a freebie. Play music on any google device, including the Sound bar which has a wireless subwoofer and satellites in the living room. Works pretty effortlessly along w the standard shopping lists, timers, alarms, homework questions, traffic, news, games, etc etc.
Google flooded the market around the holidays, offering a Google Home Mini for a total cost of $4 when purchased from Wal-mart through Google Instacart.
I’ve got to say the speaker in the Home Mini is dramatically superior to the Echo Dot. Really no comparison. That’s a good thing, because it has no audio-out jack and can’t play to a bluetooth speaker either!
The Home Mini speaker is fine for news, podcasts and such. For music, we have Chromecast Audios feeding real speakers. With those grouped up into a bunch of combinations (the Chromecast groups feature is flexible and very useful), we can put music wherever we want.
This is me. I have a mini in my bedroom on the nightstand, and Chromecast Audios throughout the rest of the house. I can listen to podcasts and ask questions while lying in bed, and the speaker is good enough to play music through when I’ve got it playing in every room of the house and am in them all- cleaning day, getting ready to go out, etc.
They can’t afford to sit on the sidelines so long that the market picks a home AI winner, but they’ve taken so long already that that’s what they’re facing. $350 is fine for a really excellent speaker, but there isn’t a /huge/ market for really excellent speakers – at least when compared to cheap, “good enough” speakers. Getting vendor buy-in is going to be an increasingly tough sell for them where it comes to integrations.
I happen to be right in their target market, and the pair of Sonos Play: 1’s I bought awhile back, which might have already filled that need, did not (discovering that they failed to include a line-in was a dealbreaker for me – small speakers in our house have to sound excellent, which they managed well enough given their size, but they also have be more versatile than that).
I’m going to pick up one of these on launch day and give it a try. I’ll report my findings :p
The Harmony Hub is the base station, it communicates with the AppleTV over bluetooth. You can choose between a basic remote and one with a LCD screen. I prefer the basic one.
The hub+basic remote has been on sale recently for $58 pretty frequently.
