If Apple heads that direction maybe it will involve concomitant iTunes changes.
What does iTunes have to do with Siri? She can already play Apple Music.
I was thinking about the moves Apple has made in the content biz.
Edit: And the AppleTV interface could become a hellova lot more appealing.
Early impressions:
It sounds excellent.
As a previous owner of a pair of Sonos Play:1 units that I returned, I can share that it is unequivocally better-sounding than two of the small Sonos speakers. It’s the frequency response and the effortless 360-degree sound that most clearly stand out. With the Sonos, while I thought they sounded good, especially considering their size and price, as a picky listener with very good ears (a blessing and a curse), I was far from blown away; I was also disappointed by the narrow sweet spot that the stereo pair provided, and ultimately felt that the sound did not overcome the other limitations (mediocre iOS software looming large among those), so back they went.
Setup with the HomePod was a little surprising. After I unboxed it and plugged it in, I felt a wave of dread over visiting the App Store to find whatever app I needed (getting the Sonos going on my parents’ crappy guest network – and especially trying to get them paired – was an awful experience). On a whim I just pointed my phone at it, though, and up popped a control panel showing my speaker and offering to set it up. And it worked, getting things all set up in just a few seconds (I selected a location name for it from a list, and told it not to give access to my chat and email).
Now, Bang & Olufsen has been advertising some of their portable speakers as having 360 sound for years, but really they’re just bidirectional, with speakers pointing out the front and back.
This thing is providing truly room-encompassing sound. There’s no bad spot to stand.
Mid and mid-high volume levels are best so far; at very quiet levels (trying not to wake the downstairs neighbors at 7am level), the bass is a tad overpowered. At very high levels I could notice the subwoofer holding back a bit (as designed, I suppose) on some tracks to prevent being overdriven and/or distortion. But throughout that wide sweet range in the volume range, the sound is just terrific.
Siri is Siri, for what it’s worth. Siri’s response is noticeably better than any iPhone has ever been (it’s not even close), picking up even quiet voices directed her way from across the room and responding quickly.
All in all, this is a keeper. I’ll post more after I’ve had more listening across a wider range of music.
Just ordered one myself and will pick it up later today. (Side note: Apple Pay with a Mac is great, wish more sites supported it.) My Echo is getting relegated to my bedroom, which will be really handy actually. I am pretty excited about this after reading some of the reviews (including yours). I think Siri is decent as it is, so that along with better sound, I think it will be a perfect fit for me.
I am a bit worried about the bass though because my condo’s walls are way too thin. I don’t suppose there is an option anywhere to lower it? Knowing Apple, there isn’t.
If you’re playing from your phone, you can use the EQ in the phone’s settings. But otherwise no, not that I’ve seen. I’m in a similar situation, and I’ve been looking at sound isolation mats this morning :-)
We’re not talking 10-12" subwoofer levels of bass, though. I’m just paranoid about being insensitive to neighbors.
Spent the last couple of hours listening to music and doing other basic tasks that I usually use my Echo for (timers, sports scores, etc).
Music it isn’t even close. One HomePod sounds amazing. Very full sounding, rich music. I was very happy with it…except the bass. The bass is just ridiculous. It’s overpowering. I don’t listen to the kind of music that needs bass like that and I really don’t want to piss off my neighbors. It limited how loud I could play music just because I needed to keep the bass down. I really hope they add some sort of controls to lower it. Classical music on the other hand was perfect on it.
Siri is just as easy to activate over the music as an Echo is. Never had any issues with it hearing me. I generally like Siri and think it does as good of a job as the Echo, but I was trying to get it to play the soundtrack for the Pianist and it just wouldn’t even get close. To be fair though, I don’t have iTunes Music or Match, so it’s only playing what I have bought through Apple, which is probably only a quarter of the music I own. I am not sure that album is even available to me through it. But every time I asked, it played something else, never the same thing.
Sports scores: It new the score of the Arsenal match this morning. Siri knows about the FA Cup, Alexa does not. Neither knows about the League Cup.
Timers etc it does fine, as expected. Can’t do more than one, but I never do that anyway. All the other little things like shopping lists, calendar, etc worked fine.
IMO HomeKit is superior to the Echos home automation stuff. HomeKit is easier to set up and Siri can do things like change colors which Alexa can’t do. It’s also nice having access to all my HomeKit scenes. Having a hub for that is working great so far.
I would really like an Echo like app to work with it. I don’t want to do all music stuff through voice, sometimes I just want to see my music collection and pick something from it. Plus I want to play music from my Mac, without Airplay.
So while not perfect, its pretty good so far. It will only get better from here, so I am happy with my purchase.
Can you explain what this means? I use Alexa to change colours of my Hue bulbs regularly.
Then I must be wording it wrong. If I saw “Alexa, make living room lights yellow” it won’t do it.
Try “Alexa set the living room light to purple.”
“Name of light/group does not support that.”
Tried groups and individual lights. All are Hues, on a Hue hub. 1st gen Echo. I must not have something set up incorrectly. Probably something has changed since when I first set it up 3 years ago when I got it.
Another plus for the HomePod, the response for turning on and off lights is quicker than the Echo. Noticeably so, but still fractions of a second.
I almost never use the Echo or Siri for general questions but tried a few last night after watching a French movie. Neither was great, but the Echo got far more correct than the HomePod. Neither could tell me when French independence day was for example, but the Echo could tell me when Bastille Day was. The Echo was more willing to guess at what I as asking, and give some sort of answer, even if wrong, while the HomePod would just say it doesn’t know.
Edit: Alexa App shows all my lights as not color capable. They all are. No option to change that. I guess I would have to delete and re add them. Not going to bother. I want an Echo Spot as a bed side clock/Echo, so maybe I will fix it if I ever get one.
B&O have two sorts of ‘360 degree’ speakers, the BeoSound 360 degree range that offer true omnidirectional music, and the Beoplay with True360 that uses evenly dispersed tweeters with (usually) one front facing mid-range speaker.
They use acoustic lenses for the former rather than a plethora of tweeters and some software skulduggery.
Speakers don’t go obsolete. They don’t break or go bad, if you treat them well. They last essentially forever. I’m using computer speakers from 1992 on my high-end gaming desktop at home, and bookshelves on my home theater from 1995. Both are perfectly fine.
The main problem with the Homepod is that it doesn’t have an input jack. When Apple stops supporting it, it becomes a brick.
Apple infamously released the iPod Hifi back in 2006. It was a very good sounding speaker at a pretty high price, and it didn’t sell well. But it had an input jack, so if you bought one back in 2006, or you purchase a used one today, you could plug in a Chromecast Audio or Echo Dot and have a perfectly usable bit of kit.
Yup, that’s the thing. Get any speaker you like that either has an aux or RCA inputs, pair with a Dot or Chromecast Audio/Home Mini combo and you don’t need to limit yourself to the smart speaker market.
Couldn’t care less about lack of inputs. Would never use them. The lack of Bluetooth connectivity is a major drawback though and the only thing I am missing from the Echo.
The thing has tons of drawbacks that have been stated in every article about it. Yeah, it’s a first gen product way behind the completion. People who buy it have to burn, enjoy being an early adopter, etc.
I am still enjoying it. Probably should have bought 2 Sonos Ones, but oh well. Will be fun seeing where this goes. Or I will join you guys complaining about it if it goes nowhere.
Another question: Do calendars really work? Multiple reviews I’ve read / heard say the standard Siri calendar functions aren’t available at launch. Just reminders and timers.
Hmm, thought it worked, could have sworn I tried it, but guess I didn’t, or it didn’t work. Will try when I get home. Been using reminders a lot, and that has been good, but sometimes it uses the default list when I say a different one. That has never happened with phone/watch.
The base leaves white rings on waxed wood according to the Wirecutter. Apple really wasn’t ready to release this thing. Although I would never have guessed it would do that to wood. It’s a nice grippy rubber on the bottom. Guess all that bass must shake it enough to leave a mark.
I just tried. She says she has no calendar access from there.
